Recently I realized that my early love of animation began with TV shows that feature spaceships.
Aside from Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry, in the 1970’s I was introduced to anime. And my first loves were Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers. At that time, I was also a fan of Space:1999 and the movie The Black Hole. More recently, I became a fan of Cowboy Bebop and Battlestar Galactica.
All of these shows and movies have in common spaceships: the Phoenix in Battle of the Planets; Battleship Yamato in Battle of the Planets; the Eagle 1 Transporter from Space:1999; the Cygnus from The Black Hole; the Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop; and Galactica from Battlestar Galactica.
Since I love these ships so much, why not build and display models of them?
As a kid, I built numerous car and boat models. All of these, sadly, were carelessly trashed when my parents moved the family from Queens to Pleasantville while my sister and I were away at camp. It’s the one act for which I will NEVER forgive my parents. It was incredibly selfish, lazy and thoughtless of them to simply throw in the garbage things that I spent hours gluing and painting. I’ll never forget the moment I saw my new room in the new house and realized that my models were gone. Heartbreaking.
Anyway, to tap back into that childhood feeling of creation, I bought model kits for all of the ships listed above except for the Phoenix. My original thought was that the Phoenix looked too cheesy but I may end up getting it anyway. If for no other reason, it will complete the collection.
This may sound strange, but the Star Wars ships are purposely missing. I loved the movie and was enthralled with the ships when I first saw them but they didn’t affect me the ways the others did. I can’t really explain it…
I started my collection with the Swordfish II. The design is accurate to the animated version in look and function.
And I built it quickly!
It just needs some glue for the small parts that keep falling off and paint to make it look like the truly worn ship Spike puts through hell.
One down, five more to go!