I dunno whether to call the show “Spy Family” or “Spy x Family.” I’Ve seen a lot of Suntory Coffee Boss Spy Family products at drug stores lately. The top picture is peanut-flavored café au lait. I bought this box, but I have yet to try it. I’ll show this in the next Japanese snacks video I upload to my YT and Odysee channels.
Unfortunately, the Spy Family movie won’t be out until December! By that time, it will have been a year since the 2nd season on TV ended. They’re making us wait a whole year.
I’ve been slowly working on this project for seven years. It started out with me just wanting to build and light up the Rebel Transport. This was back when I worked for Aoshima. I had wired it for lighting, took it to work to show a coworker, then placed it on the front seat of my car so as not to upset the bosshole because that grumpy dingbat bitched about everything. But the sun shone on it for many hours, causing the air inside the empty shell to overheat and warp the plastic. It was a lost cause, but fortunately my friend Steve (SMKR on YouTube) sent me a replacement!
These model ships came from the old MPC/AMT Rebel Hangar diorama from the early ’80s. There was the Hoth Battle and this hangar, and both came with lousy vacuform bases. I had the battle with the AT-ATs and Snowspeeders when I was a child. The Falcon isn’t too bad when looking at it from the top and bottom, but the sidewalls are crap. The back engine is completely featureless, as are the docking rings on the side. I added greeblies and pipes to the sides to spruce the kit up. The same for the X-Wings, where I added sewing pins to recreate the laser cannons properly. The Snowspeeders aren’t too bad, but the Y-Wings were sculpted without proper reference material and were obviously made going off of someone’s memory. Nothing is really in scale with others, although the X-Wings are in scale with the Falcon. I’ve been chronicling the process of this build on my Tumblr account and will update it again once I am finished. I envision this as a scene between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.
I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.
The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.
In level 1-3, a secret area shows Snake Plissken from Escape from NY land atop the building on his glider and he hands you his special automatic pistol.
Level 4 is the section that most resembles Blade Runner. The secret area in level 4-4 shows Deckard holding onto the ledge of the building while Batty releases a dove. Cool.
We went to the trout farm in Katashina two weeks ago, and enjoyed the cool 28°C. As always, the air was filled with dragonflies flying about.
There is a trick to catching dragonflies. As you know, they like to land on the reeds standing out above the water, right? If you point your finger up, the dragonflies might land on your finger. Ulan is a master at it!
