Today, I’m placing the focus back on Star Trek model kits. Some times we get to a point in our development plan when we have to figure out “is this kit worth doing?”. Or in the case of today’s kits “what could we do to this kit to make it worth doing?”. We have to weigh the expense of course. In the case of today’s first kit, our appetite was originally bigger than our mouth…

U.S.S. Enterprise 1701D 1:1400 scale. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this one before. Essentially the story goes like this. We wanted to eliminate the inaccurate raised detail from the ship, fix up some other details here and there, add a new base and add a set of Aztec decals. What we found out was that the raised details were probably added by the same means that the raised panels were added to the original AMT Enterprise Refit. We were told that the tools could not be modified this intensely and that new tools would be needed. The cost of which could have bought us two or three other entirely new kits. In addition to that, the mechanics of one of the tools was also substantially damaged. In the end, we canceled that iteration of the ship. So we took a step back and said “is there anything we could do with this kit at all?” After all, it is one of the most well known versions of the ship. After some serious thought, we thought about the requests we get for clear versions of various Star Trek ships. We figured, we’d fix the mechanical part, inject it in clear, fix up a couple fit issues here and there and add in our signature decals. So that’s what we’ve done. We’ll have our buildup with prototype decals on it as well as a clear test shot built on display at the show.

We’ll also have a prototype buildup of our new release of the U.S.S. Reliant. Again, we’ve invested in some key revisions in this kit. We have thickened the saucer, eliminated the inaccurate lines around the edge of the saucer as well as the “window” pock marks on the forward bulkhead and lastly, added ridge detail around the bridge dome that had been missing for unknown reasons. On top of all that, we are adding a new base which is essentially a bigger version of the one included in our 1:1000 scale Refit. To keep the price of the kit reasonable, we have decided to leave out the Aztec decals from this release and offer them as a separate item. The kit still includes all of the expected markings, etc. We’ve done our best to make this kit, if not 100% accurate, at least more appealing.

I’ve said before that The Reliant is probably my favorite Star Trek ship but of the enemy vessels, one has always really appealed to me. That is the Klingon Bird of Prey. I like it for the polar opposite reasons why I like its Romulan ancestor. The Klingon ship show conveys the aggression that is synonymous with its people. We’ve added some new and significant parts to this little birdie. First, we have adjusted the baffle angles to match the stance in Star trek III: The Search For Spock. In cruising mode, the wings raise above horizontal and as much as I like the aggressive attack stance, the original kit took it a touch to far. On top of that, we’ve decided to include a brand new “pose” for the kit- a “landed” pose. For the first time, the kit will include all of the parts to show the ship in its landed stance as seen in ST3 complete with ramp and a third set of wing baffles. We’ll add a little bit of real estate onto the decal sheet to finish it off. We will have a buildup of the adjusted wing angles and mockup parts of the landing gear to show off.

Tomorrow… Batmobile.