The old adage of “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it” applies equally to modelling as to other facets of life. How many times have you tried something and been glad that you did? How many times have you looked at, or been given a kit, and thought “That’s not something I would build!” but then you build it, and you’re amazed to find it was fun and interesting. Maybe a whole new world opens up, maybe it doesn’t, but the fact of the matter is that you’ll never know until you try it. For me, it was that way with cars. When my brother gave me my first car kit, a 1/32 Exp, I thought: “Well, I love EXPs, but don’t like car kits, so I can build this ONE and that’ll be okay.” Now I have something like 182 car kits. Don’t judge me… you’re no better!
However, if you’re a new modeller, maybe you don’t even know what you like or don’t like. Maybe you just want to build something, but are kind of overwhelmed when you go to the hobby shop. Or, maybe you’re a parent or grandparent who wants to get their youngster interested in modelling, but doesn’t want to pick the wrong thing and close that door forever. That’s a lot of pressure, in either case. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to try different things and see what you liked best? What you need, in this case, is a styrene version of a Whitman’s Sampler; something of every flavour so you can find the one(s) that suit you.
Well, thankfully, Academy thought of this too, and has you covered. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, it is, of course, the rather unknown and esoteric “Transportation in Miniature” set!
Now, here at the Lagoon, running into weird and wonderful kits is kind of what I do. I love to present things that are cool, and where possible, a bit off the beaten path. Well, this thing doesn’t even use a path, and other than my 1/20 Mazda Familia Rotary, this is the kit I’ve been able to find out the least about online. All I know is it was made by Academy/Minicraft, and represents what is literally a Styrene Sampler!
I ran into this thing at a relatively recent “Nostalgia Show” in Woodstock, Ontario. I’d never seen anything like it before, and the folks selling it weren’t heavily loaded with plastic kits. This was one of only two they had! I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it seemed weird, interesting and maybe just a bit fun, so I scooped it up and brought it back to share with the world. So, strap in, because unless you are a totally closed-minded and blindered modeller, there’s bound to be something of interest here in this box!
The Box:
The box of the “Transportation in Miniature (TiM) kit is large and very, very flat. It’s about the size of a small pizza, but not as thick. It also has less melted cheese, so if you’re hungry, look elsewhere. What it does, have, though, is a lot of pictures! The box itself has a silvery background onto which is overlaid a 3×3 grid of squares. The centre of these tells you that this kit is “A History of Transportation” and requires no glue or paint. It also tells you it covers air, land and sea. Oddly, there’s no mention of space; an interesting omission since there are several space kits in here.
The other eight squares contain pictures of some of the kits in this box. How many are there? Well, the subtext at the top of the box tells you there are 16 scale model cars, ships, planes and space vehicles. (Oh, good, there’s some recognition of the space stuff!) The eight squares only illustrate some of these. Most of the squares call out two different subjects (for example, the Concorde and Boeing 727) but only illustrate 1 (the Concorde, in that case). However, there are exceptions, since all four space kits are illustrated. The drawings of the depicted subjects are quite nice, and they vary a lot in composition. Most have no background, but the lunar landing sets do! The drawings are nice and big enough given the size of the box, and seeing everything from a Mayflower to a Model T and a Concorde to a LEM certainly does attract one’s attention and tweak one’s curiosity!
What’s even more interesting is the list of subjects! Here’s what’s in the box:
Aviation:
Concorde
Boeing 727
Boeing 707
Boeing 747
Ships:
Mayflower
Canberra
Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner
Hovercraft
Tugboat
Cars:
Model T
Bugatti GP Racer
1904 Mercedes
Morris Oxford
Space:
Astronaut
Radio Telescope
LEM (lunar lander)
Apollo Command Module
You have to admit, that’s a pretty eclectic bunch of subjects to find all in one model collection, let alone ONE BOX!!
Yes, there are a couple of problems, as you’ve likely noticed. Neither a radio telescope, nor an astronaut, are technically transportation. Also, if you count them up, there are 17 kits, not 16. The fact that Academy couldn’t count is a bit unnerving, sure, but hey, never turn down a bonus kit, right? Another problem is that the ship called the QE II is actually the original RMS Queen Elizabeth from the 1930s. Oddly, the script on the drawing of the ship on the box gets this right.
