Elvira - Mistress of the Dark from Moebius

After waiting for what seems like ages, Moebius has finally released their Elvira plastic model kit, one which I was at the fence deciding if I should get her or not. The picture above was what they released as a teaser and I have to admit, I am rather biased with feminine kits. Of course I had wanted to see the parts first hand before deciding, and thanks to ELs from Hobbytalk forum, he showed us what to expect.  

But before I go into details about the kit, some of you may ask "who is Elvira?" OK, for the uninitiated, Elvira began with a horror comedy movie back in 1988 under the title Elvira - Mistress of the Dark, and stars Cassandra Peterson, who gave Elvira her iconic look to this date.  

And here is the famous Elvira pose .... HOT! HOT! HOT! I use to have this poster during my school days .... its gone now. No idea what happened to it. I think she somehow got replaced with the Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole poster when I became a Ferrari Fanatic. Well, I was young and hot blooded that time, and having nice cars always get the girls .... in my case, it was fun dreaming about it.

Kind of hard to imagine how a beautiful lady like Cassandra can be transformed into .... Elvira. The power of .. Gothic cosmetics? This is going to make painting her fun. After the movies, Elvira made a few appearance in a RPG game under the same name, courtesy of Accolade.

OK, lets focus on the kit. 

I have been hearing a lot of good comments so far from people who have purchased her, and the only thing that raised some eyebrows here was that the kit's pose was different, it wasn't what we thought we would get. Elvira's pose now follows the box art where she lies on her love seat sofa, as against the original image at the top of this blog. Don't matter, its still a nice pose.

There are about about 66 parts to the kit (correct me if I am wrong here) and the figure itself is scaled at 1/8 scale. Kit includes accessories such as that weird looking pet dog, skull and skeletal hand, a candelabra ... and something that is peering from under the carpet.

Images below were taken by ELs from the Hobbytalk forum as my kit haven't arrived yet to get the parts images.

And here's how the complete build up should look like. Nice eh?

Wait, I'm not finished yet. One common problem faced by almost 90% of all scale modelers worldwide, and I need to highlight this .... is ... just how do you paint a woman and get her to look like a woman? I am of course referring to the face. This is truly a challenge, getting Elvira here to look like ... well, Elvira. Sorry, I can't give you any tips here since mine usually ends up looking like a transvestite, guess I'll just need to practise more.

So to help out all you scale modelers out there (me included), here are some reference shot of Cassandra dolled up into Elvira (I already notice the cheeks needs to be more puffy on the kit)

Ahem ... I hope you guys were studying the face, cause that's really where the problem area lies.

Now, as an added incentive to the many others planning to assemble their own Elvira kit, here are some wonderful build up shots done up by jaws62666. Its by far one of the best example of an assembled and painted Moebius Elvira kit.

Just curious how mine is going to look like. No thanks to jaws62666, he really raised the bar with his build ... nuts!

Elvira - Mistress of the Dark is available over at CultTVman. There are some scratch and dent boxes still available with very good prices there. Just in case you're wondering, scratch and dent here refers to only the boxes' condition. The plastic parts inside are undamaged. So it is really a good deal, after all, you want the kit, not the box.  

Happy building with this one.