My motivation in buying this kit was twofold: 1. it was cheap and 2. I wanted something that I could mess around with and modify a bit. At first I was worried it was going to be too simple of a build, but once I took it out of the box and realized what a stinker of a kit it was I knew I'd have my hands full. More on that later.
If you are interested in all the particulars about the '80 Ford Bronco, have a look here: wikipedia.
I remember the Bronco from the days of riding three-wheelers and quads down muddy trails where I grew up in mid-Michigan. These were great muddin' trucks and there were plenty of guys that drove them to death with a smile on their face. I never had the pleasure of driving or riding in one these trucks as my family was a "Chevy" family and the whole Ford vs. Chevrolet truck battle was a pretty big deal. The Bronco was part of a family of early generation SUV's before the term SUV entered the public vernacular. I'd argue they represent the golden era of the SUV, before they were co-opted by hip-hop and soccer moms. A functional, badass truck you could seat a bunch of your friends in and go tear up a muddy field.
On to the kit itself:
First off, this kit falls into that confusing Monogram/Revell badging zone that isn't particularly relevant, but makes it hard to call it a Revell model or a Monogram model without further investigation. The box has a Monogram logo with a copyright of Revell 2010. OK, this makes sense. It was originally a Monogram kit, Revell now owns Monogram so it's being sold by Revell and branded as Monogram. However, once you open the box you find out the molds are copyrighted Revell 1981! The instructions use the Monogram logo and the decals are copyrighted Revell 2010. I give up.
It was hard to tell from the box, it's copyrighted 2010, but I was pretty sure this was an older kit considering the subject. This proved to be a correct assumption as evidenced later. Overall the box art gave a good impression of the kit with two variants displayed on the front and back.
Front cover:
Back cover:
The box contained 2 large and 2 small white sprues for the main components, the chassis, tires, a chrome sprue and a clear sprue in bags:
The main sprue is copyrighted Revell 1981. This kit is over 30 years old:
Upon inspection of the parts, I can confirm this kit is very old and boy-o-boy does it show it. The molds are in rough shape. Here is a small sampling of the flash that is present everywhere on this model:
The chassis is fairly solid, but somewhat lacking in engine well detail:
The chrome sprue seems to have weathered the ages better than it's counterpart. Overall the condition of the parts was pretty good with none of the flash problems seen in the main parts sprue:
Unfortunatly the chrome is way to chrome-y for what I have in mind for this truck, so I plan to strip it:
Overall the clear parts were not as bad as I had anticipated:
But they still have some pretty noticeable wear on them (not a big deal as this will be a dirty birdy anyway):
The tires are a soft plastic and the molding is simply dreadful. They lack branding detail along the whitewall and overall just leave me somewhat disappointed. I'm going to be doing some research on how to salvage these:
The big surprise here are the decals. Given the 2010 copyright date I'm going to assume these were printed on newer tooling. They are very crisp with no alignment or color issues:
The front of the instructions give a small bit of info on the Bronco and have a generic color callout chart:
The instructions are clear, concise and give the impression this should be a pretty easy build (clean up, not so much):
The decal placement page shows decals for the two variants:
Without a doubt this is an old kit with old molds. It's going to take a lot of work to get it cleaned up. I haven't even tried fitting any parts yet, but I can only imagine. With that said, I'm still looking forward to this build.
More to come...
--Bill
