Received the Ultimate Bridge Upgrade Set and Aurora Vampirella from Moebius

Received 2 packages today from CultTVman and Hobby Search. One has the Ultimate Bridge Upgrade Set from Creature Arts/Don Lights and Magic for the AMT Original Series Enterprise Bridge Set along with the Aurora issue of Vampirella (Ulala) re-issued by Moebius, and the box has some wonderful PE Sets I've been meaning to get for my scratch build activities.

I had highlighted the Ultimate Bridge Upgrade set before over HERE and today, after inspecting her up close, I am able to give everyone a more comprehensive look on the parts.

The Ultimate Upgrade Set for AMT's Original Series Enterprise Bridge Diorama

This set is designed to replace some of the original plastic parts from the kit as many of those were overly simplified (meaning all the control panels you see there are all the same generic design, and others were just given the basic shape with little or no details). The proportion of some of the kit's parts are wrong and even the decals provided only serve to give the bridge a busy look - inaccurate since its suppose to look busy as in the TV series, not just look busy.

This upgrade set represent phase 1 and will be further complimented with a phase 2 that will consist of a photoetch set and transparent panels for lighting. Phase 2 will only be made available sometime in 2011, so in the meantime, you will get in phase 1 the following parts:

  

• 4 clear replacement desktop units with control panels molded in (really cool when you light these up)
• 6 accurate chair seats with their stands
• 1 accurate Captain Chair to replace the simplified version given in the kit
• 1 correctly detailed elevator door unit to replace the lame part in the kit
• 1 clear piece red alert beacon
• 1 accurate and detailed helm unit
• 1 helm scanner unit which was missing from the original kit
• 1 correct wall panel unit
• 1 detailed and accurate viewscreen unit
• 1 viewscreen back support unit
• 1 clear piece for the view screen

 Here's more images of the parts provided. Click on the image to see more details



Opaque pieces laid out



The chairs were in a separate zip lock bags which I didn't take
out for fear I may loose some parts



Compare these with the kit's part - enough said



The new Turbolift and wall section gives the kit a more Enterprise
look. The kit's just look like a piece of wall



The new Viewscreen is very accurate to the TV series, and looking
at it now .. just realised LCD TV was already around in the 1960s???



Clear parts consist of the 4 workstation, the main Viewscreen clear
part and the red alert beacon part

Check out the control panels molded unto the clear parts.
I am already visualizing the lighting effects there



I understand there's a lot of Star Trek Modellers who owns the AMT TOS Enterprise Bridge set, and many had put this project on hold due to all the inaccuracies and missing details. Only a handful succeeded with their build but that is only after scratch building their own parts.

The Ultimate Bridge Upgrade set will definitely make your job easier and not only that, its accurate to the tee. It is currently available at CultTVman Hobbyshop site HERE and when phase 2 is available, you're going to have one hell of a TOS Enterprise Bridge diorama. Now, if only someone can sculpt up more crew members. We're missing Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Uhura and Chekov. Having Ensign Rand there helps too.

Aurora Vampirella from Moebius

 

 

Technically this kit was produced by Aurora, a company that made its mark producing monster kits from the yesteryear's and had a huge following. Unfortunately this company has since disappeared from the market and for a while, many had to resort to eBay and cough up exorbitant prices to own one.

Now thanks to Moebius who bought up the rights, they have re-issued many of these kits again, and in their original mold. Mind you a lot of these are meant to look like the yesteryear's, so the molds especially on the faces do look like ... well, imagine a young Elizabeth Taylor's era with you know, weird eyeliners and heavy make up and all. Want to modernize them .. well, you can, but it may be sacrilege. Its like giving a Gundam kit realistic metal colours - can get flamed for that you know.  

Vampirella was among the few kits in particular that I had long wanted to own when I was a teenager in High School (the other is Elvira but she's not available yet). Used to have a lot of comics about this character but alas they've all gone missing from my collection. So when I heard Moebius re-issued this kit and CultTVman put her status as "available" .. well, as Lord Vader said ... "I have you now".

The box was surprisingly .... small. I thought the kit would be about 12" tall but it looks more like she's just half of that, which is even better. Easier to work on and she doesn't require a lot of space to display. The castings are super clean, and the details, especially on the face, is sharp and clear. The kit gives you several options to pose her as they are 2 different sets of legs and arm appendages, and there's that cute little bat there.

Here are some better images of the parts in case you're wondering:

I have never worked on an Aurora kit before and looking at the parts, it sure looks like this kit is going to be a joy to work with. Let's see if I can modify that face to look more like Angelina Jolie .. oh yeah ... now that would make her a real killer. Seriously I was rather surprised that the plastic quality is similar to that of the Mark II Viper and the Galactica, meaning this plastic cast is really very easy to work with. Looking forward to building this one next year.

Vampirella is available at CultTVman HERE