Model Kits from Special Armored Battalion Dorvack

 These kits are still works in progress.

I finally have THREE of the Dorvack Power Armor kits from 1983 classic mecha anime "Special Armored Battalion Dorvack". I have finally seen the show, and I was less than thrilled to find out these are basically all grunt suits and get blowed up real easily. So I'm not making them anime accurate at all.

You see a LONG time ago in a galaxy far far away I used to buy a lot of Japanese model kits that were being imported by the metric ton back in the 80s. You could get them at Toys R Us or Karls Toys or even Kay Bee some times. Testors just brought them over with no english translations. At least Revell made "Robotech". It was a great time. I built kits from dozens of shows I've still never seen, just because they look cool.

That's what happened with my first Dorvack kit - the PA36HD Nove Laser power armor. It just looked bad-ass, and when it was finished it was virtually the same scale as a 3 3/4" GI Joe, Star Wars or Micronauts, which is still what I was into at the time (who am I kidding still am). So I built him up, didn't bother to paint him, and he became a staple of my GI Joe Forces, he often fought my SNAKE Armor....which I'll come back to.


Anyway, poor old Nove Laser got lost to the sands of time or moves, and I've always wanted to replace him and get more Dorvack kits. So for the past decade I've had a search alert on Ebay for when Dorvack kits go on sale. There's still a TON of them out there, but they're getting more and more expensive, which is kind of sad. They're not great kits, but I love them.

PAC-48G Doldian (Kit #25)

The first one I managed to find was the PAC-48G Doldian.  This is a monster of a suit, larger than the other two.  And it has that big old triple barrel cannon for an arm.  I like him.  I got him in the early 2010s from ebay for under $20.  Brand new with all the paperwork.

More recently I found a PA-58N Halk, which is one of the more basic suits.  Also picked up from eBay for less than $20.  Kit was brand new with all the paperwork and the dried up thing of glue.  I built him up and started to paint pen him today.  He's so cute.

PA-58N - HALK

A couple of months ago we attended the monthly MINT ON CARD Stand Up Comedy Show in Burbank and I won the grand giveaway prize (it was their 7th Anniversary! I attended their FIRST) of a $25 gift certificate for the store.  I decided on this beat up PA-58N Halk-Sovat kit, which when I got home I discovered a) had already been semi-built and b) also contained a partially built Space Runaway Ideon alien mech kit.  

Oh and there was a bunch of extra parts in the box too, looks like some pieces from a car model kit, and some pieces from an old Return of the Jedi Speeder Bike kit.  The person who previously owned this kit had modified it to have a rear engine and a cover, which is kind of cool.  Anyway, I finished him up today and started to fix up the deco.  I need some new paint pens.  

PA-58N - HALK SOVAT

It also had a partial sprue of the GI Joe SNAKE Weapons, including the Gun hand, the missile hand and the Stand.  I mean I really do want to get a replacement SNAKE armor.  At least I have some of the harder to find parts now.  


So if you see any of these kits on your journeys and they're under $20, hit me up!  

I love the wire frame box art, not as much a fan of the other art, but it's OK.

Special Bonus - Both sides of the catalog insert

I built a model kit sort of from my youth. DORVACK Powered Armor

Something happened in the early 80's that really changed my collecting habits and ultimately my life.  Toy Stores started carrying Japanese model kits.  I know it sounds a bit odd, but let me continue.

I'm your standard 70's era card-carrying geek.  I was 6 years old when Star Wars was released and yes, it changed my life too.  But even before then I was watching Planet of the Apes and Star Trek.  My Mom actually acknowledges that she was a Trekkie during the original run of the show when she was a teen-ager, so I have that going.  My television cartoon diet was dominated by the likes of Speed Racer, Giant Robot, Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets and then much later Voltron, Robotech and the rest of the second generation anime imports.

My Dad was a history buff, and while he merely tolerated my appreciation of sci-fi toys (I did get the Space 1999 Eagle for Christmas 1977 because they couldn't find the Star Wars Early Bird Sets) he really instilled a love of model kit building in me.  I can still remember the first kit I was allowed to build with glue, a navy training airplane that was cast in yellow.

Imagine then my fascination when the local toy stores started carrying Japanese kits in the early 80's.  Even though I had never seen the shows these models came from I knew I loved the designs, and unlike American model kits which were usually a make and display type item, a lot of these kits were designed to be PLAYED with!  It wasn't until I joined CF/O (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) in San Diego in 1985 that I would even discover that there were shows attached to a lot of my favorite models, and that led me to attending my first San Diego Comic Con in 1985, and from then to 1997 I went to 10 conventions, making many friends and having tons of exciting experiences that I have a hard time recalling now.

In my 40's I still want to have my old toys back.  One of the cool models I ever made was a Dorvack Powered Armor Nove Laser.  I never did see Dorvack, which from what I understand wasn't that good of an anime.  But I liked the design aesthetic and the completed figure was just about the right size to play with 1/18th scale figures, even though the model itself was billed at 1/24th.  My original Nove Laser is long gone.  But for the last several years I've been looking for cheap kits on eBay just for fun.  I finally pulled the trigger on one a few weeks ago and my Doldian was on it's way!

Yes, it's very different in terms of coloring and armament, but it's close enough to the one I had as a youth to make me happy.
I paid $10 plus shipping so about $15 all together.  Shipping was great and fast, and I got the kit within a week.  It was imported by Testors and sold in the US originally.  There's some wear on the box, but that didn't bother me at all.  The sprues were still sealed in the original plastic and the packet of glue originally included was still there, along with the decals and the pvc grommits, which have held up very well.  This kit is over 30 years old after all.

I took my time building and painting, all together spending about two days to finish.  I'm still not the best modeler, but I'm happy with the results.  I wasn't going for screen accuracy, as again, I've never seen the show, but I did follow one of the paint guides as closely as I felt like doing.  I also used some paint sharpies.  I need some Gundam Markers, I wish they weren't so expensive.