Models, anyone else into them?

[livingdead70]

Beware of those Polar Lights Kits, they are real sketchy casts too. I got lucky on my Zilla he was okay, but Rodan was a nitemare, lots of seam puttying. Ive heard that the other kits by them are hit or miss too. Dont get me wrong, they are great but can have thier problems. Some of the pieces can be real ill fitting.
One reason I have enjoyed those Tamiya soldiers is the ease of thier assembly. Those are some well thought out kits in my opinion. I have really had alot of fun with those soldier kits. And alot of them come with varying parts so you can vary the poses to your liking.
trey

[ctc]

>Beware of those Polar Lights Kits, they are real sketchy casts too.

I got a few of those too; and most were pretty good.

>I got lucky on my Zilla he was okay, but Rodan was a nitemare, lots of seam puttying.

I think a lot of them have problems because of the originals, or because the molds were retooled. I remember my original Ghidorah, from when I was a kid, didn't quite fit together right, and neither does the Polar Lights one. Nothing CRIPPLING; but it takes a bit of work to fix. Noticed the same thing with the reissued Dimetrodon. I had a bunch when I was a kid, and the top of the head NEVER fit together right. And neither does the reissue....

Don C.

[livingdead70]

Well thing big problem with Rodan was the wings. It took me and another person to get them on.
Im going to order that Ghidorah soon, how bad was it?
The Polar Lights kits are great, dont get me wrong. I actually read somewhere recently that they are getting out of making models.
trey

[palitoy]

I bought my daughter Rodan (she sleeps with a plush Rodan) and it really did suck to put together, it's a good thing she's three and paints like a mad thing.

[livingdead70]

Yeah those getting those wings on blew. And the Box says Snap-together?
heh, not quite. I couldnt that foot with the peg to go into to the building to stay on for nothing. I dont see how you could snap that guy together.
But I digress, it was tough but I had fun with him overall.
trey

[ctc]

>Im going to order that Ghidorah soon, how bad was it?

It's fixable, but the seam runs between the spines and it's tough getting a file in there after puttying. When I was a kid I sustained a few injuries off them spines trying to fix it.

Don C.

[tay666]

Well thing big problem with Rodan was the wings. It took me and another person to get them on.
Im going to order that Ghidorah soon, how bad was it?
The Polar Lights kits are great, dont get me wrong. I actually read somewhere recently that they are getting out of making models.
trey

Actually Polar Lights ceased to be a few years ago.
Bought out by RC2 and shut down (they bought the parent comapany Playing Mantis in order to get theri Johnny Lightning die-cast line and closed the model division a few months later)
A new company Round 2 now has access to all of RC2's model molds and will be producing some of the PL, MPC and AMT kits.

The PL kits are kind of hit and miss because
A - a lot were were made from the original molds that are still owned by Revell. Polar would pay Revell to run the kits then they would package them up and sell them themselves.
B - others were reverse engineered from old kits. Those teneded to be not so bad, as while they were having the new tooling made, they would make some minor tweaks to fix parts fit and such.
C - for some reason, a lot of their original kits are soft on details, and their snap kits are almost impossible for a child to actually snap together

What sucks the most about the PL kits though are their insturciton sheets.
Not sure why, but they just couldn't seem to get that part of the equation right.

But you have to give them credit for even bringing these kits out for us.
They paved the way for a lot of people to get back into the hobby that had quit building kits years ago.

Speaking of kits and kids.
For anyone interested, here is the link to my daughter's first model kit she did back in 2000, when she was 9 years old.
Britny's models
She even used nailpolish for some of the painting.