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1:72 Y-Wing sofubi kit by Argo Nauts

On my nerd shopping expedition with my friend Lou at the end of April, I was at a Book Off Plus in Maebashi and took a look at this kit. I’ve seen it at that store for many years now, but they had reduced the price from something like 4000 yen down to 2400. I peeked inside the kit, thinking that it was a resin kit. It turns out that it’s a sofubi kit, with resin and metal parts. I couldn’t resist! I’ve already begun cutting the vinyl parts. I’ll put videos of this build on my YouTube and Odysee channels.

Argo Nauts was a sublabel of Aoshima’s in the early ’90s. They made sofubi kits of subjects from Robocop, Terminator, and Predator. They also made several Star Wars kits, and until Fine Molds got the license, these Argo Nauts kits were the best ones available. A few years ago, I built the Argo Nauts TIE Interceptor that was resin and metal. (Here’s a link to my photoset of this build on my Tumblr feed.) The detail on it is pretty fantastic, but despite it being 1:72 scale, it is a bit smaller than the Fine Molds TIE Interceptor (I built that one too). Argo Nauts’ X-Wing fighter kit is also a sofubi/resin/metal kit. That same Book Off Plus in Maebashi once had the Argo Nauts X-Wing Fighter, but that was sold a few years ago. They also made resin kits of the Millennium Falcon and the Star Destroyer. I have a 1:6 scale sofubi Stormtrooper by Argo Nauts, but the figure stands a bit too short, proportionally. It looks a bit like Luke Skywalker when he wore the Stormtrooper armor because he is short in stature and looked awkward wearing the armor. I think I will try to modify the knees with some PVC pipe or something to try to make it stand taller.

I had known of Argo Nauts for a while, but I did not know that it was an Aoshima brand until I worked for Aoshima in 2016. I had a conversation with an employee named Iizuka-san who had been with the company for a very long time and said that Aoshima had once made Star Wars kits. I was like, “No way,” and he told me that Argo Nauts was their sub-brand.

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My Star Wars Rebel fleet plamo diorama is nearly complete

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.