Topic: Tomy Slave I

[Clonehead]

Today, I am reviewing a kit produced by Tomy back on 2006. That year, they produced 5 little Star Wars diorama kits that were available only in Japan. I got this one off of ebay as well as the other 4. Since then, I believe that they produced some character bust-up type kits but haven't looked lately.
  This kit is the #4 kit which is of an AOTC era Slave 1 flying through an astroid field. It is a prepainted kit and comes with a mere 15 pieces including the base.
  All of the boxes looked the same in this line, so it is important to note the #4 on the one narrow side of the box to determine which kit it is.
  Upon opening the box, you are presented with a plastic bag of all the parts which are individually bagged inside.
There are only three sprue frames in this kit. One of 3 small clear parts, and two with light grey parts. One of these two holds the two wings on the other holds the very small gun parts.
 

[Clonehead]

No scale is listed for this kit but the ship is smaller than the titanium version.
Now some care must be observed while removing the parts from the sprue as they are delicate and the gun parts are among the smallest parts I have ever seen in a model kit. Tweezers are a neccessity during assembly.
The instructions are fairly straght-forward and easy to follow although they contain no english. In the step where you are to attach the guns that are closest to the cockpit, you are directed to insert the long end of the piece but I believe you are supposed to insert the short end into the ship's receiving hole. That's the way it looks on the box's example.
  The ship body and astroids are a hard flexable and surprisingly heavy plastic and the paint applications on these pieces look good enough. There was no flash or mold lines on these pieces.
  Assembly of this kit took around 20 min and was no problem givin the small size of some of the parts. There is a clearance issue when it comes time to mount the ship to the astroid with the supplied clear posts as the nearest astroid on the left side touches the back of the ship and I don't think that it was meant to.

[Clonehead]

3 more shots of the little dio. I forgot to mention that their was a little star field detail painted onto the base.
  This kit wasnt too much of a chore and will display well with my other kits from this line. I will post pics of them in my diorama thread.

[jkno]

I used to have it together with Gunship/AT-TE and Jedi StarFighter (red & blue versions)  but I donated them for contests on the Romanian SW forum about 2 years ago since my focus are Imperials. They are really cool and very detailed for their size, and the bases are looking great too.