REVIEW - SWEET DREAMS
It is my habit to try and remain positive in all situations, looking for the good regardless of how bad things seem at the time, but on this occasion I have failed on most counts, but I make no apology for this. I say on most counts, because I still like the idea of this particular kit (as someone has written 'it floated my boat'.....), and it was a valuable learning experience.
SWEET DREAMS by Avalon is the kit in question.
I first encountered this kit in an advert in AFM, and as I tend to be drawn to projects that say something to me, I was quite taken by it. I did not however go in search it as there were other things which headed my list of wants at the time.
It eventually came my way by chance, via the top shelf of Forbidden Planet, and I now know there were two questions I should have immediately asked: Why was there so much broken tape on the lid of the box? and, Why didn't I ask to see the contents? The answers to these questions are painfully are apparent, other people checked the contents and had more sense, and I'm an idiot respectively.
On first opening the box I thought there'd been a mistake, surely I only had packing! But on closer inspection I realized that my first impression was wrong. The advert stated - 'vacuum - formed.' Now I either didn't understand this, or didn't read it properly, but I think I expected a vinyl kit of sorts, not something made in the same way - and apparently from the same material - as the packaging for 'Mcvitie's Jaffa Cakes'. Should I have closed the box? Yes I probably should have, but I didn't, I couldn't help myself.
The accompanying instruction sheet is reasonable, although apart from the colour copy picture on the box, the pictures on the sheet are very dark and show no detail and the legend beneath them 'once complete your model will look like this', seemed quite acrimonious and provoking.
Altogether there were 19 parts. Four moulded sheets (floor, wall, bath top [with girl], bath bottom), 2 wooden sticks, 7 ball bearings (missing), 1 flexible tube, 3 rigid plastic tubes (missing), 1 mylar mirror (?), 1 cloth bath mat (?).
THE KIT
The main sections of the kit are moulded in white plastic sheets that need trimming, but
none of them were well formed and try as I might I couldn't get a straight edge. This
was bad enough, but worse of all was the fact that the base of the bath was more than
an inch shorter in length than the top and the two would not marry up.
The top section of the bath includes the reclining figure of a girl and it is with this part that the poor quality of detail becomes evident. Certain characteristics jump out at you, for example the size of her toes (one foot is raised from the water), they look ideal for a heavy shade of red to simulate injury (a' la Tom and Jerry), then there's her chest. Two conical shaped peaks that rise from the water as stiff and hard as any school boy flicking through the forbidden pages of Penthouse. Unnatural? F'chis'sake even Pamela Lee Anderson has some sag.
Her face is devoid of all but minutest of character, which is probably as much as I should say, except the last time I saw the like the mouth was open in a 'O' and it came with either real or moulded hair. Her hair meanwhile had little depth, therefore shading became very important in creating a 3D effect. Finally there is her left hand which rests on the edge of the bath.
This appendage is a soild piece of moulded plastic, I say this because even after careful painting, shading and dry brushing it still looked like a piece of moulded plastic. The problems lie in the detail of the fingers, and with the fact that the hand itself is slightly arched but there is no hollow between it and the bath. Cutting it out seemed the only option, but this produced a hole which needed filling, with the added delema that the little finger couldn't be shaped!
The instructions warned that webbing could be present, and sure enough it was, between the girls chin and shoulder. But no amount of care when removing could avoid the plastic from scoring quite badly, meaning that it had to be filled, and filled carefully, the reason being that even light sanding with the finest paper I had, badly scratched the plastic.
The lack of moulded detail also extended to the figure emerging through the wall, and while I know I am not the worlds greatest painter, I can usually achieve an effect that is close to what I want, but not this time. Painting and repainting left me no further forward.
The floor is supposed to represent old fashioned tiles (black and white in the box illustration), large octagonal tiles with smaller square tiles in-between. Not much to go wrong here, except that most of the smaller tiles are far from being perfect squares. So far so bad.
In deference to Avalon it must be admitted that the thought was there when they considered other details, but the problem is the little extra 'realism's' that they include with kit do not match up with the kit itself. The diorama (walls, floor and bath) have an almost gothic feel, or Victorian depending on your persuasion, but the detail of towel rails, and mirror were crass 70's. The two wooden sticks supplied were for pipes, but there were no taps and the supposed bath mat was a piece of very thin misshapen cotton. All of these I discarded, and replaced with various items that seemed more in keeping, from a local 'Dolls House' retailer - taps, pipes, carpet and mirror.
BUILDING
Because of the disparity between the two bath sections, it was necessary to lengthen
the base. A cross section cut was made at the centre point, and three strips of stiff
plastic were inserted to bridge the gap and act as a support for the filler. This seemed a
simple task except for the fact that the kit kept repelling the glue, and when a bond
was eventually formed it was weak, and so care was needed when applying the fibre
glass coating.
I used David's Fastglas fibre tissue with Fastglas resin as this gives a smoother finish, covered by Polyfiller Brush-on Skim, as this is light and easily sanded. A 24 hour drying time was left between these layers, and a further 24 hours before sanding and priming.
Fitting the two halves of the bath together should have been simple, but it wasn't. What detail there is on the top section extends onto the bath lip, which produces a very uneven surface underneath, so when base and top are married up they only touched at a limited number of places. This coupled with the fact that the plastic again rejected the glue created some difficulty. Plastic weld only succeed in melting the upper lip of the bath, destroying the paint and deforming the edge even further, so to join the two I eventually used a roll of milliput in the top section and pressed the base into it.
The wall section consists of the spectral figure and the raised oval base for the mirror. As I was discarding the mylar mirror, which was less reflective than tin foil, I cut the raised oval out and glued the Dolls House mirror over the resulting hole. The floor section is hollow and needs to be filled to avoid sagging, and to give a firmer base on which the bath will stand. For this I used thick sections of cardboard glued to a piece of hard board, a second piece of hard board, cut to size, was used to strengthen the wall. The wall was then glued and pinned to the floor.
A hole was drilled in the bottom of the bath and the waste pipe fitted, which along with the water pipes were painted in brazen copper. The water pipes were fixed to the floor section, and two holes drilled into the lip of the bath to take the taps these were then aligned and the bath glued to the floor. Which completed the build.
DISPLAY
The size (w16 x d9 x h9) of this piece means it takes up a fair amount of space, and to
gain the best effect it needs to be at eye level. This allows you to see the character
coming through the wall, but doesn't lend itself to appreciation of the figure in the
bath. Because of this the overall effect is lost.
Overall this kit took maximum effort for minimum reward because of the quality, or lack of it in the moulding and I feel no satisfaction in its completion. However the image is still appealing even if the kit is not.