The Model Stash

Hi, Everyone! Many sci-fi fans remember the 1975 British-Italian television show Space: 1999 .  Some consider it a classic with high-at-the-time production values and thought-provoking story ideas while others find the episodes dragging with poor plots, bad acting, and lots of very questionable science. The show ran for two seasons, each one being very distinct from the other.  Season one featured often-explosive Commander John Koenig (played by Martin Landau), soft-spoken Doctor Helena Russell (Barbara Bain, who was Landau's wife at the time), science adviser Professor Victor Bergman (Barry Morse), and many other members of Moonbase Alpha.  Many of the first season episodes skewed toward the cerebral which made them seem long and drawn out to critics.  By season two, Star Trek: The Original Series third season producer Fred Freiberger had come onto the show, and made tweaks so that it became more action oriented in efforts to appeal to a wider audience.  B...

Hi, Everyone! In 1978, the year after the original Star Wars became a successful worldwide phenomenon, Glen A. Larson and Universal Studios began production on a planned series of Buck Rogers TV movies for NBC.  During that same year, the pilot for Battlestar Galactica was re-edited into a theatrical movie which ran in some countries and in key locations in North America.  That film did well at the box office, so Universal decided to release the first Buck Rogers TV movie in theaters as well.  The box office returns were good which led NBC to commission a weekly TV series instead of more television movies.  Thus Buck Rogers In The 25th Century began on September 20, 1979. Given the subject matter, the show was decidedly campy with production values that easily date the episodes with 1970s futurism.  However, the two seasons of Buck Rogers gave viewers a few iconic goodies including the suave and charming Captain William "Buck" Rogers, the oftentimes Sp...

Hi, Everyone! Bandai burst onto the Star Wars model scene back in 2014 and instantly set a new, very high bar for accurate, detailed, and quality kits.  In that relatively short period of time, they have produced 80 kit releases as of this blog post! Most will agree that Bandai's Star Wars model kits are very great.  They are of manageable size when built, they are all designed to be snap fitted together, and they are molded in color.  Also, most of their offerings provide both water slide decals and stickers in order to appeal to different levels of scale modelers. Bandai makes kits of both vehicles and characters.  In regards to the vehicles, most are 1:72 and 1:144 in scale with a few also coming in at 1:48.  However, Bandai also has an inexpensive "Vehicle Model" line of kits that focuses on 1:144 or smaller BUT does not sacrifice on detail. Back around mid-2016, the first Vehicle Model was released.  It was the Imperial Star Destroyer.  ...