Buck Rogers premiered in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories.  In this first appearance, Buck was a former service pilot turned mine surveyor.  Buck’s true adventure begins when he is trapped in a mine cave-in and goes into suspended animation by virtue of a radioactive gas.  He wakes up 500 years later and becomes mankind’s great defender against Mongol invaders.  Buck Rogers became tremendously popular, developing into a comic strip, radio show, and even a movie and early television series.  Such was the appeal that the Buck Rogers comic strip lasted until 1967.

About 10 years later, NBC reintroduced Buck Rogers to the television watching public.  This time, Buck was an unfortunate astronaut whose spacecraft suffers an accident and drifts through space for 500 years with Buck again in suspended animation.  Buck’s battles this time are against the Draconians.  The show lasted just two years on prime time, but can still be seen in reruns on SciFi.

THE KIT

 

During the show, Monogram released kits of both the Draconian Marauder and Buck’s Starfighter.  I remember seeing lots of Marauder kits on the shelves, but never the Starfighter.  Small wonder as the Marauder is one of the ugliest spacecraft ever designed.  Molded in “coral” with a tinted red canopy, the Marauder consists of 18 pieces, including a two piece stand.  You don’t have the option for a landing gear, so unless you hang it from the ceiling, you’re going to need the stand.  The Marauder features raised panel lines (it was released in 1979) and an initial fit check shows the major pieces fit well together.  You only get a seat for the cockpit, but unless you use a floodlamp, you aren’t going to see anything through the transparent red canopy anyway.  The decals in my sample are thick, but well-printed and in great shape.  I’m guessing that total assembly time, sans painting, will be around one hour. 

CONCLUSIONS

Despite being pink, red, and ugly, the Marauder should turn out to be a nice little kit.  It doesn’t have the following of the Starfighter, which sells for around $50 on eBay, but the Marauder is still a neat kit.  Now if they would only get around to releasing the show on DVD….