R is for Red Thunderchief Movie Car-90 or Something?

With a nod to Pete and Dud for their skit, which I've posted the link to here, and elsewhere, more than once, so won't bore you with again! And it's all because this is one of those moments when TJF's criticism of me holds some water, if only because I do, from time to time, get it wrong, but I tend to then tell you, giving a lie to his arrogant-git's attempts to paint me as an arrogant-git, although I may well be over-confident in my self-assurance sometimes!

I saw this going cheap on evilBay, can't remember if it was BIN or opening-bid, but I secured it for a reasonably small amount, thinking two things, firstly, "It's a copy of that big thing I got in two parts, but smaller and made as a single piece" and secondly "It's that little space man (fifteenth image down!) with the plug-in ariel who is still a question-mark".

 

Well, when it arrived, very quickly and well-packed I'm pleased to say, I knew instantly that I had been a very silly boy, as not only was it the smaller half of the X-40 Thunderchief Movie Thing, but that meant I'd had the pilot, AND had posted him, before I posted him again as a question mark! Doh!

 

Anyway, as you might have noticed it was also damaged, so, with nothing to lose, and a better one in the box, I carefully prised the two glued halves apart, by running a fine blade round the joined rim until the two halves fell apart, and the contents fell out!

I then cut away the remains of the cross spars, and polished the scars away with my finger-nails (the best way to get rid of the whitening of damaged polystyrene, you can also use jade polishing tips, or the old ivory finger-nail buffers), and heat-polished the transparency by rubbing vigorously on my jeans until I could feel it heating up, a technique which requires a bit more care/practice as you can crack the piece or actually melt it and instantly pick up fluff which equally-instantly wealds itself to the softened plastic

 

I then washed off all the greasy finger-marks from the inside of the canopy and put it all back together again, although you may have noticed the wheels have changed size, and it's lost its spigot/pitot/anemometer thingy . . . whatever they call the spike!

Major 'King' Kong, goes to space war! Yeeharh!

 

When it turned-up with different front wheels, and because I needed to dig everything out to unify it all, in one place, a quick look at the box, and comparison with my whole (ish) one, revealed that it had been mucked-about with and should have had the larger wheels, so they were swapped-out, and the pitot tube/prong went on the bigger model at the same time.

 

It's actually a carefully sanded, rolled-paper, lolly-stick (the new Q-tips, or 'don't-put-these-in-your-ears', ear-cleaners have them too), from the previous owner, to which I have applied a silver Sharpie! At some point in the future, I will do a little more work, especially to the rear, to make it more of a space-taxi or airfield/space-field apron vehicle!