The Little World

At the risk of alienating my readers, I would like to recall them to the 1957 song by Buddy Holly: ” Peggy Sue ” and let it play in their minds. It will do so all day, I assure you…

The Mitsubishi ” Hiryu ” bomber is a Hasegawa kit that came up in the Metro Hobbies lockdown special sale and was very good value for the price. I intend to follow the kit instructions religiously as I know so little of this airplane. The prototype apparently was a trials ship used to experiment with the rocket-powered glide bomb. Thank goodness there were so few of them and they did not work all that well.

The kit is immaculate – I am coming to recognise this as a trademark of current Japanese and Korean kits, and to appreciate it as wonderful therapy after any Eastern European short-run thing. You can only deal with so much flash and foolish design before you become ill.

The kit is one of the interior-build types – a thing that I am also starting to appreciate as it teaches me as much about the internal construction as the outside shape does. The final viewer of the model may not know what’s in there but I do and it helps me to appreciate aeronautic design better.

The instruction sheet also has the advantage in that Hasegawa have struck an understanding with GSI Creos to quote the paint colours in Mr. Color and Mr. Hobby terms. Of course you would not expect this from a Tamiya kit or an Airfix one – they have their own paint divisions to support. But I appreciate the help that ties other Japanese makers together. I note that the Chinese Hobby Boss also quote in GSI Creos numbers

The decals seem to feature large red dots… Perhaps they could do a promotional deal with Red Dot Discount shops to carry the kits…That’s only funny in Australia but it would be even more cheerful if Red Dot would carry plastic model kits.