Mil Mi-1M (Tintin and the Picaros)

Tintin and the Picaros (French: Tintin et les Picaros) is the twenty-third volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The final instalment in the series to be completed by Hergé, in Belgium it was serialized in Tintin magazine from September 1975 to April 1976 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1976. The narrative follows the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy and his friends Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus as they travel to the (fictional) South American nation of San Theodoros to rescue their friend Bianca Castafiore, who has been imprisoned by the government of General Tapioca. Once there, they become involved in the anti-government revolutionary activities of Tintin’s old friend General Alcazar.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The VIDEO:

The story:

Y’know, Tintin and the Picaros is probably everyone’s least favourite Tintin albums, but I have to admit, it does offer some neat scale model building opportunities.  After the Land Rover, I was really looking forward to the chance to tackle the Mil M-1M helicopter.  It doesn’t have a huge role to play in the story itself – Tintin never actually rises in it, it just does a 2-3 panel recon pass over the jungle where he’s hiding with General Alcazar – but it certainly is an odd little chopper.

I may have been a bit more focused on the Land Rover and Zil 114 Limousine projects, but there was never any real doubt that the M-1M wouldn’t make the cut for my Tintin build project.  A big reason for that, of course, is that Blue Rider saw fit to include it in their awesome Tintin decals series.

Of course, there are a few options for kits in 1/72, just no particularly good ones.  The most widespread and “popular” (relatively speaking) is the Amodel offering.  That’s the one I was planning on getting, until this weird little kit from WK Models jumped out of nowhere and assaulted me in the Nakano Broadway location of the Japanese anime-related-fun-stuff store, Mandarake.  As I was digging through the boxes of used model kits (mostly Gundam and some old Hasegawa boxes), out of nowhere I found this flattened little box I didn’t recognize, but was instantly drawn to.  It wasn’t the M-1 kit I’d been looking for, but who was I to argue?

i like old kits, so the instruction sheet printed with “Made in West Germany, 1988” intrigued me.  It was obviously a short run kit, and they spared no expense on the flash – each of the sprues had a truly generous amount.  At first, this bothered me, but after checking out some pics of Amodel kit builds, it seems to come with the territory.

Besides, who doesn’t like a challenge?

The build:

The build itself was relatively straight-forward.  I basically just built it straight out of the box. Of course it was a bit rough, but nothing that that a whole bunch of putty and even more sanding could beat into submission.

The only real bit of scratching building I did was open up the air intake vent at the top, near the rotor mast.  Again, it didn’t really stretch my abilities.  What really stretched my patience though, was the fit.  The clear cabin parts were a real pain to fit in place, and, in the end, I didn’t really do such a hot job of it.  The putty and sanding made up for a lot of it, but being so close to the masked windows made it quite challenging.  The masking tape started slipping around a bit and some grey undercoat paint made it’s way into some places I’d have rather it didn’t.  Oh, well.  It’s not like I didn’t expect that to happen anyway.

What I didn’t really expect was the slightly lower quality of the Blue Rider Tintin decals.  I thought these were a real treasure trove when I first got my hands on them, but since this is the first build I’ve actually used them on… well, I was less than impressed.  For one, the size seems a bit off.  The San Theodoran flags on either side of the fuselage don’t really fit properly – neither where they were supposed to go (highter up on the sides) or where I had to make them fit as best I could (lower down, over the curve of the undercarriage).  The red ones on the tail weren’t long enough to wrap all the way around… and to make matters worse, the offset printing was off. That meant there was a bit of black and white border showing on some of the edges.  Hopefully not all the decals have the same problems… but I guess we’ll find that out in due course.

I’d love to get some comments, to feel free to check it out and tell me what you think: