|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Welcome to Altair 4. Chris’ vinyl Robby the Robot stands a menacing two feet tall, large enough to make use of a car’s seat belt. No more tickets in the diamond lane. |
Although you’d never know it from my steady stream of 1:72 airplanes, I was raised on a steady diet of science fiction by my father. The first model I ever built was the Aurora Godzilla. As much fun as the Japanese rubber-suit movies were, however, the film my dad always held up as the gold standard—the Shakespeare of film science fiction, as it were—was 1956’s Forbidden Planet. The Shakespeare allusion is apt, since the movie was loosely adapted from “The Tempest.”
In this film, which was remarkably literate for its time and genre, the United Planets ship C-74-D is sent to Altair 4, where 20 years before a prospecting team aboard the ship Bellerophon landed and then was lost from contact. Here’s the first clue this movie was more than your usual matinee monster movie: in Greek mythology, Bellerophon was the hero who defeated the Chimera only to later plunge to his death trying to reach Mount Olympus, proving that humans cannot be gods.
The crew of C-74-D are initially warned away by Dr. Edward Morbius, but the crew, led by Cdr. Adams (Leslie Nielson, before he discovered comedy) lands anyway. They are greeted by Robby the Robot, who speeds up and take Adams and two crewmen to see Morbius and his beautiful daughter Altaira. At Morbius’ homestead, the crew is treated to a demonstration of Robby’s abilities: he whips up a synthetic lunch, and then is ordered to shoot Adams. Robby can’t, because he seems to have read Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics and taken them to heart. Later, he makes 60 gallons of bourbon for the grateful crew.
Unfortunately, while Robby is the good machine on Altair, there’s also a bad machine, one left over by the previous civilization, the Krell. Morbius first tells his visitors that a “planetary force” killed the rest of the prospecting crew. In reality he is hiding the massive subterranean world of the Krells, including a machine that can vastly increase the mental power of those who use it. Before long, crewmembers of the C-74-D are being menaced by a mysterious monster. Although Adams would like to blame Morbius, he was with him during the attacks. The culprit eventually turns out to be a Krell-enhanced physical manifestation of Morbius’ own id, functioning against his conscious will and acting independently against the men who threaten to change his world and, perhaps more significantly, take his nubile young daughter away from him.
 |
| For $15.42 per inch, the Masudaya 1/3 scale model comes with Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space hands. Robby the Robot appeared in a couple movies and many television series. |
It is no surprise that Forbidden Planet still holds up today. Not only is the script and story very sophisticated, but the production design is far above the average for the 1950s. Granted, the C-74-D looks like your typical flying saucer, but Morbius’ home looks like something Frank Lloyd Wright might have had a hand in designing, and Robby the Robot is a timeless character, certainly better known today than any character in the film. Created by art director Robert Kinoshita, Robby’s career, like those of many other Hollywood figures, only went downhill from his debut; in 1957 he appeared in the movie The Invisible Boy, then was seen on television on the series “The Thin Man,” “Lost in Space,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Addams Family,” “The Love Boat,” “Columbo,” “Mork and Mindy,” and “Clueless,” to name a few. Robby’s odyssey from expensive prop to cast-aside relic to lovingly-restored artifact can be found at www.the-robotman.com, which is the site of 1:1 scale robot modeler Fred Barton. No matter what your area of interest, the obsessive research and enthusiasm Barton shows for his chosen subject will be familiar to you.
Early in 2004, I received a call from out of the blue from Kent Sezen, an engineer in San Jose whose office is entirely decorated in 1940s and 1950s robots, lunchpails, Disney theme-land posters and other items that reflect the “future of yesterday,” or what the world was supposed to look like in the future as envisioned by people 50 years ago. Kent asked me to assemble and paint a model of Robby the Robot. How tough could that be? I thought. I took the commission.
My question was answered by the sight of the almost three-foot high box the model was packed in. This was a Masudaya 1:3 scale vinyl Robby the Robot, which my research revealed costs in the neighborhood of $370! The finished Robby is two feet tall and “talks,” sort of, when you push a button in his chest. In reality, the “talking” sounds like a tape recording of a small television playing a worn out print of Forbidden Planet, but hey, this is a two-foot-tall robot! What more could you ask for?
The model breaks down into a few major sections: a legs-and-hips section that is heavily weighted, insuring that Robby doesn’t topple over; the torso, which also includes the arms in a clever ball-in-socket arrangement; the head; and an assortment of other parts that adorn the head. This is really more like a toy than a model; Kent and I agreed that I would leave the model in its natural black vinyl color and paint only the head and other areas that were different colors.
 |
| Most of the assembly and painting of this kit took place under the face plate. Some “brutal” modifications were needed to get proper fit of some parts. |
The head, torso and hips/legs went together with just some gentle physical coercion. There’s a clear plastic faceplate which fits rather miserably, but it can be set in place and stays put on its own. I chose not to glue it in place. The first real bit of actual modeling work I did was to mask off the area that would go inside this faceplate with thin strips of Tamiya tape, then mask off much of the robot’s head. Then, I airbrushed a mixture of silver and gray over this area. Remember that if you’re painting a vinyl model, you’ll need to use acrylic paints. Enamels react with vinyl and, as a result, never dry! I used Testors Model Master acrylics for most of this model.
When I peeled off the masking tape, I found that there had been no bleeding under the masking, and the paint dried very quickly, allowing me to go to the next step of the process that night. I carefully painted the “mouth” parts of Robby’s head black, followed by a coat of gull gray on the small rectangles on the front of these parts (teeth?). The kit provided very spotty instructions, so I had to check the internet for extra assistance in locating areas that needed painting. Next up came the large orange hemispheres at either end of the bank of relays (I guess) on Robby’s head, and then I alternated yellow and orange across the small round bumps above this area, which are said to be the rocker-arm computer relays that clack when Robby speaks. These details required careful use of a small brush, because the molded-in detail has lots of round surfaces recessed inside raised detail. It’s a little like playing the game “Operation” with a paintbrush.
Next came the addition of the clear high-voltage coil where Krell energy is harnessed and distributed. There were coils that were the proper length for the outside coils, but the inside coils were the same length and had to be modified in a fairly brutal fashion to approximate any sort of a fit. The problem was that the area these plug into curves upward; the Masudaya failed to take this into account and simply replicated the same part four times. The outer horizontal coil was also impossible to fit without some considerable mangling of the original part, but some coercion with pliers and flush-cutters resulted with this part being stuck to Robby’s face, sort of.
There is a small plug-like fixture on the very top of Robby’s head; this was painted with Tamiya acrylic brass. Into this plugged the three clear gyroscopic stabilizers. The two reciprocating arms at the top of Robby’s face were painted white and pushed into place. At this point, I used Tamiya’s silver spray paint on the styrene vertical and horizontal access rotating scanners and his four “vision coils.” The coils had their points painted with acrylic blue; I bet you didn’t realize that Robby had blue eyes! These parts were pushed into place, as were the two clear “energy neutralizers,” which resemble ears. These latter parts took considerable convincing to fit into place. I opted not to glue any of these parts in place; should the model fall over, glued parts would break off, but snapped-into-place parts could be replaced by the new owner.
 |
| Chris used acrylic paints because enamels will not dry properly on vinyl models. Pushing the button on Robby’s chest causes him to speak even if it sounds a little like talking through two soup cans and a piece of kite string. |
The most frustrating areas of Robby to paint were the fins along the head. These are silver, but trying to reach inside the narrow openings of the fins with a brush and painting a reasonably straight line was an effort. Also, brush painting silver is no fun on its own, so adding a second coat was doubly frustrating.
Next came the two dials in the center of Robby’s chest. Applications of bronze, orange and silver replicated the dials that monitor Robby’s molecular analyzer and RNA duplicator.
Finally, I selected the Forbidden Planet-style hands (in place of the hands Robby had in the “Lost in Space” episode he appeared in) and pushed them into place.
The finished model was so large it was easy to transport. Robby was tall enough that he could be secured in the passenger seat of my car using the seat belt, which fit quite comfortably across his barrel-like body! Kent was overjoyed—and a little overwhelmed—when his huge Robby arrived. It dwarfed his other robots and displaced a few from their original locations! It was my first vinyl kit and my first science fiction or figure kit in at least 20 years. Thanks go to Kent for giving me a chance to build this reminder of my childhood.
Chris Bucholtz has been building models since 1973 and has been a member of SVSM since 1986. His interests include 1/72 scale aircraft of all types, but specifically World War II and subjects whose pilots or crew he has met. Occasionally he builds robots.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
