Hasegawa 1/35 Crusher Joe Galleon: Painting The Interior And Assembly

As I’m not on any social media, I do miss out on seeing a lot of what is available in terms of kits and products, new and old. So occasionally I visit a few online hobby sites and simply scroll through looking for things of interest.

It was on one of those forays that I saw a vehicle that really caught my eye. The shape is like they started with an M113 APC, but then added a bulldozer plow, jet engines, and laser shooty pew-pews. And because it’s from an anime, there are of course a few angsty teens involved.

The anime (or cartoon in my old man brain) it is from, Crusher Joe, was one that I’d never heard of at all. When I told a few friends of this, they were astonished… “you never watched Crusher Joe?!?!” No, no… never really did. At that point in my youth I was into basketball and guitars, so I rarely caught the anime stuff. The cartoons I did watch were mostly Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, Speed Racer, and the likes.

I did go to YouTube and watch a few clips of Crusher Joe. My basic summary? Speed Racer in space, kinda. Flashy hero, girlfriend, old guy, little kid. Speed Racer had Chim-Chim, Crusher Joe had Dongo. No, it’s not a perfect comparison. But give me some leeway, I’m an old guy. I still call printed things “comic books” and animated things “cartoons” in normal conversation.

But this vehicle is called the Galleon. And it just looks cool. Being from Hasegawa, I knew it would generally fit well and have good castings (which it does), and the figures and decals would be not quite as good. (Which they weren’t.)

Still, the fact that it looked like something that would accept a load of gratuitous weathering, never mind whether it was cartoon accurate, was the icing on the cake.

So this video takes a long, boring look at the kit, my assembly choices, painting and decaling the interior, and priming.