Martians War Machine

The box says this kit was made by B.C.I. whoever they are - there's not as much as an address. However, I think it’s made in England by Comet models. I picked it up through Monsters in Motion.

What a terrible model! I don’t mean the design - I knew what I was getting when I bought it. I mean the casting and the resin. I’ve never had a nightmare clean up like this model in my life. It was terrible, but what was worse was the God-awful resin they used to make the kit.

I posted a question on the boards about Comet’s special resin. Someone replied that it’s GRP or “glass reinforced plastic.” It’s a kind of fiberglass. It feels like porcelain, is light as styrofoam and as fragile as eggshells. To say it’s brittle makes it sound sturdier than it is. Luckily each piece was terribly cast so I got to be intimate with each piece trying to gingerly coach off the flash and remove mold lines with every type of gentle abrasive I had. From files to sandpaper to fingernail files to guilt, it took hours and hours to clean up this friggin’ kit. To make matters worse, GRP is one of the most toxic resins known to man. I understand there are weapon inspectors in London checking out the Comet plant. I had to wear a mask during the whole process. I still have lines on my face where it dug into my skin. When it was all said and done, I had managed to break the pieces 5 times during my cleaning.

There are some “traditional” resin pieces with the kit as well. The tentacles. I say traditional because they’re not GRP, but it’s hardly “good” resin as I’ve come to know from other manufactures like Erasmus’ Design used on their Roger Young or Skyhook’s Planet Express. To be consistent, Comet cast these pieces with as little if not less care as the rest of the model. I got to spend hours cleaning up, re-carving and repairing these pieces too.

Assembly was a nightmare. Due to the shape of the model, pinning was necessary if I didn’t want a shattered war machine in a week. I carefully drilled little holes and used wire to strengthen the joints. Because I was careful and lucky, this part didn’t break the model.

I had hoped to do a lot with this kit somehow, but since it broke once during the priming and again during the red basecoat I figured I should keep it as simple as possible.

I mixed up my Acrylic Liquitex Cadmium Red with Liquitex Acrylic Iridescent Tinting Medium to make a metallic red. The color was wonderful, but shooting it through an airbrush was a nightmare. I don’t know if it was my thinner or what, but I think the tinting medium kept separating and clogging the brush. I’d mix the paint again and again to try to keep it emulsified. I tried using Liquitex airbrush medium, but I don’t know how to use this. It’s not thinner and it’s not Tequila, so I don’t know why I bought it. It didn’t help the clogging issue. I just fought through it.

I used a dark brown oil wash to try to shade the walker. The legs got most of the attention. I used iridescent silver to highlight the “rivets,” and called it done.

The model broke a couple of times during painting. The worse was when a huge unseen bubble in one of the legs just snapped open dropping the leg to the floor.

I painted the alien that came with the kit in reds and Caius used it on his Pinewood Derby car.

I still think the model is cool. It’s a unique design and from a distance looks impressive, but the casting and resin used on this kit, makes it a total piece of shit. I wouldn’t recommend this kit at all. No amount of clean up short of recasting would have corrected the misaligned legs and tentacles. The bubble filled GRP resin just made matters worse. If the casting had been clean, if they’d lined up the molds properly, I might have forgiven the GRP, but it was insult to injury and the whole thing was a mess.