Calling Dick Tracy!

The heyday of Dick Tracy was before my time, but I was aware of the character from the comic strips, and I get the feeling that I may have actually seen the cartoon series in syndication though my memory about it is rather unclear.

10¢?!!!

The 1990 movie didn't do much to increase my interest in the franchise, though I did like the highly stylized art design of the movie itself.

What I didn't know back then, was that the merchandising associated with the movie would provide us with a 1/72 scale 1936 Ford Model 68 V8 Fordor sedan.

The Dick Tracy logo across the boot of the car detracts from it's appearance, but luckily, diecast car collectors have come up with a number of ways to get rid of unwanted tampos. The method that I used to get rid of the branding is shown in the following YouTube video.

The method works pretty well, though at certain angles, I can still see a faint outline of the Dick Tracy logo.

There are three other cars in the series, including a 1937 Studebaker Dictator, 1936 Ford V8 De Luxe, and a 1939 Chevrolet Master De Luxe, but they are all overscale. There is also a micro size set of four cars that can sometimes be confused with the larger ones.

Another interesting item from the Dick Tracy franchise, was the Space Coupe. I don't know what space travel had to do with a detective series, but I guess it was the late 60s, right in the middle of the Cold War Space Race, so the subject of space travel was popular.

A model of the Space Coupe was manufactured by Aurora, and various sources have suggested that the model is 1/72 scale. Since the vintage Aurora kits are always pretty expensive, I never bothered buying one to see if the rumors were true, but a while back I managed to pick up an inexpensive Polar Lights re-issue kit.

The kit includes four figures consisting of Dick Tracy, Moon Maid, Junior, and Diet Smith.

The figures are sculpted in a cartoony style that befits comic strip characters, but I don't think Moon Maid is a very good likeness.

Moon Maid wearing a hat to blend in with the natives.

I'm undecided about whether I really want to build this kit, but an amazing build was done over at Hobby Talk.

An image of Aurora Station, which is being touted as the first luxury hotel in space turned up during my Google search for the Aurora Space Coupe model. The center module of the station looks remarkably similar to the hull of the Space Coupe.

In the event that I don't want to build the kit as the Space Coupe, I was thinking about using it as the base for an Aurora Station conversion.