This is a review of the Bandai Veh model #005

I figured I’d take a small hiatus from cars and such and, as I am a BIG Star Wars fan, I thought I’d go over some models as the year progresses. I cannot say I am very knowledgeable of REALLY good S.W. models, but I am going to do some here and there for those who are as big a fan as I am.

The Y-wing is a fun design, but I can say it isn’t as movie-popular as a tie fighter. It makes appearances here and there, but I find it is a fun little design either way. The original movie versions don’t have a LOT of the detail on them, but the one to the left is close to what they would have.

The Y-Wing comes in a very VERY light grey plastic and I think it looks a little too sterile. I used a Tamiya Light Grey to spruce it up a bit and I think it works. The stripes are another story. They are GARBAGE. They are actual stickers vs. water decals and they look awful no matter how precise the placement. They don’t work well over the little “dots” of detail here and there on the ship and they are tough to use altogether. I used Testors Tangerine and a darker grey for the stripes and I promise it looks better than the decals. The glass is semi-gloss black and I used silver/dark red for the “R_” unit. Kinda like R4, but there wasn’t a true “R” unit for this ship in the movie series. There is a LOT of wiring and hoses that could be colored too, but no pics on line really show what they should be EXACTLY, so I left it all grey like in the film.

Something of note as well, the skeletal spindles are an annoying fit to the ends and are VERY breakable. I appreciated the way they did the design to include a couple more pieces than they could’ve done, however, I think they sacrificed stability in this case. The directions for these Bandai models are on the far side of terrible as well. They are TINY, and they aren’t very specific as where the pieces finally lay. Thankfully, there aren’t too many pieces to have to contend with, but they are still crap… and not for the very novice.

The box is tiny, the parts are slightly small in number, the decals are JUNK, and the directions are abysmal. However, the kit IS really easy to build, the kit is really inexpensive and the end result is perfect for a Star Wars fan with little shelf space.

9.0 – Very Good