Introduction

Calling your company "Skunkmodels" to analogy with the famous Lockheed Skunk Works, designers of among other things the famous SR-71 Blackbird shows that this is an ambitious and innovative company.

This missile cart is my first contact with this company and its products. Let's see is it the high flyer one would expect of a company with such daring name. This offering is one element in a range of products which allow airplane modelers to compete with AFV builders in making realistic diorama's.

The box

The box is not displaying any fancy artwork, instead it is giving loads of information about its contents and is almost as informative as some instruction sheets I have seen of other, small manufacturer, kits.

Even before opening, I know that it contains 2 missile carts and 3 figures. Each cart can be "configured" to carry the many different types of ordnance that is common on modern age fighters.

This is excellent promotion for the little box as it shows that the content can give added value to many diorama's.

The instruction sheet

The instruction sheet is very simple as most of the needed information is already available on the box itself. It is a small piece of paper with some drawings on showing how the different parts can be put together depending on the desired configuration.

The plastic parts

There are 4 sprues in the box, two for each cart and then 3 small ones, each time for a single figure. The molding is crisp with lots of detail.

The surface of the floorplates is outstanding mimicking to great detail the "tear plates" used on the real thing.

Still, some parts are suffering from ejector marks in places where it will be very difficult to remove or correct these. An actual assembly will have to show to what extend these marks are still visible in the assembled model.

Painting

The overall color of the missile carts is given on the box as GSI Mr. Color 120 Olive Green.

I do not like that colors are indicated by pointing towards a particular paint brand (understatement). It would be far better to refer to the standardized FS-595 color card. Unless when they want us to believe that NATO is buying its paint from Gunze Sangyo?

According to the box, several parts (the ordnance resting places) are painted in grey or black-ish (would these be rubber parts in reality? Unfortunately, there is no color indication here.

I could not find any pictures of this cart on the internet but I expect that many details of this thing are not painted green in the real world. I would appreciate it if someone could point me to pictures of these carts in real life.

The decals

There are no decals present.

Assembly

Putting the main parts of the kit together was possible in less than an hour. Painting and cleaning the airbrush was good for another 20 minutes. The assembly is straight forward and everything fits nicely. Now I have to wait for a decision of which ordnance I want to put on the carts before being able to finalize them completely.

Conclusion

This kit is not a subject on its own but aims purely at adding value to a diorama or another kit. It does not contain any missiles or other ordnance but there are already several offerings in this area.

Serving as prop to another kit, it is not the kind of assembly that will get me excited and I don't want to make this more than once. Considering the price, and the relative simplicity to put the carts together, an extra cart in the kit (even at a slightly higher cost) would strongly help justifying the purchase.

Please remember, when contacting retailers or manufacturers, to mention that you saw their products highlighted here - on AEROSCALE.