On the side of the box are some, admittedly small, pictures. They show every kit in the box assembled and painted. Given how small they are, they look decent. The fact that they are all painted would somewhat seem to negate that whole “no glue, no paint” claim from the lid, but once we look inside here, you’ll see why they chose to show the kits at their best.
Sadly, I can’t find a year for this kit. However, the age of subjects, silver/purple box and general aesthetic, I’d guess the late ‘70s or early ‘80s. There are Hot Wheels from this era that use similar colours, so that’s my best guess. The box is a top-opening affair, but it’s fairly thin-feeling cardboard. It doesn’t like things stacked on top of it, and my copy was a bit dished in the middle due to previous loading.
As a gift, this box would present well, and I can’t help but think it was precisely for grandparents looking for a Christmas present that would give a child, off school for two weeks, something to do. It’s like an arts and crafts set, or one of those old “electricity lab” sets, but the styrene version. So, does that mean the kits are even worth building? Let’s find out!
The Kits:
Taking off the lid reveals a series of 8 clear plastic blisters glued onto the inside of the cardboard bottom of the box. Each one of these blisters holds the sprues for two kits (or three in one case, since there are 17). There’s Korean writing at the top left of each bubble, telling you what’s in there, but since I don’t read Korean, and they’re hard to see, they don’t help much.
The immediate effect is one of “Wow! That’s a lot of stuff in there!” It looks like a fun variety pack of neat little plastic toys. It’s literally like a hobby shop in a box, and since the kits are cast in all kinds of colours, the impact is multiplied. I must admit, I got an impression of fun. If I was a kid, I think I would have loved this. I could have spent a bit of time every day building and then playing with a kit, and on a snowy or rainy day, they might well have proven a neat little distraction.
There seems to have been some line of Academy kits called “Ultra Mini Scale Models”, as indicated by the title above the blisters. I can’t find anything about them on the internet, but they remind me, in a way, of another line of very small kits that were called “Minute Models”. These were made by Ertl, and were pre-painted “kits” that snapped together. There were cars, tanks, planes, a sub… and the line played on the “Micro Machines Effect” of the early 1990s, where anything small was big!
And, really, in many ways, that’s the kind of kit these things seem, at first, to be. I mean, they’re tiny! The sprues aren’t much bigger than a credit card, and how much can you cram on there? Sure, 1/32 Airfix Mosquitos they aren’t, but these aren’t quite as low-rent as you’d be forgiven for thinking! For one thing, they are not pre-painted, they are actual kits, not just snap-together toys. Now, on the other hand, they are somewhat reminiscent of a Kinder Egg toy, although the complexity is a bit higher than that, especially on the cars.
Some of the simplest kits are the space kits and the ship kits. The Command Module and Radio Telescope only have 3-4 pieces each, and while the Astronaut is more complex, he’s only got 7 pieces. Some of the ships are only 3-4 pieces too – a top and bottom hull, a couple of masts or funnels, and that’s it. The tugboat and Hovercraft are only 2 pieces each. Amazingly, the airliners have more pieces, including full (albeit very simple) landing gear bogeys and the cars are crazily complex, with separate wheels, fenders, axles and in some cases interiors.
The set I have had already been started, so I had a chance to see how some of these little guys build up. One thing of note is that the plastic is pretty hard and brittle, reminding me of the Daewoo LeMans.
Ship Shape:
In my case, the SS Canberra was moulded in yellow, and someone had snapped the bulk of the kit together. Granted, it was not overly impressive at first glance. There is a lot of flash, and definitely some fit issues. There’s no interior to the kit, and the external, covered walkways are just openings. There is, however, some neat detail, to be had! A quick look shows that there’s a textured deck, and the main swimming pool in the centre of the ship is, indeed, moulded in! Not only that, the two pools at the aft are moulded in, as is the kiddie pool on the uppermost of the two! The main pool is sunk a level down with a sun deck above, and that is reproduced! So, while some of this thing is rough, it’s also very thorough!
