The movie Forbidden Planet, released in 1956, has always been one of my favorite science fiction movies of the 1950s. I always loved the ahead-of-its-time tech on display in the movie. Upon a recent re-watch, I realized that one of the leads was none other than Leslie Nielsen, who I know more from the hilarious Naked Gun movies and the Police Squad TV show.
Anyway, when I saw this kit from Polar Lights, with lighting and a motor that spins the engine, I grabbed it as quickly as I could. Then it sat in the purgatory of my sci-fi stash for years, with the box sporting a nice layer of dust when I finally decided to rescue it from the stash.
The kit is very simple. A couple of dinner-plate-sized discs, a few other parts comprising the landing legs, parts for the battery compartment, the spinning engine parts, and the pre-fabricated motor and light part. The build was consequently pretty simple, quick and straight-forward. Unfortunately that's where the simplicity ended.
The motor was very much underpowered. Every construction test I did revealed that it would never actually spin the ship's engine piece. I attempted a fix for this by removing the plastic gear cap that comes on the little motor. I then took a part included in the kit that was not once included anywhere in the build instructions, so it was a spare that looked quite adaptable to affix to the motor as a spinner. But it was too thick to allow the clear part that covers the spinning engine piece to fit correctly, so out came the Dremel and old-school sandpaper. I was able to thin it sufficiently to fit inside the clear piece, and drill out a deep-enough hole to hold to the motor's drive shaft. Without the clear piece, it spins just fine, but when the clear piece is in place, it will not spin. Grrrrrrrr.
The two main discs also do not go together very well. I used clamps to hold the parts in place, and noted when I removed the clamps that I now had very evident clamp marks on an already painted spaceship. Grrrr. Sanded all that away and had to re-paint. Then one of the discs separated somewhat. My efforts at getting more glue in there resulted in some marring of the external plastic; sanding took away a lot of that but when looking closely, the marring is still evident.
Not my best effort, but the photos don't really show any of these issues. Also, this is honestly not a very photogenic subject, so I only took a couple of shots.
Paints were Krylon silver and Alclad II Magnesium for the ring around the outer diameter of the discs.