I have a large stash of unfinished kits…200+ is large to me, anyway. And it’s a rather eclectic stash as well. I have kits from just about every model category there is and they aren’t stacked together in any kind of organized manner. I have an Aoshima Nissan 350Z kit sandwiched in between Revell USA’s Mi-24 Hind and Monogram’s F-4C Phantom. An old AMT Monte Carlo NASCAR kit from the 90’s is trading paint with a War of the World’s kit from Pegasus. There are muscle cars on top of Tiger tanks. A creature kit from the Alien movies shares space with a PV-1 Ventura. Aoshima’s Airwolf kit sits alongside Academy’s USS Oliver Hazard Perry Guided Missile Frigate. I’m sure by now you’re getting a pretty good idea of how varied my stash is. As I’m glancing over the stacks of tanks on top of prop planes on top of spaceships on top of race cars I come across one particular model and I think to myself, “This has to be the most unusual model I have.” It’s Revell/Germany’s Bucket Wheel Excavator.
I first came across this kit back in maybe '89 or '90. I found it at the local Walmart back before there were Super Walmarts. I had it for around ten years and actually started building it but eventually sold it because I didn’t think I would ever get around to finishing it. At times since then I found myself thinking about that kit and regretted selling it because I thought I would never see another one again. Last year, while browsing the Squadron website for nothing in particular, I was blown away with surprise to find it had been re-released in a limited edition. I wasted no time in ordering it and a good thing too because shortly after that they had cleared it out of their stock.
Even though I haven’t built it yet it is the Crown Jewel of my collection.
So, what is the most unusual model you own or have owned, either built or still in the box?
Wow, I can’t even get into my collection—it’s spread between 3 different houses right now for lack of space, but I would say that if I had to guess from memory, i would be the Polar Lights “Psycho House”.
The other candidate would be the UPC “Roman Chariot” kit
Three different houses??? Holy cow! How many models do you have in your stash?? [proplr] I thought having 104 in my stash was overdoing it! Heehee! Hey, wait a minute… You own three houses? Cool!! [Y] [t$t]
Doog, I think both of those are certainly unique kits. I’ve been tempted to buy the Psycho kit but haven’t done it yet. And the Chariot is a new one to me. I’ve never heard of UPC. Is that an old or new kit?
Good lord, NO, no! [:O] I don’t OWN three houses—Jenn and I Are only now building a modest home in the Charlotte area. My stash is split between what I have here in our apartment, a few dozen up at her mom’s house in NY were I stored some of my furniture and other things when I moved from there to NC, and some are at my parent’s house in PA. All in all I’d have to estimate my stash at about 200 kits, fully 1/4rd of that is cars.
It’s pretty old – it’s probably 1960s-ish or even earlier—I get the feeling that it was a model to capitalize on the 1959 movie “Ben Hur” with Charlton Heston. The box art with the white horses-- it just really evokes the race scenes at the end. Pretty cool model; the molding is average, but it looks like it will build up into a decent looking representation,
I have wanted that one for awhile .I have the " OffShore Oil Rig " but somewhere along the wayI lost my real prize which is the REVELL early release of a "Westinghouse Nuclear Reactor’ . I can find the same thing in paper and it’s the same scale too ! But it just isn’t the same
UPC or Universal Powermaster Corporation was a company that reboxed many older kits that were going out of business or needed some cash flow in the 1960s, They also reboxed many Japanese motorized tank kits that had the black rubber band tracks.
Probably the oddest kit I have is the sand worm from the 1984 movie, Dune.
Haha, no, but it’s from Toho films where the hapless ground forces do battle (or rather, get stomped as part of the script) against kings of monsters like Godzillas and the like.
More recently I bought the 1/700 Tomytech LC39 Space Shuttle Launching Pad. Pricy but men must never let go of the romance of space exploration!
Revell did three model kits that tied into the Dune movie. The best of the three was the 1/72 Ornithopter they used to escape into the desert. They also did a sand crawler in a much larger scale, 1/25 or 1/32 if memory serves me. I’ve got them somewhere. The sand worm is a very small scale, but a very large worm and even comes with the little Freman figures to pose on top of the worm and the worm itself is molded on a sand base.