The same seems to be true for the Queen Elizabeth, which has a nicely moulded top deck complete with “boards” and lots of lifeboats. The sides of the hull have a lot of tiny portholes, or something, on there too! The Mayflower, while moulded in a bilious green, has charm all its own. It has separate sails, with the rings that hold them to the mast even moulded in. (NOTE: I don’t know sailing terms, so don’t get upset when I wrongly name or describe ship-stuff. It’s just a quirk of the show…) Even the flags have the right markings on them, and while the railings are massively oversized and crude, they’re still there and getting the point across.
The hovercraft is a three-part kit; a top, bottom and propellor. It’s an SRN.6, which seems to have been the most popular hovercraft in real life, as well as with toy makers, as there are Corgi, SuperKing, BattleKing and small Matchboxes of this thing at least, and in many different schemes. This kit doesn’t of seem to have the propellor with it, not surprising since the kit was started. Still, it does have decent detail, including the characteristic “louvres” on the sides. It also has an open air intake and a very aggressive lift fan on the underside! The tugboat is another three-piecer, and it has nice detail of rope on the deck and little bumpers on the side.
Take Wing:
The airliners, of which none were loose or opened, are not as detailed. No windows or flight-deck glazing, of course, and there are some injector pin marks to be seen. The Boeing 727 makes as good a case study as any. It’s not as detailed as the ships, but there are control surfaces, and there are also engine pods that come in halves! The landing gear for it, and indeed all the airliners, have a weird loop at the front of the nose gear. It looks like a place one would tie a thread, but I can’t imagine to what end. That can be chopped off, of course! The build of the Concorde looks weird, with the single-piece wing sliding into the fuselage halves, similar to the tail on the Farpro Norm. I hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate. If you want to add markings, you’re on your own, as no decals are provided.
You could glue some clear sheet styrene into the inside of the planes before buttoning them up, or even just white will do fine; some black wash will help pick out the windows when you’re done. Its’ a shame there’s not some more detail on the airliners, but then again, even bigger scale airliners aren’t really the kings of panel lines. These are more toylike in some ways than the ship kits, but are still kind of cute.
Spaced Out:
Seemingly less cute are the space kits, and yet, there are surprises here too. The Astronaut does not really resemble an Apollo astronaut at all, as far as I can tell. While the box illustration depicts the kit thusly, the model itself looks more like something from a 1950s’ sci-fi serial. With its weird helmet, odd oxygen pack and accordion-style rubber joints, it looks completely different from what really existed. In fact, it is a nearly dead-on replica of a piece of space art from the 1950s by the artist John Polgreen! Not sure what Academy was doing with that, but the crater base is cool and as a “what if” this could be a neat figure, now that we know what it is and isn’t!
The Apollo command module isn’t great, although with some foil work and a neat base it could be made to be at least somewhat visually interesting. The panel lines on it are very fine, and the RCS jets are moulded in, which will be troublesome. The three crew members and their empty “cockpit” leave lots to be desired, but if closed up and handled properly, this thing could work. The radio telescope has little to recommend it; it’s a web-like dish and a base. However, the base has a tiny ladder on it, to help give it scale. Despite some searching around, I couldn’t figure out what kind of telescope it is.
The LEM, while simple, could be made effective with some hard work. It’s not overly well-detailed as far as I can tell, though I can’t see much of the kit. I don’t know, and can’t tell, if the descent stage even has its engine bell. If not, I have spare Gundam verniers that will do! Interestingly, it appears that the four sets of RCS jets are moulded separately on the LEM, and these are very tiny indeed!
You Auto Know:
The cars… well, they’re a weirdly executed bunch. The weirdest part is that all the cars are split right down the middle. This is a highly unusual practice, thank your-deity-of-choice, because it’s really a terrible idea, and I’m worried that the fit isn’t going to improve as a result of this decision. All the cars have wheel/tire pieces that are attached with pins, so painting them will be marginally less impossible.
The one I have access to on the rack is the Ford Model T. I’m not a T-buff, but I think it looks like around a 1913-1916, given that it has the more angular radiator shell, gas generator on the running board and the wooden, heavily-spoked wheels. Despite it’s being cleaved down the middle, this isn’t a terrible kit! The seats have nice texture and the grille even has “FORD” on it over the radiator! At 20 pieces it’s almost like a real kit! Heck, there’s even a steering wheel! The only iffy thing about it is the door-mounted spare. It’s shown by the back door on the box, but it’s shown going into the driver’s door on the kit. It’ll be hard to fill and sand the hole where it goes, but that’s something for another day.
