Moebius Models

"The Hanging Cage"

Kit Number: 637

Reviewed by  Mike Hinderliter, IPMS# 45124

MSRP: $29.99 Website: www.moebiusmodels.com The Hanging Cage My family really loves the old Universal Monsters movies and Hammer films. We regularly have the family movie night so we can eat popcorn and get nostalgic. This kit reminds me of some of those films with the mad scientist and creatures that they created in their labs. You can almost feel Vincent Price or Bela Lugosi about to come around the corner. My wife had already started to collect this series and we are going to have a shelf in our display case look like a small dungeon. The Model Moebius has looked at these old kits and reissued them with all new and better fitting tooling. The kit is a snap-together, but not necessarily something simple for the beginner because I found it to have very large mold pins that need to be cut out. You get two large bags of gray parts. The instructions are very clear and comic book like and give a good order of assembly given to you by a skeleton host reminiscent of the old horror comic books. There are no painting instructions as such, leaving the colors to the imagination of the modeler. Painting and Assembly The first thing I needed to do was put the dungeon floor together. It comes in three pieces and fits like a jigsaw puzzle so that there are no seams in any of the blocks. I filled the two seams with Squadron putty and then used Woodland Scenics' stone gray liquid pigment for that stone look. I then washed the floor, no pun intended; with The Detailer "Black It Out" black detailing liquid to bring out the stones' detail. This is not to hard to do because the molds have excellent detail for the stones and the beams to hold the cage have great wood grain detail. The beams were a little harder to put together because of the mold pins that needed to be removed and they are thick. Once together I painted the beams with Model Masters ® Wood # 1735. This wood color is fairly light, but once I washed it in The Detailer brown detailing liquid, the wood looked perfect and the wood grain detail really popped out. To finish it I used Floquil old silver on the bolts and pulley. The cage went together nicely and is held together with padlock pieces that snap in place. They are easily removed if you need to open it, to place a victim inside. I was trying to figure how to do the color for this, because I didn't like the way "steel" looked. What I came up with was to paint the whole thing in Floquil's Engine black and then wash it in Model Master Burnt Iron Non-buffing Metalizer. The Metalizer says "for air brush only" but I thought I would experiment with it and it seems to make a pretty good wash because of how thin it is. I also liked the way that the black came through. I painted the brazier the same way, as well as the poker and pincers. The sword was painted with Floquil silver and the handgrip with Model Master tan. The fire was done with mixtures of red, orange and yellow enamels and the washed with some of the black detailer liquid and then I also added a wash of yellow and red inks from Citadel Color. Overall Assessment Recommended. I really enjoyed building this kit. The biggest thrill I had was the memories of when I was a kid and these kits first came out, I was really hoping that someone would reissue the old monster and dungeon kits. The second thing that made it so much fun was how I started to think of all of the old horror movies that my family and I watch together. The only problem I had was the large mold pins but they were easily taken care of. This is understandable because this is one sturdy model when it is put together. Now my wife says we are going to build kit # 636 The Pendulum. I guess we'll call it the family dungeon. Thanks to Moebius models for the review kit, and IPMS/USA for the chance to build it.