Lindberg Transparent Roswell Alien Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Several years ago, a group of business folks associated with the hobby industry pulled together a new company and bought the rights to the brand names of Lindberg and Hawk. While many folks only associate the brand name of Lindberg with a handful of aircraft and car kits, many 'old timers' will recall the wealth of kits that were developed under the Lindberg as well as the Hawk names, but in the final years of Lindberg's existence prior to being purchased and 're-invented', the brand name was left with just a few legacy (read inexpensive) aircraft kits and a limited focus on the automotive hobbyist.

Under its new ownership, the 'new' Lindberg team went out to locate much of the original tooling. By the time the Lindberg/Hawk team had debuted the 'new' company at the Chicago toy and hobby show, they'd reassembled a vast range of kit offerings from the original catalogs, many of which have not been available for decades. One of my favorites was the scale SM-62 Snark kit ( reviewed here).

As Linberg continues to roll out some of their new subjects (like the two 1/72 IJN submarines coming soon), they are also reissuing many of these classic kits like the Snark. While I wasn't surprised to see this Area 51 UFO kit ( reviewed here) on that reissue list, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this new team has a great imagination as well as a sense of humor with the release of this 'Transparent Roswell Alien' kit.

Many will remember growing up with kits of the 'Visible Man and 'Visible Woman, many of which found their ways into Biology classes. The new Lindberg isn't reissuing those kits, they've designed new-tool and larger versions that are more 'anatomically correct' and threw in a few new topics like this one.

This kit comes in a rather large package as the alien figure, molded in clear styrene, stands 18 inches tall without the display base. What's interesting is that the arteries and veins are pre-painted. A separate abdominal cover is also provided so you can disect your model after assembly.

There are two trees of skeletal parts, all molded in off-white. A set of clips are also provided (not shown) to interconnect the bones to provide some flexibility.

If you believe the stories about this race of aliens, they're rather evasive in their answers. I'd have to disagree. When I opened the parts bag containing the pre-colored internal organs, this creature spilled his guts. Note that with all of these pre-colored parts, there isn't much to do aside from stuffing the parts back inside the clear shell.

The box lists some recommended paint colors for some reason, though the instructions don't mention a word about painting. As you can see here, this isn't a complicated model and the pre-colored/pre-painted parts will make this a relatively quick build.

If you're not into the UFO/alien thing, but you are a fan of the outstanding TV series Stargate SG1, then ignore the title on this kit box and think of this as a 'Visible Asgard'. Jaffa, kree!