X-Wing

The Bandai 1/72 Red Squadron X-Wing Starfighter kit is the first official Bandai Star Wars kit licensed for sale in the US. This kit is a re-release of the previous X-Wing kit, with some slight modifications and additions.

This version features an all-new set of decals to mark it as one of the X-Wings shown in Rogue One. The original kit included a Death Star exhaust port base and Photon Torpedo effects, which are omitted with this release. In its place is a second 1/144 X-wing kit that was previously released as a stand-alone kit.

This review sample is provided by Bluefin Distribution. You can get yours on Amazon.com

The box is all-new for this release and reflects the branding of Rogue One. Around the perimeter are photos of the actual painted up model to be used as a guide should you decide to paint it.

I decided to do some minor painting and weathering on this kit as I assembled it. I think the kit will look a little plain without the paint work, but the decals do wonders. No glue is required.

In the box all the parts are sealed in baggies, with instructions and two sets of decal sheets. Bandai provides both water slide and traditional decals, its up to you as to which you are most comfortable with. I chose the traditional stickers for this build.

Bandai also included a pair of Mr. Tools nippers, which honestly have changed my life. I was using an old pair of traditional diaognal nippers to cut parts off of the sprue and they always left marks. These Mr. Tool nippers are amazing and don’t leave any stress residue on the parts! I’m never building another kit without them.

The build starts with the wings. There are plenty of stickers that can be applied at this point, and it’s a lot easier to get to them now before you have the rest assembled. The below picture shows the part with stickers but without paint detail.

Below you can see my attempt at weathering. I use Tamiya dark grey acrylic and a pointy cotton swab to liberally apply the paint then I use a paper towel to drag away the excess paint. I use enough to fill in panel lines, and then wipe away the rest in the direction of any weathering marks. It works pretty good for a cheap weathering job, but real kit builders will likely paint the whole kit first rather than leaving the default plastic color. I’m not that ambitious.

From there, you start on the fuselage. There are tiny decals for the cockpit, in addition to an X-Wing Pilot and your choice of R2 or r4 units.

The completed kit comes in at 7 inches long and feels good. The amount of detail is fantastic. By building up and detailing this kit I noticed details that I never did before.

For example, in the 40 years that I have been a Star Wars fan, I never noticed that the number of stripes on the fighters wing denoted their place in the squadron. Bandai provides extra stripes to make it Red one through five. I chose to keep this one as Red Leader with only one stripe.

The model features a plain base that has a locking joint system in it. A small panel underneath removes to allow the stand to attach. There are two joints with three positions each.

You can of course lock S-Foils in attack position. Moving one wing moves all of them into position.

The cockpit detail is nice, but I decided to paint the entire interior. I think it helped a lot. The decals for the R2 unit’s head were a pain to stick on and took a lot of patience. Two canopies are included. One canopy is just the frame with no windows, the other is clear with a hinge.

One of the things I do recommend that you paint is the interior of the engines.

A set of landing gear is included, as well as the opening hatches for them. The gear cannot be stored inside the model and must be added for display.

Here you can see the clear opening cockpit.

The front nosecone is removable to reveal the sensor systems. I probably could have painted this but I got lazy.

Some extra parts are included, some of them mysterious. I have no idea what the pilot standee is supposed to be. The clear parts were for the Photon Torpedo effect from the earlier version of the kit, and the R4 head can be swapped out if you wanted to make a different X-Wing.

The small kit is cool, and at 3.5 inches long I found it too small to paint up. Fortunately the numerous decals made up for it. I spent more time adding the details to the little kit than I did putting it together!

The little kit fits on a ball-jointed stand and also has opening S-Foils.

It’s a nice little kit that I doubt I would have bought on it’s own due to its size.

The X-Wing fits nicely in with the Y-Wing that I reviewed previously. I do miss the Death Star patterned base, but the addition of the second kit is a nice consolation prize.

The kit was a fun build and only took me a few hours to put together. Expect to spend as much time with the decals as with assembly. I would absolutely recommend picking up a set of Mr. Tools pliers to assist with the build as I think it has revolutionized my kit building. You can buy the nippers alone or as part of a set.

Thanks again to Bluefin for providing this sample. You can get yours at Amazon.com!