Opel Olympia + Gillet-Herstal Motorcycle (King Ottokar’s Sceptre)

King Ottokar’s Sceptre (French: Le Sceptre d’Ottokar) is the eighth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from August 1938 to August 1939. Hergé intended the story as a satirical criticism of the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, in particular the annexation of Austria in March 1938 (the Anschluss). The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to the fictional Balkan nation of Syldavia, where they combat a plot to overthrow the monarchy of King Muskar XII.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

King Ottokar’s Sceptre is one of those stories that sort of grows on you every time you read it. As a child it didn’t resonate with me all that much. I suspect the reasons for that are more or less two-fold.

The first is the relatively uninspired cover. Tintin taking a leisurely stroll through the front gate of some castle, in some country in Europe I’ve never heard about. What’s so exciting about that? It certainly doesn’t have the danger associated with “peeking out from your hiding spot” like on the cover of The Blue Lotus, nor the “hot on the trail of a mystery” of Cigars of the Pharaoh. I mean come on! Tintin looks like he just spent the afternoon at the museum and is heading home for a nice bowl of tomato soup. It doesn’t exactly scream “pick me up and read me!” now does it?

The second is the whole plot. I mean the Bordurian agents are neat enough, but the whole “if you lose the sceptre you have to abdicate the throne” idea was a bit incomprehensible to my young mind. Who cares if he loses his walking stick? The king is the king, no?

Of course, as one grows older, the political intrigue and satire inherent in a story written under the growing storm clouds of World War II… well, now we’re talking.

Regardless though, it does have a great chase scene. On that both my young and old minds can agree. Who hasn’t wanted to just jump on the nearest motorcycle and speed off in chase of the bad guys. Heck, Tintin did very nearly the same thing in Cigars of the Pharaoh, only that time he had an Alfa Romeo P3 at his disposal.

But strangely enough, when I started checking the boxes to select the possible entries for inclusion in my Tintin build project, neither the Opel Olympia nor the Gillet-Herstal motorcyle were even in the running. Come now… nothing is going to dethrone Tintin’s spin in the Bordurian Messerschmitt Bf 109G, is it?

Back when I first started planning out this project, I was only really looking to build one model from each of the albums. So I just plunked down the Bf109 for King Ottokar’s Sceptre and promptly forgot about it. But then a funny thing (or two) happened.

One day as I was rummaging through my stash (a favourite pastime of mine), I stumbled across the Academy 1/72 M3 Half Track + 1/4ton Amphibian Vehicle set  – a kit I’d originally bought for some other, now forgotten, purpose – and I noticed that it also happens to include a motorcycle. At the time I was doing some planning for my Studio Ghibli build project and it occurred to me that I might be able to use it as an accessory in the Lupin the Third’s Fiat 500 build – basically as a stand-in for the non-descript motorcycle that Fujiko Hine rides off on at the end of the movie.

So I dragged the sprue out and plunked it down next to the Fiat 600 shell (don’t ask… ok do!) that I was planning to use and snapped the first picture for the build log. But the more I looked at the sprue, and how well-formed the motorcycle bits were, the less I wanted to use it as an accessory.  It was simply too good for a supporting role… it needed a project of its own.

Then I remembered the chase scene.

Sure enough, after a quick check, I discovered that ACE had a 1/72 scale model of an Opel Olympia on offer, and my two-part build for King Ottokar’s Sceptre was born.

The build:

Since the Opel Olympia is one of those rare 1/72 scale car kits, and I was building it more or less out of the box, it should have been quite easy… and it would’ve too if I’d paid more attention to the difference between the 1937 and 1938 car models. Although very similar, the car depicted in the book is obviously a 1938 model, and sure enough, I accidentally ordered the 1937!

Luckily, in an attempt to maximize their moulds, ACE saw fit to include both grill/hood combo (the main difference) on the same sprue. This allows them to only have to produce a separate sprue for the side panels. So I ALMOST had a complete 1938 kit… and what I didn’t have, I could fake.

Marrying up the “not quite right” hood and grill to the rest of the shell just took some careful sanding. The hard part was removing the triangular side vent from the ’37 and swapping in the longer linear vent from the ’38. It wasn’t perfect (or even as good as it would’ve been if I’d paid attention), but it was good enough.

As for the motorcycle part of this combo, I have no real comments on the build itself. It was over pretty quickly and the only additions I made were to turn the engine into a single cylinder, use a bit of stretched clear sprue for the headlamp and a bit of wire for the exhaust. But feel free to tell me what you think: