Battle the forces of the First Order with the Resistance A-wing Fighter™! This detailed authentic movie model kit includes 25 easy snap together pieces and features a battle ready pilot, light up engines and battle-action sounds. You are now ready to recreate your own great movie scenes from Star Wars: The Last Jedi!
This is the recently released Resistance A-Wing Fighter from the upcoming movie Star Wars; The Last Jedi from Revell. I love the design of this ship. It pays homage to the late Ralph McQuarrie. The kit has 24 parts and 8 straight forward steps to build the model. As with the other kits on the line, it comes with a sound and light module. Building this kit out of the box would probably take 20 to 30 minutes tops but that wasn’t what I had in mind with it. Instead I chose to sand and repaint this model using Tamiya AS-20 Insignia White. That was before sealing the landing gear wells because the model was to be displayed in-flight.
I did change the blue pattern and for that I used Vallejo Flat Blue 70.962 which is strongly pigmented but flows very nice with Medium Retarder 70.597 on my Iwata Neo airbrush. The yellow LEDs that comes inside the module had to go. I drilled -and destroyed in the process- the LEDs with a 3/16 drill bit. This would allow the cables from the pre-wired 5mm LEDs to go thru the engines and meet on the front of the cockpit. From there the LEDs were soldered leaving just 1 cable to go thru the mounting 3/16 K&S aluminum rod and fed by either an AC Adaptor or a 9v battery holder. The LEDs included with the model are way inside the engines and little light will come out. The replacements LED were moved all to way to the front and rest inside the clear parts ‘P’ thus more and better illumination was achieved.
This is a good kit with plenty of potential for the model builder. It is far from perfect but very good still. I guesstimate it is around 1/48th scale based on the size of the pilot.
My special note on this A-Wing and all the rest of the models that Revell brought us on Force Friday:
For those who moan about Revell Star Wars models with the typical ”Bandai does it better” argument: You are comparing pears to apples. It is true, Bandai is producing very good models. But they are targeted to a different market. Read the box of this model, it reads big and bold BUILD & PLAY MODEL KIT. Now, try to Build and Play with a Bandai model kit. Again, they are fine model kits. But they are mostly Build & Collect. No Bandai model would hold a fall or bump from rough play like a Revell model kit would. Revell gets bits and pieces of the design team which could during production slightly change thus varying by the time the movie comes out. Bandai makes models after the movies when the vaults are opened and the curtain of secrecy and NDA’s are moved. Damn it, you can not compare Revell’s kit 85-1475 Jimmie Johnson® LOWE’s Chevy® SS 35 parts Build & Play kit with the new Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion 85-4218 Level 5 and 104 Parts with water decals. I have kept this site rated G for a long time but the bulling on social media is getting of the charts. Revell vs Bandai is Apples vs Pears. Stop the bitching and start sharpening those scratch building skills, OR, wait at least for your Bandai.
Here in the USA the Resistance A-Wing Fighter is a Target Exclusive model kit. As a collector myself, I know this creates an inconvenience. Being in the Twin Cities area home of Target HQ’s, I have at least 7 stores in a 1 hour drive radius. Others don’t have that luck. To make it worse, I saw the case breakdown and there’s only 1 A-Wing per case. If the shelf is full with other models, they won’t bring another case. Target has a policy with collector’s items -at least there was a few years ago-. No employee can go to the back room to get specific collectors items. Be nice and gentle with them. It usually works for me.
Happy hunting and happy building!
My sincere thanks to my lint filled pocket for the review sample.
