We need a NEW Larry!

A few years ago when I’d made the switch from aircraft to scifi, I had my first experience in Maschinen Krieger building a kit based on the AFS called the New Rally Pawn. If I recall correctly, the lore was it was a fighting suit used in an attack to take back something (maybe on the moon), thus the “New Rally” part. And the Pawn part of the name was… well, they got blowed up quite a bit.

Anyway, I wanted to revisit that kit, as I quite enjoyed it. I’ve always found it fun to have a “do over” of kits I’ve built in the past that I really liked.

And it’s not an exciting kit. Just basically a man in an armored suit. But something about it grabbed me.

Of course, because it is a Wave Maschinen Krieger kit finding one can be difficult. Unless you can order one when they’re released… or rather RE-released… you may be out of luck.

Kow Yokoyama, the original designer of the Maschinen Krieger line, designed several models early on. Those were first kitted by Nitto, and now by Wave and Hasegawa. However, there really haven’t been any new designs in years. There may be a few modifications – add some rocket nozzles, move an antenna over, add some fuel pods, etc. But for the most part, the kits are the same basic designs.

And I’m not saying that in criticism. It just is. It’s no different than multiple issues of Spitfires, P-51s, Me-109s, Tiger tanks, or Shermans. The companies make more, and people buy more.

I’d do it too if I could.

But when it comes to the armored fighting suit kits, which are released by Wave, you really have to move quickly. As I understand it, they’re a small company, without a lot of capacity for long term storage and distribution. So when they do a run of a kit, it’s pretty much in small numbers. Retailers put it on pre-sale, and once it’s finally released, the production run sells out fairly quickly.

A variant of the kit I wanted – I can’t recall which variant, but it may have been the Nightstalker – was released about the time I got into scifi. But thinking kits were like in the airplane world, I thought “Oh, I’ll pick up another later.” Turns out I was wrong.

I mean, I could pick up another one – at about 3 times the original asking price (or more) on Ebay or Amazon. And while I like the kit, there’s no way I am paying that much for one.

Not even for a hilarious misspelling like “New Larry”. Not the old Larry, nor the regular Larry. No sir. This is the New Larry. One Larry to rule all the Larrys.

So I wait until the AFS/Nightstalker/Larry gets released again. Perhaps with an extra antenna.

Maybe I’ll get two. Nothing like dual wielding your Larrys…