When I was growing up in the 70s in England, Space 1999 was one of my favourite TV shows. I had the Dinky Toys Eagle toy (actually I think I had both the transporter, and the one with the nuclear fuel waste disposal section) and loved it. There have been many kits made over the years, but as soon as I heard about this one at 1/48 scale, I had to get it. And yes, I was excited when it arrived in the post earlier today!The kit is from MPC / Round 2 models and costs around $100US, although postage and duties push that significantly higher. It comes in a nice sized colour printed box, with colour pictures showing a painted kit (and painting/decal guide) on the inner box.

The runners come in “white” (a sort of off-white that’s meant to match the original studio models) and grey for the landing gear and thruster rockets.

The detail on the kit looks very good, with good crisp edges and smooth surfaces. The plastic is thicker than I’m used to with mecha kits, which is hardly surprising given the size of the completed kit, and corresponding, the gates joining the pieces to the sprue are large too. This is not a snap-fit kit, but one that’s going to require a good amount of part preparation, gluing and finishing, but it’s such a classic space ship design, that I’m sure the end result is going to be well worth it.

The kit comes with a nice set of properly printed water-slide decals. The instructions appear a bit basic, being black and white printed on two sides of a large fold-out sheet rather than a booklet. It would have been lovely to have a proper booklet with colour photos and kit back-story to go with the model.

I’m keen to go with the red/white stripes of the “rescue pod” design, as although the kit will look great mostly white, I remember the toy I had when young also had the red stripes on the module section.

I also ordered the “Modelling the Eagle” book from http://www.scififantasymodeller.co.uk which is coming out this month to go with this kit. This looks to fill in the back-story of the kit and the original models from the series.

I’m not sure when building will start on this, and it will probably go parallel with other models due to the nature of having to prep and paint the figures and interior piece, and thruster bells and assemble sub-sections.

Update

The “Modelling the Eagle” book just arrived in the post from the UK. It has 80 full colour pages in a magazine style (with adverts only on the inside front and back covers).  I’ve had a quick glance through and it seems pretty decent, covering the original models in good detail, along with articles on the creation and building of new kits including this new 22″ one.