The Model Kit Monster

It was 1966, and it seemed the world was in the grip of "Bat-mania".  The new Batman show was a smash hit, and suddenly Batman was the hottest property around.  Aurora had released a Batman kit in '65, so they were ahead of the curve and were ready to reap the rewards when the teeming masses suddenly wanted to have the Caped Crusader (even in miniature) in their homes. My father was no exception, and I like to think his two rabid, Bat-fan sons helped in his motivation to buy the kit.  Either way, he did buy it, and after building and painting, he left it to reside on a display shelf in the room my brother and I shared. Now, my brother and I loved that kit.  I mean LOVED it.  We kept climbing up on furniture to get it off the high shelf and just admire it.  At some point though, that wasn't enough; eventually, and on a regular basis, we would detach the figure from its base and play with it like an action figure.  I have to admit, I don't know if it's a

I had never heard of this kit back when I was a kid building monster models.  It wasn't until my brother gave me a vintage Revell kit of The Phantom, that I learned (through an ad on the side of the box) of THIS one.  While the Phantom was cool, THIS was something special, in my book.  Even moreso after I finally saw a small picture of the actual kit, but finding one of these was like the proverbial needle in a haystack.  Until last year, when Atlantis produced a fantastic re-issue of it.  Even better, there was now an aftermarket base by Thunderboy that accurately reproduced the base as shown in the box art (a vast improvement over the small parts that were originally included). I would've built this kit soon after buying it anyway, but as it happened, there was a group build of it that started up on the HobbyTalk forum ( http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/ ), and it was a good kick in the butt to get me started in on it. Here are the initial sub-assemblies: One thing I d