Pegasus Hobbies 1/72 “Apollo 27” Rocket

A little known and underfunded NASA planetary exploration vehicle, the Apollo 27 Rocket was developed and designed by the folks at Pegasus Hobbies during a Friday night in-house drinking seminar. The design is based on a typical 1950s style rocket ship and is piloted by two astronauts. Propulsion is from 5 rocket engines using Hyper-dynamo-tension, giving Apollo 27 an acceleration rate that staggers the mind. While still secret, the fuel for the Hyper-dynamo-tension engines is believed to be iludium phosdex, more commonly know as the shaving cream molecule.

Apollo 27 is part of the Pegasus Hobbies Rockets and UFOs Collection; this includes an Area 51 UFO, several War of the Worlds kits, the rocket from When Worlds Collide and several others. Like most of the Pegasus kits I’ve seen, this is an easy build kit and has only 23 parts.

 Made of thick white plastic, the kit should build up to be virtually indestructible. It feels like it would survive quite a few descents from a 2nd story window to the front lawn. The parts are large and easy to handle with huge alignment lugs. There is some flash on the sprues, but none on the parts themselves. The decals are minimal and the builder is expected to mask and paint the kit in a modified Saturn V livery.

 Two astronauts are included, but they are small and badly molded and the serious modeler will replace them. The cockpit area is devoid of any details except for the seat module; for some strange reason the astronauts sit back to back. There is one clear part: the bubbletop for the crew compartment.

 This is probably one of the best “first model” kits that I’ve seen that is not a snap-together. Because the parts count is so low and the parts so easy to handle, it’s a great kit to introduce kids to gluing and painting; I could even see someone using this kit to teach a child how to use liquid glue or slow setting superglue for the first time.

 You can build the kit one of two ways: if you pre-paint a few parts, use superglue and forego the decals, you can have it in the hands of an impatient 4 year-old in about 30 minutes. Or you can build the ship with some hot plastic glue, sand out the seams, give it a decent paint job and clear coat, and it will be ready for its first mission within two days.

 This looks like a fun kit to build: quick, easy to paint and a great break from more complicated (and realistic) subjects. It’s also pretty cheap. As stated previously, this is a great first glue-together kit and could be completed (with assistance) by kids as young as four.

  Uh, yeah.

Joe Stevens

January 2011

 Review kit courtesy of Mastercard.