All right, a new Star Wars kit. AMT has finally released the Corporate Alliance Droid from the Revenge of the Sith©. This kit features 37 parts molded in light gray plastic and instructions. There are no decals or painting instructions provided with this kit, even though the instructions call out 11 different colors of paint.

The molding is fairly sharp with some ejector pin marks and mold separation lines. One part has the Lucasfilm copyright marking right were it will be seen, rather than on the inside of a part. The tracks are molded in one piece with separation lines down the middle and mold stubs all over the inside that will require some careful cutting to remove.

Overall this is a welcome kit from the Star Wars universe and with a little research on painting should make up into a very nice model.

© 2005 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved.

Those of us that like to display our automotive models with the hood open generally face two problems. The first is, of course, having an accurate-looking hinge mechanism, and the second is keeping the hood open. It’s just about impossible to build accurate-looking hood hinges that are also strong enough to do the job they are supposed to do: they’re fairly complicated mechanisms with springs and multiple pivot points that just can’t be accurately reproduced in plastic. Well, J3 Models has a solution to this problem in their fixed open hood hinges.

Each hinge consists of a piece of photo-etched (I assume) metal representing the hinge itself, and a spring which attaches to the hinge to produce a fairly good replica of a hood hinge in the open position. There is a large horizontal surface available to attach the hood to, and another large surface that can be glued into the engine compartment to hold the hood in the open position.