AT AT Imperial Walker

October 2005

This model marked my reintroduction to plastic modelling after a hiatus of many years. I'd been planning on getting back into modelling during the summer of 2005, and Mayu wanted me to build her a model of the Imperial Walker from Star Wars, which she calls a "doggy horse." She bought the model at a local shop called Hobby Bench and I put it together. It now stands on her bookshelf along with her other toys like Astroboy, Chuckie the killer doll, Wallace and Gromit, the 2005 San Diego Comic Con exclusive Super Grover action figure, and her plastic electronic Doraemon bank.

I haven't been too impressed with the quality of AMT/Ertyl models. In high school I had put together an X-Wing model. I had weathered it and made it look real cool, but it was difficult to "lock S-foils into attack position" and the wings were crooked. I ended up throwing it away. This ATAT model wasn't to bad. The legs were somewhat poseable as well as the neck. However, the head and neck are attached to the body by a rubber band in order to pose it. I noticed that the head would droop quite a lot. In the dry Arizona air, the rubber band had started to deteriorate. I decided to just glue the head and neck into place. Also, there were a lot of areas where I had to use my X-Acto knife to whittle down certain parts to get them to fit together properly.

I used black paint to smear across the Walker, and wiped it off with a paper towel soaked in thinner to create the dirty streaking, as well as to make the appearance of grime collecting around the joints, feet and crevices.

It's a shame that this model company owns the rights to these models, because AMT/Ertyl could do a much better job from my experiences with their models. I have a Star Destroyer and a Snowspeeder that I have yet to assemble. I may get one of those cool-looking Jedi Starfighters from Episode 3 as well.

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