Thursday, March 23, 2017

News from the partwork world

A couple of interesting bits of news from the partwork world. First, DeAgostini are releasing a Build your own Thunderbird 2 mag.


The series has been running in Japan and the only report I found says it is pretty good - but then that's on a Facebook group dedicated to Space 1999 Eagles so people there love sci-fi craft from the Anderson stable. 

Completion seems to be the usual 100 issues so budget for £800+ for the full set. 

The finished model is 54cm long, 1:144 scale apparently, and includes pods 3 and 4 plus an assortment of rescue vehicles. I'm slightly surprised that part 3 includes all of Thunderbird 4. The iconic submersible could have waited until later in the series I would have thought. FAB 1 is also in the set - did this ever travel in TB2 or is this publisher licence? 

DeAgostini have also started to release complete kits - older partworks available as a full set in one go. 

If you want a Japanese D51 2-8-2 in 1:24 scale and have £799 going spare, it can be yours in one big box. A brass and steel kit, 88 cm long for less than the price of 7 Heljan 4mm scale 1361 class tanks. OK, it's a chunk of cash, but not as scary as it might be when you are looking at models in this sort of scale. 

Interesting move to sell kits this way. Presumably the plan is to mop up a few unsold models and satisfy the people who don't want to wait two years to complete a project. 

Cars, boats, planes and trains are available from the website.  Fortunately, my bank balance won't stand me adding to my unbuilt kits pile in this way. If anyone from DeAgostini is reading though, one of the cars or a train would make a great project for this blog!

2 comments:

Mr Taylor Anthony said...

I couldn't believe the size of the component in the first issue, would dwarf the front of a similar scale jumbo...

James Finister said...

The Swift pilot boat looks like it could be useful for an O gauge harbour scene with a little modification