Cycroader II from Lensman

[Millenniumf]

I was cruising through Starship Modeler, looking at the Mecha section on the main site, and in an interview with Alain Gadbois there's a picture of this thing from Lensman that had a really interesting shape. The picture's really small, but it looked really cool! After some research I discovered it was called the Cycroader II. So I got bit by a bug that told me I needed to track down one of these little kits and build it. It wasn't easy to find one that had a good deal on it because Lensman kits are hard to find (good luck ever getting a Britannia II these days for a reasonable price!). But I lucked out and found one on EvilBay that wasn't too expensive. It turned out to be an absolute joy to build! The flat surfaces of the model were just begging for a nice weathering job. And since it's basically a space motorcycle owned by a teenager, it figured that it should have plenty of dents and scratches, but not so much that it looked like it had spent the last fifteen years out in the rain. The base I decided need to be metallic like the logo in the anime, so I went with Alclad II Chrome and Testors Silver. The lettering was done by hand with Vallejo acrylics.

And naturally, me being me, I decided it needed lights! I hadn't seen the anime before building it so I went with pink LEDs for the engines, as they are shown to have a pinkish glow on the box art, but if I'd seen the anime first I might have picked blue. However, I think it looks great either way.

 

[JeffBond]

I loved these kits--I still have the Brittania but it's in pretty dire shape. Someone is doing a larger garage kit version I'm interested in...

 

[Victor3]

I had that kit when I was a kid! Of course, I did a terrible job on it and eventually broke it.

Yours looks great!

 

[Guns Akimbo]

Great build! I have this kit in my stash, as well as a Britannia II.

 

[Millenniumf]

I loved these kits--I still have the Brittania but it's in pretty dire shape. Someone is doing a larger garage kit version I'm interested in...

I'd be interested in that, too! The Britannia II is on my list of ships I love from the 70's, and I'd love a larger version than the small 1:1000 scale Tomy kit, especially since it's getting really hard to find these days for less than $200.

 

[JeffBond]

I had the Brittania II Tomy TOY for a while--it was really cool, but it had a spring-loaded feature such that any time you removed it from the box where it was secured by styrofoam packaging, it sprang into an L-shape, so it was impossible to display it in its normal configuration. So I wound up selling it.

 

[Guns Akimbo]

I'd love a larger version than the small 1:1000 scale Tomy kit, especially since it's getting really hard to find these days for less than $200.

I guess I lucked out when found an unbuilt NIB kit on ebay for under $100 a few years ago.