Hasegawa 1/20th Ma. K Vega/Altair Part 2: Weathering and FINISH!

I have finished up the Ma. K Vega. It caused me to reflect on something that was very important to me.

As a kid, one of the phrases I tended to use quite a bit was “cool”. Having grown up in the 1970s, I suppose that’s no surprise.

Usage of the word varied though. A friend might say “we went our for pizza last night”, and I might respond with a nod and say “cool” in a subdued way. Other times the same word might be employed much more emphatically. If my dad told me we were going out for pizza – a rare occurrence for us – then I’d shout “COOL!” and quickly scurry off to comb my hair, one of the main prerequisites for going out to eat.

I never did figure out what combed hair had to do with nutrition. Thankfully, it’s no longer an issue for me.

Cool was very important when it came to scale modeling too.

Many models were just straight up cool. Spitfire? Cool. Sherman tank? Cool. Lunar lander? Cool.

Often cool was used with a modifier. Getting Monogram’s 1/48 B-17 for Christmas was “super cool”. On the other hand, the same manufacturer’s Red Baron funny car was “weird cool”. Sometimes a kit even rose to a level of coolness that was so astounding it produced a temporary loss of mind. MPC’s Darth Vader kit, with glow in the dark lightsaber, notched its way up to “stupid cool”.

I don’t recall any level of coolness higher than that. Perhaps there was, but it was so stupendous that it wiped all traces of itself from my memory. And how cool is that?

Still Cool

I think I still mostly buy models based on the notion of “cool”. I try to consider how valuable the content might be, or if I can get some good demonstration footage out of it, and perhaps even sell it for a reasonable amount on Ebay.

But when you get down to it, the underlying current is always “cool”. And if that isn’t present, I’ve learned the build just won’t be much fun.

This Vega kit falls into the “weird cool” camp. To my eye, it’s not really aesthetically pleasing. It has a gaunt, chilling look to it, almost as though it is a skeleton of a laden soldier, burdened under his pack. The double knees are just odd.

But when I saw it in the hobby shop, my first thought was “that is so weird cool!”

Having Fun With The Vega

And the build was fun. There are a lot of parts, but they go together well. I was a bit worried all of the hoses and wire parts would be a bit of a pain, but thankfully they worked out without too much fuss.

The weathering process for this kit was “super cool”. I think if it weren’t for a self-imposed deadline to have a video ready I’d have just kept on adding weathering until it might have reached that rare-air of “stupid cool”.

Hasegawa’s Ma. K Vega/Altair is just a cool kit. It embodies the look of Maschinen Krieger remarkably, capturing elements of both the manned armored fighting suits, and so many of the robotic vehicles in the franchise. And as it’s from Hasegawa, the kit is a bit easier to get than most of the Wave Ma. K models.

I guess the best part is when I was finished with the build, I knew what 10-year-old Jon would say…

“That is so COOOOL!”

And that’s good enough.