The END GAME has come and gone and the MCU’s Phase 4 went out with a whimper. But go back to the beginning in 2007 and boy, was IRON MAN a blast! Tony Stark knew how to make an entrance, and he did it in style… or rather, he rolled up in a silver Audi R8 that looked like a million dollars and dripping with rizz.
But when I went searching for a 1/64 miniature, guess what? There was no official licensed merchandise for that model of the R8. Silver ones, yes. But they did not have the distinctive dark colored side panels. I think Tomica made a R8 in dark blue or red with silver panels. In the end, I had to ‘settle’ for a Kyosho 1/64 in metallic silver, apply masking tape and customized those panels with matte black Tamiya paint. OK, car done!
Of course, what made the original IRON MAN movie so endearing even after close to 20 years, was the ‘suit up’ sequence. The way the filmmakers blended practical armor and digital effects really sold the illusion that a real life powered armor barely larger than a human body could be made.
So when I looked through my collection, I couldn’t help but see a semblance of technical genius, inventiveness and flashiness in the Zebra DelGuard Type Lx. Specifically, I chose the Amazon 2018 limited Metallic Silver in tribute to the Iron Man Mark II suit, which Stark had refined after his escape from captivity; and a custom combo of the standard candy red 0.5 with gold parts from a 2024 DelGuard 10th Anniversary model to replicate the look of the Iron Man Mark III hero suit.
Why go through the trouble of remixing parts when Zebra actually made an official Iron Man edition Lx? For one, they were based on the later suits from later movies, so the printed ‘arc reactor’ shape was different. Instead, I wanted the proportion of red and gold colors to be closer to the Mark III from the first movie.
Well, that’s it. I’m pretty sure if you put me in a cave with a box full of DelGuard Type Lx parts I would probably be able to put them back together into a working pencil. That’s as close as I’ll get to be Tony Stark!