MPC Space:1999 Eagle 1 Transporter

[Mike]

Space:1999 Eagle 1 Transporter
MPC by Round2

The Eagle was the spacecraft star of this live-action Gerry Anderson trippy space opera, and was the crew's main mode of transport to and from Moonbase Alpha, as well as defence from incoming threats that had an uncanny knack of appearing out of nowhere each week. The sleek nose and crew cab is straight out of Thunderbirds, while the geometric framework body sends a nod to both the film 2001:Space Odyssey (as does the colon in the title), and real space designs that were coming through at the time. After writing that last part, I found that it was even built by the same model-maker, Brian Johnston.

The ships were modular, and being made on the Moonbase, they were easily replaced, which was a good job really, as they were always breaking the things! The central pod could be swapped for other equipment in the same manner as Thunderbird 2, which is fair enough – why waste a good idea? Powered by pyrotechnics nuclear fusion rockets (just ignore the science), they were capable of 15% the speed of light, and had an endurance of 2 days with extra fuel. A booster pack was also able to be fitted when the need arose. They were armed with lasers and rockets on occasion, and even had a retractable laser fitted to a palette on the backbone, and could fire all around it. After the second series, the show was cancelled due to falling ratings, and went on to become somewhat of a legend with fans that weren't even born when it was first aired.

The Kit
Very few British lads of the right generation won't have heard of the Eagle Transporters, and if you were a modeller in the 70s and 80s, you probably built this kit, as that's how old it is. I built one as a teenage with a bad hangover one weekend, and I still think I did quite a good job of it, despite my banging head and griping stomach. The kit has been marketed by Airfix, MPC from memory, and possibly another that I can't remember at time of writing. It is a product of the time, and not quite as accurate as it needs to be for serious fans, but for the causal modeller, it should tick all the boxes and lead to a fun replica of this interesting and believable Sci-Fi spacecraft.

The box is still a rather odd shape, which hasn't changed over the years, but this is a special edition with Alan Carter on the boxtop, and a collectible card on the inside with a montage of the actor Nick Tate playing the part of its chief pilot overlaid on a combined shot of Nick in his suit, next to an Eagle flying over Moonbase Alpha. The styrene seems identical to the original, being a white colour, with the slightest hint of translucency on thinner parts. There are seven small sprues, plus four separate parts already clipped from their sprues at the factory, the largest being the tubular ladder that forms the backbone of the ship. It has just occurred to me that this must have been made using a multi-part mould, which was a big deal back then, but it's a shame that this technique couldn't have been used to create the lattice framework that surrounds the front and rear pods, which instead have been moulded in relief with no internal detail visible. The decal sheet it quite large, and adds extra detail by using shading to imply depth to areas that are flat. I don't recall any of that in the original kit. The instruction booklet has changed format from the original Airfix issue that I built, but the diagrams are all familiar, and it appears they've been re-used.

Construction starts with the rear pod, which is a four-part assembly onto which the four engines and their spherical fuel tanks are added to pegs on the rear wall. These are split vertically between front and aft, and the cruciform bracing framework fits to the rea, and the exhaust bells glue onto them to complete the assembly. The vertical landing nozzles are single parts that fit onto pegs on the bottom of the pod, with two on the rear pod and another two on the front pod, which builds up in the same way, but with the two-part cockpit section attaching to the front.

The backbone part will need plenty of clean-up to remove the various seams, after which it is used to connect the front and rear sections of the ship together by locating a pair of lugs in a depression in the top of each pod. The landing gear sponsons are next, made up from two parts, plus a reaction jet on the outer side, and a single part gear leg on the box-shaped bottom section. Repeat three more times and you're ready to build the crew module, which is made up from two upper halves, a flat bottom part with more lattice-work moulded in, and a snap-on clip that allows you to attach and remove the pod at will – presumably to play with! That's the build completed, but of course there will be lots of painting and decaling going on during the process, so it sounds a lot quicker than it will be in actuality.

Markings

There is only really one scheme for the Eagle, and that's mostly white, with the spaces between the relief lattice-work painted black or dark grey, some red stripes on the crew pod, and more red on the engines and fuel tanks if you believe the box art. The engine bells and reaction jets are silver, and the rest is made up of decals, which are quit comprehensive. You get decals for the black surrounds to the pilot windows, as well as a tiny decal that actually has the crews' heads in their orange helmets on it! That's a super touch that made me smile when I noticed it. There is no decal placement guide in the box, but some of the pseudo-relief decals are pointed out during construction, as are the blast panels around the small puffer-jets on the landing gear sponsons. Black panels are provided for the windows in the crew compartment, for the landing gear leg "blocks", but when I said there wasn't a decal placement guide, I wasn't being entirely truthful. The guide is actually printed ON the box, around the sides of the lower tray, based on pictures of a completed model. This is also helpful as a painting guide, and shows a few optional colour schemes for the various pods that share the same outer structure, such as the VIP and rescue pods.

Conclusion
You can't be too harsh on a kit that has such long teeth as this one, especially as it's the only affordable mainstream injection moulded option out there. Sure there are other kits in different scales, but they have price-tags that could buy a whole fleet of these kits. As to the scale? It's about 12" long, which some folks believe scales out to around the 1:100 scale, and who am I to agrue? I like the addition of the relief decals to give the impression of more detail, but this kit could well be improved upon either by scratch-building, or adding the delightful Paragrafix PE set the review for which can be found here.

Recommended for a bit of nostalgia.

Review sample courtesy of
UK distributors for

[Basosz]

That hangover from the 70's still bothering you Mike? The second and third photo look incredibly identical

[John_W]

Awesome!

I remember the series and the kit. The decal sheet addresses the appaling lack of detail on the pod.

Will the Hawk be getting a re-release too?

[Kallisti]

There is a PE accessory for this from ParaGrafix which adds a lot more useful detail such as more refined landing legs, engine bell baffles, cockpit window frames and more detailed doors for the pod and the front and rear doors of the main body.

I've got two of these in my stash, with plans to build one OOB, while building the other with lots of mods to make it more accurate, such as hollowing out the struts on the bodies, adding internal detail, using the PE set and making the top spine narrower to be more accurate to the original models. I've also got a WARP kit, but that is scarily complex and the white metal suffers from poor casting.

There are a number of fan sites out there with useful information on how to go about improving these kits, including All Sections Alpha and Eagle Transporter Forum.

[Mike]

We'll be reviewing the Paragrafix set tomorrow, as noted in my conclusion

That hangover from the 70's still bothering you Mike? The second and third photo look incredibly identical

My hang over was in the 80s thank you - I'm not THAT old!

[SMD70]

Well just nipped down my LMS to pick this up as a Christmas pressie to myself!

I'd spotted it through the window on Monday… shops closed on Mondays though.

[Mike]

I've been missing mine since I traded it, so this is a welcome return to the stash

Check out the review on the Paragrafix set here to remove even more of the content of your wallet

[Chris @ Above & Beyond]

I've been missing mine since I traded it, so this is a welcome return to the stash

Check out the review on the Paragrafix set here to remove even more of the content of your wallet

The Paragrafix kit is in stock now, be sure to head over to store.scifihardware.com to grab yours now