My kit for our little GB will be the Nitto re-issue of the Raccoon, in 1/20 scale. It’s the recon armor for the Mercenary forces in the M.aK. universe, covered w/ special sensors, and having certain stealth modifications. The gun arm was also removed, making this a two handed SAFS variant.
Back when Nitto re-popped the MaKs, I bought and built every one them. Most of them came w/ visible pilot figures, and the juxtaposition of Man and Machine appealed to me, therefore I built most of them w/ the pilot showing.
However, the figures in the Nitto kits were… somewhat lacking. Detail was soft, they had molding issues, and sometimes they were barely recognisable as human. It took a lot of work to get them to look good.
So, I decided that I wanted to build an SAFS without the pilot showing. Since I was going to make it a pure Mech build, I bought the most non-human looking SAFS of them all - The Raccoon.
However, the high quality of the other Nitto releases had made me a bit of a snob. When I opened my new Raccoon, I found the kit parts to be covered w/ flash and sink marks. GASP!
Thusly disappointed, I tossed my Raccoon into the closet to be used for spares.
In fact, a few years later when building a Jerry, I used the upper sensor array from my Raccoon to detail it. in those heady days when MaKs were everywhere and only cost $11 (yes, you read that right) I scavenged a bunch of my kits, including most of a SAFS Fireball for that same Jerry model.
However, times have changed, and I realise that I was probably too hard on this little model (not to mention the fact that the cost of these kits has at least tripled), so I decided to give it another go.
Now, Nitto produced a number of the SAFS kits, including the Prowler - a Fireball variant covered w/ additional sensors. A little know fact, the Prowler kit contained all the sprues from all the various SAFS kits, including the Racoon’s upper sensor housing. So, I’ll be scrounging the parts from my Prowler kit, and possibly making use of the leftover parts from my Fireball kit as well.
Some of these kits also came w/ short lengths of corrugated vinyl tubing that was used to cover up the connecting parts inside the limbs. I actually prefer this covering to the current vogue of using putty to re-sculpt the joints. Fortunately, one of my kits came w/ a spare set of these little bits of tubing, so I’ll use those on my model.
…and that’s about as far as I’ve progressed. [H]
