Tintin’s Vespa (Le Journal de Tintin)
Tintin Magazine (French: Le Journal de Tintin) was a weekly Belgian comics magazine of the second half of the 20th century. Subtitled “The Magazine for the Youth from 7 to 77”, it was one of the major publications of the Franco-Belgian comics scene and published such notable series as Blake and Mortimer, Alix, and the principal title The Adventures of Tintin. Originally published by Le Lombard, the first issue was released in 1946, and it ceased publication in 1993.
– courtesy of Wikipedia
The finished model:
The video:
This is Tintin project : 056
This project was originally completed on 2025/11/22
The story:
You’d think 24 (and a bit) Tintin albums would be enough of a challenge for my Tintin 1/72 scale project. True, it’s not like there’s an actual shortage of possible projects, but sometimes there are projects that just demand to be brought to life.
Tintin does drive a few motorcycles throughout his adventures, and I’ve done a couple of them, such as the BMW Motorcycle from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the Gillet-Herstal from King Ottokar’s Sceptre. I’ve also got plans for the Honda CD 50 motorcycle Tintin rides in Tintin and the Picaros, and the sketch of a scooter in Tintin and Alph-Art.
But none of them are a Vespa, right?
Tintin appears (with Snowy) on the back of a 1954 Vespa on the cover of issue no. 289 of Le Journal de Tintin magazine (May 1954). He’s surrounded by a group of his friends, and Quick et Flupke (also by Herge) announcing that the Vespa is the grand prize in the “Grand Concours”.
That’s legit enough for me. Besides… who doesn’t love Tintin on a Vespa? They go together like… well, like two of your favourite things that go together.
The build:
As I usually say for these small little “side” projects, there’s not much to say in terms of the build. In fact, this one really started out as a request to model a Tintin figure for a friend so that he’d have someone to ride on an already existing die-cast model of a Vespa he owns. Far be it for me to let some work go to waste, so once I had Tintin and Snowy prepared to sit on a scooter, all I really needed was the scooter.
There are several Vespa 3D designs available, but none of them were quite right… either too new (post-1954) versions of the iconic scooter, or they simply weren’t print-ready (at least not in 1/72 scale), so I had to design my own. That meant making some choices about what details to gloss over – partly because they wouldn’t show up at such a small scale, and partly because too fine a detail in the wrong place can lead to an unstable print. In the end, I was pretty happy with the balance. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, you can find the design on Cults3D.com – and since you’re coming from my blog, be sure to use the discount code “STROBEZ” to get 50% the download fee.
