Sunday, January 2, 2011

Airfix re-issuing Captain Scarlett's Angel Interceptor in 2011



Here's a bit of good news for all Gerry Anderson's fans. Airfix has announced (look for "Space 1:72 scale - no images there though) that they will be re-issuing out the 1/72 scale Captain Scarlett Angel Interceptor. I vaguely remember this puppet animated series ... then again I remembered being scared off my wits watching those type of puppet shows at that tender young age. I loved the fighters though.

I knew a cousin of mine was interested in this kit. I was taken aback when I found out recently there are actually quite a few scale modelers interested in her too. Previously many had to depend on eBay to get her, and the box condition would have deteriorated somewhat with age. Its great that Airfix is going to re-issue her.






Interesting to note that I had always thought only Airfix released the Angel Interceptor. I did a little research and found out that Aoshima and Imai from Japan had also released scale models of her.


The design for the Interceptor runs on very common flow lines in Gerry Anderson's series, including another show called UFO where the Interceptor there had ... I'm not really sure what you call that nose thing.



Anyways, no information was given as to when Airfix will make available this kit, so in anticipation of her coming, I found some interesting reference materials. Not really sure if these are accurate but they sure look like studio models.







And on a last note, I also found out there is a resin kit for the Angel Interceptor in 1/48 scale. Interesting ...



Hopefully this kit will be out soon. I missed the earlier batch way back in the 70s, hopefully the new kit will come with some re-tooling to meet modern day scale modeler demands.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Bruce... Happy New Year!

    I don't know if you're joking about the UFO Interceptor, or if you've never seen the show.
    Assuming you've never seen the show... the concept is that these ships would launch from a moonbase, and fire a nuke, (the bulbous nose section), at alien ships trying to sneak in. In the show I don't remember them ever being effective. After firing the missile, there appeared to be no other weaponry to engage with... kinda stupid actually. The intercept mission would then fall to earth based assets, namely SkyDiver, which almost always got a kill.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Eric, Hope you have a good year too.

    Unfortunately in terms of puppets shows from Gerry Anderson (GA), I have never seen the UFO series, only Captain Scarlett (a few episodes) and Thunderbirds. The only GA series I followed up religiously was Space 1999.

    Thanks for the explanation on the UFO's interceptor. It does sound kind of silly to only have a Nuke for its weaponry. The ship design is great though for kit bashing.'

    Bruce

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually UFO wasn't a puppet show, it was Gerry's first live action series using actors. It preceded 1999 by a few years, but it was pretty dark and serious as I remember. I liked the hardware on the show, but the moonbase interceptors irritated me with their apparent lack of effectiveness... I think the writers missed it on that one. They should have had them wrack up a decent number of kills once in a while. :)

    ReplyDelete