More Images:

• Front angled view with a good look at the warhead.
• Port side view.

It was 1980 and Earth was under attack by a mysterious race of aliens who used captured and altered humans as their front-line invasion force as a prelude to colonization of our planet. Earth’s first line of defense were small, one-man interceptors based on the moon. Armed only with a single nose-mounted nuclear-tipped missile, the three ship fleet had a success rate that was somewhat less than perfect.

Of the several versions of interceptors released by various companies over the years, this one by Bandai seems to be a fairly accurate rendering and builds up into a descent representation of the film model. Built pretty much stock, the only alterations I found necessary was to eliminate the “toy” aspect in the form of a spring-activated launch system for the missile, the triggers for which protruded through the nose just in front of the cockpit and behind the forward landing gear.

I also patched up the large rectangular notch for the stand on the underside. I then added a rocket nozzle to the bottom that was not part of the kit but should be there (see reference photos). Also, the cockpit and pilot that comes with the kit I found inadequate and replaced them with ones having much more detail and realism. The main engine nozzle also was open to the interior of the model, so I blocked that off as well.

The assembly is pretty easy and the parts minimum wich is a good thing because the instruction are in Japanese. I painted the craft with a base coat of Model Master flat white, and the various silver-colored areas and landing gear with Testor’s flat steel enamel, the area in front of the cockpit and inside the engine nozzles flat black, and all the red stripe areas are hand painted flat red. The cockpit is painted flat gray, and the pilot’s uniform flat blue. I used a permanent black marker for the helmet visor and also to outline the canopy. Weathering was done with a #2 pencil. A fairly descent decal sheet is included, although some of the lettering and words on them don’t make much sense, they’re really tiny so that unless you use a magnifying lense you don’t much notice.

All said and done, this is a nice kit of one of the “hardware heros” of sci-fi TV history.