CLOUD OF KITS FLY IN FROM PEGASUS

Mat Irvine reports from iHobby Expo:

Continuing my look at the new goodies on show at iHobby, this time I'm inspecting Pegasus Hobbies, a company that started off by making glitzy accessories for car modellers, an aspect it still does, but that now also makes aircraft and military models, and is best known for its science-fiction kits.

War of the Worlds

This is high on the Pegasus listing, and with the classic 1953 George Pal movie having been covered, attention is now being given to the more recent Tom Cruise movie of 2005. A Martian figure has already been released, and next up is the three-legged Martian war machine. Interestingly, the Pal ‘flying’ design was the only one that eschewed HG Wells’s text description - all other versions, including the Jeff Wayne audio and stage show version, and this latest, follow Wells closely. The Pegasus kit is big and tall - it stands more than 600 mm (24 in) high, even in 1:144 scale. The kit will also provide an opportunity for internal lighting, and a pre-production set-up by VoodooFX was on show. It's an impressive model - just look at the size of the car on the display base!

Nautilus

The submarine Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea should be available soon. This Pegasus design has a slight resemblance to the Disney movie version, however, it still has much more ‘design’ than Verne, who described the submarine as little more than a cigar-shaped tube. Perhaps that was fine at the time of writing, but it’s not much good as a screen star, hence the alternative designs.

My Favorite Martian

Mixed in with the ‘serious’ sci-fi kits was this one from a comedy, the spacecraft flown by Uncle Martin in the 1963-66 US TV sitcom My Favorite Martian. You get a neatly-moulded 1:18 scale spacecraft, with opening doors and detailed interior, plus a standing figure of Ray Walston, who played the Martian. 

Kothoga killer creature 

To come are two new fantasy creature kits, first Kothoga, as featured in the 1997 horror movie The Relic. The 1:12 scale Pegasus Kothoga model looked to be well up to par for this kind of production, and a certain draw for horror lovers. 

Vermithrax dragon

The second fantasy creature is the dragon Vermithrax, which breathed fire and fury in the 1981 movie Dragonslayer, not to be confused with Draco, the feature-creature of DragonHeart of 1996, which has been kitted by Revell-Monogram. Vermithrax will be joined in the box by the movie's human star, the young wizard Galen, played by Peter MacNicol, before he found wider note on TV, starring in the medical drama Chicago Hope and crime series Numb3rs.  

Terminator 2

Away from fantasy and back to science-fiction proper, 2012 releases will include deadly machines from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, including the Skynet Aerial and Tank Hunter/Killer robots, both kits made to 1:35 scale, and in solid plastic, not vinyl. 

See Pegasus Hobbies here.

Heaps more Pegasus stuff, including the company's excellent 1:8 scale Martian, here.

Personalities at Pegasus

Pegasus founder and CEO Larry Thompson, with colleague Erik Solie.

Pegasus staff are enthusiastic about The War of the Worlds.

DANGER - THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!

A MAT IRVINE REVIEW
The HG Wells story The Wars of the Worlds always seems to draw attention, even if various movie remakes have shifted the location away from the English original. Although the George Pal version of 1953 was about the furthest removed from Wells’s Victorian settings, it arguably remains the most well known (notwithstanding the 2005 Stephen Spielberg movie, set in New Jersey) especially when it comes to the shape of the Martian war machines. There have never been any mainstream model kits of these in traditional plastic until now - and they have come from what is a relatively new company

Only a few years ago, Pegasus Hobbies was producing a few parts for car modellers and some wargaming accessories, but now it has grown to include a range of traditional construction kits, including some new science fiction subjects. We mentioned the Pegasus Hobbies Apollo 27 on SMN recently, and now we look at three Pegasus war machine models.

There are two copper-chromed war machines to 1:48 scale, each spanning some 280 mm (11 in) across. One is a kit, the other pre-built ‘with sounds’. In much smaller 1:144 scale you get the complete 203 mm (8 in) long mini diorama shown in the pictures above. This one is a simple kit, almost snap together, though some parts do benefit from glue and it needs a bit of care with the paint.

Prominent features of the George Pal war machine are the ‘green glowing’ nose and wingtips, here supplied in clear plastic. For best effect, you need to apply transparent green paint, which is available from many paint companies. The main body is a copper shade. The diorama depicts a pair of them attacking two Sherman tanks - not badly done considering their size - and one of the tanks is shown getting socked by a blast from a Martian ‘death ray’.

A neatly done base completes the set-up, the only oddity being that the war machine supports are moulded in opaque plastic, so they show up. Given that clear plastic is used anyway for other parts, it seems a shame they weren’t supplied in clear. However, on the model I constructed for the pictures above, they’ve been replaced with clear acrylic rod so they blend in to the background slightly better.

Visit Pegasus Hobbies here.

APOLLO 11 ANNIVERSARY ON MONDAY - BUT APOLLO 27 IS WHAT COULD HAVE COME AFTERWARDS

‘What if’ scenarios are a favourite with many modellers, especially the ‘Luftwaffe 1946’ brigade (SMN is what-if central, so the plea here is guilty, m’lud), so when Pegasus Hobbies brings to market a 1:72 scale Apollo 27 model, it’s a max-interest event.

The Apollo 27 is a good size model, scaling out at some 254 mm (10 in) high when sitting on its outriggers, pointed at the great beyond. A neat bubble canopy reveals the pilot-astronaut and all-in-all the A27 is well worth adding to your collection, especially so because you can display it with any current-generation 1:72 models.

So far as styling goes, Apollo 27 is perhaps a little retro, owing more perhaps to rocket designs of the 1950s era than those of the post-Apollo 11 age. But that’s carping - the idea is ace, the execution OK, the choice of scale top. All aerospace fans should have one!

Visit Pegasus Hobbies here, and UK online supplier Frontier Models here.

UFO INVASION GROUP HEADING TO PLANET EARTH?

Now that summer’s nearly here, the UFO spotting season is well underway. And with news that massed groups of mystery lights were spotted over England and Europe this week, perhaps it’s time to wonder again at what goes on at Area 51, in Nevada.

Pegasus Hobbies' nice 1:72 kit envisages one possible answer - maybe the recent UFOs were squadrons of circular flying craft that were built here on terra firma, purportedly reverse-engineered from a mystery UFO that crashed many years ago. One mechanical engineer even claimed to have work on a ‘flying disc simulator’, communicating with an alien being called J-Rod.

Ah well, here at SMN Towers, we’ll just have to stick with the Pegasus kit here.

The London Daily Mail has a good feature on these recent events here.