Pimp My Batmobile!

Posts Tagged ‘batman’

The test shots of the new 1:25 scale Batmobile model Kits (snap together and glue versions) have been out for months and are now falling into some happy contest winners’ hands, thanks to the good folks at Round 2. Sort of like the iPhone 4 leak, but – um,  more intentional. Relive the past year or so with us in this cheesy video montage we’ve put together chronicling the hard work by the folks at R2.

Remember a few short years ago when the Barris 1966 Batmobile license was just a lofty goal on many of our wish lists? Well be careful what you wish for. Or – be really thankful if they keep putting out great stuff.

Eaglemoss is a UK company best most known for its well-done heroes figurines that accompany their vivid but kind of cheesy magazine subscriptions. (let’s face it – you buy them for the figures) They’re mostly limited to UK sales, but Diamond distributes them to comics shops in the US as well. Meaning – no, if you’re in the US you can’t order this directly from the company that makes it but you can bug your local comics shop about getting one in for you. Or – you know, wait and get one on eBay like the rest of us.

Update 3/29/2011: It’s been reported to me from a friend in the UK that these will be 1:43 scale. Clearly they’ve used the Hot Wheels 1:43 for the catalog/website photo, though it’s not determined yet whether they will end up using them (like the Danbury Mint did) or produce their own. If they do use the HW cars, it’s a fairly lackluster diorama that doesn’t bring much new to the table but for a few bad interpretations of the TV Batcave machines.

Eaglemoss 1966 Batmobile diorama

Editor’s Note: Recently I was talking on another forum about my ongoing 1:25 Batcave diorama project and the person had not seen or heard of it before. I realized that the original blog articles had crashed when I took down the Scooter’s Custom Works website. (That website will be back up soon, by the way.) Even though that website content is gone, I found access in to the original Batcave blog articles and so I’m reposting them here, chronologically at PMB! Hopefully this will kick me into gear and my son Alex and I will get back on finishing the diorama up soon. The following post is from August, 2005.

For years, I had mused about creating a full-on, Batcave diorama in my favorite scale – 1:25. It seemed like  a great idea to house some of the many models I had created and also for a fun, large-scale project all  its own. I had been inspired by my friend Mike Stutelberg, whose own Batcave diorama is nothing short of breathtaking. It always seemed like a huge project and so years later, I still had not started it. Then, in 2004 a few things happened to kick-start my gumption. 1. My (then) 4 year old son had acquired a model railroading video that he watched over and over again, as 4 year olds do. And I watched it with him and soaked up some great fabrication tips. 2. Over the Christmas break, I noticed an eBay auction offering a custom 1:25 Atomic Pile model.

I thought it looked great and was amazed to see the Atomic Pile modeled in 1:25 scale and actually ON eBay for sale! I won the auction and when the model arrived I was amazed by the build-quality: Welded metal struts, cast resin panels, multi-media textures – it was very well done. I then realized that here was my answer. This was how the diorama model could get built – by supplementing our own work with pieces by other craftsmen. It would still be a huge, time-consuming folly, but it just might work!

I decided that I wanted to get an Atomic Pile model that was NOT anchored to a smaller cave setting like this one was, so I contacted the builder, Jim Graham and asked him to make me another one.

The new Atomic Pile would be freestanding and able to be utilized in my larger planned cave diorama. Now, how to house it, and what it would actually entail were the next questions I had to tackle.

Luckily, having a 4-year old telling you that anything, no matter how ambitious, is just what has to happen – is all you need to shame you into taking any project on.

And so, a Batcave – That’s it. It’s an omen. We shall model – a Batcave!