Spindrift from "Land of the Giants" (1968-1970)

Scale: 1:76
Initial Release: 1968
Medium: Styrene
Kit Rarity (Original Release):  5
Polar Lights Re-Release: 3
Moebius Re-Release: 1

About the Design

Looking like a deformed Flying Sub, the Spindrift was supposed to represent a 1980's-era suborbital commercial passenger spacecraft. Instead, it merely represented producer Irwin Allen's preference for the "cool" over the credible. Although it may have enjoyed some lifting body-like characteristics, the Spindrift has no surfaces that could conceivably produce lift, no apparent landing gear, and even the so-called "intakes" on the ship's sides were clearly non-functional. (Although they did glow and pulsate impressively when activated.) Finally, with only a half-dozen passenger seats, it would be impossible for such a craft -- even an aerodynamically plausible one -- to be commercially viable except as an "executive" aircraft. In the post-"2001" world, the Spindrift was a conceptual antique even before it launched.

About the Kit

Like the earlier Flying Sub kit, Aurora's Spindrift featured a visible interior one accessed by removing the model's upper section. The model was also marred by a glaring inaccuracy; its upper dome was hemispherical, not the teardrop shape seen on the actual miniature. The kit was first released in 1968 concurrent with the "Land of the Giants" premiere, then re-released with new box art in 1975, just prior to Aurora's demise. The model remained unavailable until 2002, when a retooled but otherwise identical kit was released by Polar Lights -- complete with original box art. It was later released again by Moebius Models, which had acquired the rights to all Irwin Allen properties.

This kit is an original 1968 edition -- and is in pretty bad shape.  (The paint job was done entirely by hand, and the rooftop antenna snapped off sometime during the Nixon Administration.)