The other cars are similar, although since most of them are open, getting the seats in won’t be as big a problem as you might think. The exception is the Morris Oxford, which is moulded top-up, and appears to have no separate seat. Time will tell how that works out. The Mercedes has the drive chains somewhat clunkily moulded on it, and the Bugatti looks about the same quality as the others, although the “1” is moulded in, in raised fashion, on the rear quarters of the car.
Instructions:
There should be two instruction pages, or maybe one double-sided page, with the set. However, I didn’t get that with mine. I did find a copy of this for sale on eBay, and I’ll admit I pilfered their pictures so I could build my kits. I’ve included them here with no ill intent, and I thank whoever put them up; You’ve done the internet and modelling as a hobby a great service!
The instructions are simple in the extreme, as befits the simple nature of the kits. They’re fairly clear-ish, I guess. They’re not the best drawn I’ve seen, but they get the point across, at least most of the time. They look very hand-drawn; no CAD here, that’s for sure! I’m glad I found them, for while most of these are simple enough to figure out, there are a few little things that could cause problems later! A good example is the tiny little antenna-like thing on the Canberra, or the differently-shaped spare-tire holder on the Morris Oxford.
Conclusions:
When I bought this kit, I thought it was kind of silly, but would make a neat write up. The kits seemed so basic and toy-like that I figured I’d never really bother to build one. I mean… a 5-piece ocean liner? A 3-piece hovercraft? Who really wants to spend time on those. No, I thought this was a curiosity, and a bunch of quick and dirty little Kinder Egg toys that came on a rack.
When I dug it out and started writing this article, I was struck by the quaintness of the whole thing. It really was the sprue version of an arts and crafts set, and it would provide some good hand-eye co-ordination exercises for younger folk who might want to put gaudy replicas on their shelves. It was something to get kids into modelling, showing them it could be fun, and giving them a sense of accomplishment. I didn’t think that it represented anything of value to a serious modeller.
However, fun is the root of the hobby, so it’s not like I disliked the set, I just thought that it’s one of those things that’ll never get built.
As I wrote this, though, and looked, REALLY looked, at these often roughly-hewn, micro-scale replicas, my attitude began to change. It turned 180 degrees when I saw the kiddie pool on the aft deck of the Canberra! Sure, these are small and simple, but there’s so much detail in some of them at the same time; I began to come to the conclusion that these, like many good kits, really will reward any love and attention shown them. There’s potential in these things. There’s a LOT of potential in these things!
Now, can I still work at this scale? Can’t say. Do I think I’ll mess these up? Maybe. Will I even be able to see the results with the unaided eye? Likely not, at least in a few years. But… does that mean I shouldn’t try? Heck no! I can honestly say that I am extremely impressed with the ship kits, and somewhat with the space and cars. The planes are weak, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make them work! Decals might be a problem, but necessity is the mother of invention and all that!
It’s my view, at the end of all this, that these are actually amazing little diamonds in the rough. You can do a diorama with them on the size of a postcard, or less. They’re small and simple and don’t take up a lot of room, but I’m willing to believe they can be made to look pretty good. I’m really, really excited by some of these, and in a way I haven’t been for a while. I can’t explain it, but they kind of make me giddy with excitement, to see what I can do with them. They’re going to make me stretch my skills, I think. Not only that, but I now know more about the Canberra and the Queen Elizabeth than I ever thought I would and I’m HUNGRY to know even more, so I can do these little guys justice.
Are these for everyone? Well, yeah! That’s the point. There’s literally something for almost anyone in this box. Brass Cars, planes, boats, space… even a hint of sci-fi! If your modeller’s blood doesn’t get pumping, excited at the prospect of making something from almost nothing, while honouring the surprising amount of work the moulders did at the same time, then maybe you’re a bit jaded. Like I was. Maybe this set is what all of us need; a reminder that modelling can be fun, educational and varied, and that it’s never too late to try something(s) new!
The Sprue Lagoon 