Goodies from the IPMS show

Now, it would be rude to go to a plastic kit show, and not come away with at least one box, wouldn't it? 

Well, I wasn't rude. I also know why I have a 35 litre rucksack. 

Starting with the big buy, a kit I don't really understand. It's a sort of walking robot suit, that a pilot sits in and operates. More than that I do not know as all is in Japanese.

My guess is that this is from a Manga cartoon of some sort. I'm not into manga, but I just love the idea of the model. It looks fun, and that's what the hobby is about. It's also as far from toy trains as you can get, and still be making models. 

If anyone can enlighten me further, I'd be fascinated. 

These three were proper bargains. Dug out of a box of similarily packages models, I eshewed the Japanese robots, I haven't built last years purchases for a start, aiming for Gerry Anderson pastiche's. The exciting thing is that the two CD-Boy kits include sound chips. What is the sound? No idea, but for four quid each, I'm happy to find out. 

OK, there is one Japanese robot, but he's from the same box of water damaged (so I'm told, hence no boxes, but a saving of six pounds in the TB4 kit) stock. It turns out there are two robots in the kit - one is a pendant for the SciFi robot loving love of your life presumably. 

TB3 is just because that's my favourite Thunderbird. I think there was a CD-Boy version, but someone snaffled it just before me, such is the scrum around these boxes.Boo. 

Kate - I'll be right there, is a kit I've been meaning to buy for a while. Purely because the main character in our excellent novels is called 'Kate'. She doesn't look much like the plastic Kate, but I think I can fix that. The model is from a range called "Dangerous Curves". I leave investigating further to you. 

The gladiators were two quid from the Bachmann MCC stand. I can't resist a bargain, and feel they might one day be made into a model of the people discussing things on a popular web forum. 

Something a bit more sensible now, a set of graduated sanding sticks. For the moment, these will be kept for best work (yes, I do some!) especially the really fine ones. 

The bookazine has Daleks in it and some behind the scenes stuff, and was three quid. I'm not flicking through a mag for that price, I'll take the risk on the content being interesting. Get me. 

Finally, a Bond Bug, to replace the one I messed up. This has been a tough kit to track down, it's been such a good seller that all the retailer are out of stock. Possibly one of Airfix's best sellers of recent times. 

And the SR-N1. Well, it's another kit I've always fancied, but not enough to shell out eBay prices. 

All this probably looks very profligate. Just north of £100 blown on plastic kits, that I might never get around to building at my current rate of progress. I don't care. This show has been on my calendar for a long while, and I was determined to enjoy myself. Part of that is buying interesting kits, and dreaming I will one day get around to building them.Maybe it could be said that I left with a bag full of dreams...