Yikes

People* will say** that I'm liable to build just about any kind of model. Some modelers*** are pretty good at restricting themselves to specific collections. You'll sometimes hear them say "Ah, well, I only build models of US combat aircraft in 1/48th scale with two or more engines from 1929 to 1935." Or "I only build tank models because I'm a tread-head****."

I'm not able to stick to collection restrictions like that. I could build just about anything at any time.

People***** will sometimes say****** that I have a modest interest in the Old West, especially the mythic Old West and not the genuine article with its tuberculosis, bad teeth and short lifespans. So one day when I was leafing through a model catalog and saw that they were offering a 1/16th scale stagecoach model complete with four horses and figures, I said "I think I have to have that."******* The funny thing is that I was looking at a catalog from an outfit that specialized in wooden sailing ship model kits; the stagecoach seemed decidedly out of place.

I ordered it, and after milling around in Postal Limbo for a while (curse that 4th Class Domestic rate!) the box arrived at the Post Office. It made the poor Post Office woman grunt when she picked it up. It was big enough to ship an entirely family in. But I figured the size and weight came from the sailing ship model I'd also ordered; I kept thinking of the stagecoach as being not much larger than the average 1/25th scale truck and trailer kit.

Then I got it home and opened the box and saw what I was dealing with. I'm pretty sure that the stagecoach box is the single largest model box I have ever seen in my life. It's positively epic, and it's actually kind of heavy, which is not something you generally expect out of a model box. It's like ordering Skeletor for your He-Man action figure collection and getting a life-size dude in the mail complete with a personal pan pizza.

Hard to say at this point how the kit looks. Lots of parts. Lots of *big* parts. The horses aren't bad - a trifle generic, but I'll soon transform them utilizing Dr. Frankenstein's Patented Home Surgery Kit. The figures aren't bad, but they'll also pass beneath Dr. Frankenstein's Horrific Buzz-Saw of Plastic Transfiguration********. The rest I can work with. And the interesting aspect of this whole thing is that 1/16th scale is also 120mm, which is a pretty popular scale for figure modeling, and I happen to have a quite large collection of 120mm body parts lying around the place.

Further bulletins as events warrant, though I'll probably move discussion of it to my other blog.*********

* Some of them, anyway

** Go ahead, ask them

*** This footnote was totally gratuitous

**** Their term, not mine

***** Oh god, not again

****** Please stop!

******* Not my exact words, but close enough for a PG blog

******** Permit me to pull up a stool next to that joke and milk it all day

********* Did I hear you say "Thank God"?