Pickup trucks are everything from stolid, stable work vehicles to glamorous, low-riding speed demons with hydraulics. Their list of applications is as long as their list of proud owners. Our model, the GMC® Big Game Country represents a backwoods explorer that’s modified for going where suburban grocery getters only dream of.
- Detailed V-8 engine
- 4 wheel drive suspension
- Separate frame
- Fold down tailgate
- CB radio
- Gun Rack
- 105 Parts
- Soft black tires.
- Highly detailed plastic pieces molded in white and clear
- Chrome plated parts
- Waterslide decals
- Illustrated instructions
- Revell Kit No. 85-7226
- MSRP: $29.99
- Street Price $22.99
Finally, after some time of fun with wet/dry sandpaper and sanding sticks, I present you one of the most recent releases from Revell. This is the new Revell Big Game ’78 Country Pickup 1/24 kit # 85-7226. The kit as suggested on the opening sentence does require cleaning on the parts. Some ”shaving of the plastic in almost all 4 corners is required and scrapping also on the mold lines. Bear in mind that this tooling is as old as the real vehicle itself.
All the details are there and are reminiscent of the tooling of the era. So there’s is a bit of nostalgia from he model building point of view as well as my personal life experience. My father (R.I.P.) used to own one of these in the same color pattern as the one on the video below. So building this model kit brought a lot of memories.
The front torsion bar (part #10), had to be cut and shortened to make it fit as per the instructions.
There is plenty of room under the hood to add more realistic brake lines and cables. The amount of detail you might want is on your ability, resources, disposition (or all of the above). At the end, this model kit with some TLC will turn our very good. A word of caution though: When building the cab, don’t cement the rear wall. I did it and then I had to force the interior tub. As a result the wall cracked a bit in a place that ended up hidden after adding the bed.
PAINTING REVELL’S ’78 BIG GAME COUNTY PICKUP.
The modeler can obviously paint this model in any color they wish. But being a game truck, it called for a cammo pattern. For those modeler builders without an airbrush, relax! Simply paint the model with an olive drab base color in spray from the craft store or local hobby shop. The rest of the cammo pattern comes as waterslide decals.
I used for this model NATO colors from Mission Models US Paints and my trusty Aztek A-470 airbrush. I used the blue white high flow nozzle for the NATO Green and then switched on the fly to the Tan Nozzle for the other 2 tones.
Frankly this build was a breeze even with the required cleaning. However, my biggest disappointment was the tire set. They are made from soft vinyl. The thread pattern is very nice but the walls are very thin. There is little margin of error when placing them on the rims. The wheels are supposed to rotate thru wheel retainers. But the tires would come off of the wheels; so this model is strictly for display (they all are I know). I was tempted to use CA glue for this but I would do it at the risk of it oozing out. This would make good ”mud clumps” but I had no intention on weathering this one.
Having said the above, this are pretty much the 2 shortcomings on the kit. This is of little concern to me as the fix where both easy.
This is a kit I would most definitely recommend to a friend!
My sincere thanks to Revell USA for the review sample.
