My grandma bought this for me back in the late 80's. It's an original Japanese release (OJR is the acronym Zoids enthusiasts use I believe). It's been through a lot to say the least. I've always been a sci-fi, anime and mecha fan and anything that had to do with these things always peaked my interest. Looking back, I kind of regret never truly appreciated the potential value of my toys back in the day. But then again, I have so many fond memories of spending countless hours playing with all of my toys and letting my imagination run wild! So the mere fact that my Zoids Iron Kong is still alive and (more or less) intact is great news for me. :)
Seeing how I put it together when I was still a teenager makes me laugh at myself for being such a noob at kit building. I didn't have any side cutters or sand paper back then to get the parts out of their runners cleanly. I just twisted the parts round and round until it came off the runners! I still can't believe I was able to put it together without doing any major damage!
After doing a quick rebuild and inventory check, I found out to my dismay that I had a missing armor plate for the left arm, All the decals were missing, the pilot figures were missing as well. And some small bits and pieces were broken off and I couldn't find them anymore. The biggest loss I felt was for the box itself. The box was nowhere to be found anymore and the kit was haphazardly placed in a plastic bag and put in storage. The boxart was the first thing that drew me to this toy in the first place. That picture of Iron Kong standing stoically, ready to do battle with any Zoid unit that was foolish enough to stand in its way. That was really cool! Too bad I couldn't find any image of the original box art except for the one below which seems to be incomplete...
First off, I had to get all the parts organized and set aside all the parts that I had to repair. That was the easy part. A bit of Tamiya plastic cement here and there, a bit of buffing out the rough edges, sanding off the nubs and stress marks on the points that used to connect to the plastic runners, and TA-DA! I was back in business :)
After cleaning all the parts and getting it ready for painting, I did a test with one of the arms first to see if I needed to do any priming. Since I was using metallic black for the black parts and a metallic red for (you guessed it, the reddish parts!), I thought that applying a primer was unnecessary. Fortunately, I was right and got the results I wanted.
As you can see, the unpainted arm is the one at the bottom and the painted one is at the top. I was really happy with the results at this point. This gave me the idea of not just doing a restoration job, but also doing some detail work afterwards to give old Iron Kong more life when I finally get my display case built and put him in a place of honor. I'll make sure to post updates when I finish the detailing work.
It took me quite a while to paint all the parts since I was just squeezing this project in my spare time. But after all that work, I'm happy to present to you my (partially) restored Zoids Iron Kong!
I took these shots at different times during the day so you'll notice that the lighting somehow differs at 2nd to the last photo (it was getting dark so I had to use the flash instead of relying on natural light). I already started doing a paint test on the cable on the shoulder mounted missile launcher. Bright yellow seems a bit too loud so I'll try another paint test using gold next time. Once I get all the detailing done I do another photo shoot and show you guys the results. Until then, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Here's some bonus shots of Iron Kong I took early in the morning when he was under direct sunlight. I think it makes the metallic red too loud somehow. I think I need to do some MAJOR brushing up on my photography skills...
