Dave Sime makes some fiddly robots, and dedicates them to Jeremey!
Back a few years ago at a SELWG show I relieved Jeremey of the burden of taking back home his 9 box collection of VOTOMS Vol.02 Mechs, that had failed to sell in the Bring & Buy. As I recall, Jeremy did not have the time to carefully assemble them.
VOTOMS Mechs feature in a Japan anime series from the mid 1980’s. The series did not gain any traction outside of Japan. While a number of larger plastic models were produced during the series run, Takara Micro World produced a range of 1/144 scale models, probably in 2007.
At first glance in their box trays, just separate heads, trunks, arms, legs & weapons, pre-formed and painted, you think this is going to be a doddle. Alas NOT. They are made of some sort of soft ‘rubbery feel’ plastic which, even using my range of tweezers, were hard to grasp/control. They did not all fit together correctly, which required painstakingly slow micro surgery using the sharpest blades to correct. Even then some parts, especially the legs, would not stay in the correct position. The only adhesive that worked was rubber glue for the body parts, even then I had to wait for each part to set before continuing, and epoxy resin to adhere to the 2p coin bases. It actually took over two weeks to assemble them. When I had finished I thought never again !
They are 27mm in height, for representative scale purposes the first photograph includes a GZG 15mm figure I am currently painting, which is actually 17mm high and one of the crewmen for the mechs which are 14mm in height. In the anime each VOTOMS has a human operator who sits in the trunk. Depending on how Chris and I intend to use them, we can use them as mechs in Sci Fi games from 6mm to 15mm, possibly even at 28mm ? Crewed or not.
It was intended that they would have their debut at the Open Day end of June, but alas that’s not to be.
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