When Shrink Wrap Collides

 Greetings Attic readers!

Today I have a slightly different post brought about by necessity. You see, about ten years ago Laurie (Mrs. Stu) and I went to a really good garage sale that had quite a few space and science fiction related items...which we, of course, snatched up! 

One of those items was this...

It's the Pegasus Models Space Ark from the great George Pal film "When Worlds Collide!" You may remember me mentioning Mr. Pal here...

Pal Link!

Anyway, the model was still in it's shrink wrap, and that's the way I left it all these years. Unfortunately shrink wrap can continue to shrink for quite some time, and this shrink wrap had begun to crush the box. No bueno, my friends. So, I was faced with the reality that after all of these years, I had to open it.

So, here we go!

First, let's take a look at that original price tag and the garage sale tag. 22.99 off? Not a bad deal... By the way, I looked these up to see what they go for now, and they seem to be between 30 and 40 bucks. I didn't want to rip open something really valuable, and you never know how much something may have appreciated!

And now for the Big Rip!!!

With the wrap off, here is one side of the box with a nice color picture...

And the other side with some exciting copy about the movie...

And herr is the newly freed box! Note that the upper right hand corner is crushed. Yeah, the wrap did that...

Inside, we have a lot of heavy duty, very well molded plastic parts! I like the name plate...

Here they all are! The model is really very simple. The base is very lightweight vaccuformed plastic.

This is the tiniest model part I've ever seen. The packaging on this little sliver of plastic probably cost more than the part!

The ship is a decent size, and could probably be converted to fly fairly easily. A standard 18mm model rocket motor would probably fit (although I didn't measure it).

Here is the instruction sheet...

Side one is all about assembling. Not many parts there, as you can see.

Side two is about painting and finishing, which seems to me to be the most challenging part. Not the ship, mind you (it's all silver), but the base!

And everything neatly back in the box. I cut out and saved the price tags.

So there you have it! 

Now, will I build it? 

And if I build it, will I convert it to fly?

And if I convert it to fly, will it work?

I dunno. 

But at least now it's free of the clutches of that evil shrink wrap!

Until next time, keep searching for treasure!