Rocketeer builds the Jungle Cruiser from Tim Tyler's Luck (1937)

Cafe Society
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The other day, putzing around in the Cavern of Doom, I stumbled across an old resin kit of the Juggernaut, a tank-like vehicle used in the 1936 serial Undersea Kingdom. I figured, why not? and decided it’d be my next project.

But when looking for pictures on the Internet, I kept seeing pictures of its later incarnation as the Jungle Cruiser from 1937’s Tim Tyler’s Luck. The Cruiser exerted a strange fascination over me–after all, it had a sawtoothed strake, just like my all-time favorite sci-fi vehicle, the Disney Nautilus–and I began to ponder how to revise the Juggernaut into the* Cruiser*.

Eventually I decided that it’d be best to just scratchbuild a Jungle Cruiser; that way I could display the two vehicles next to each other; a sort of before-and-after.

Here are the resin kit (brown) and the start of the Jungle Cruiser (white), side by side. I used silicone putty to make a mold to cast a copy the Jug’s grill for the Cruiser.

The Cruiser has a complicated set of skid bars, which needed to be built, too. Had to think a lot, piecing together all the (inevitably blurry) photos I’d found to determine exactly what the skid bars actually looked like. I eventually bought a copy of Tim Tyler’s Luck, and it helped a lot to see the machine in action.

A lot of MicroMark 3-D rivet decals were needed.

Here’s the final result, with a little movie camera I found online.

And a rear view.

Look out! (1936)

Look out! (1937 version). You can see one of the Cruiser’s goofiest features here; affixed to the fender of this futuristic expeditionary machine is a rear-view mirror straight off a 1934 Ford truck. It only appears in some pictures; I suspect it was removed by a low-hanging branch during filming. :smiley:

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So, do you count the rivets to make sure all sides had the same number?

And once again, amazing work. Thanks for sharing.

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Fantastic, of course! I like how you went with a “dirt backlot” setting for them, as if they were just outside a soundstage somewhere in Burbank.

And yeah: how did the rivet spacing & repetition not drive you insane?

4

The rivets are little blobs of some kind of resin, printed on decal paper. One cuts out a line of rivets, dips them in water, and applies them like any other decal. Makes the job immensely easier.

5

Nifty. :slight_smile:

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So you can buy rivet decals of different size rivets and spacing? Cool. Talk about your niche industry eh.

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Yeah, a real niche market. But, surprisingly, two different outfits make them: Micromark and Archer Fine Transfers. The Micromarks are cheaper and cruder than the Archers.

8

The models look remarkably like Soviet tanks of the 1920s and '30s (before they hit on the T-34 and KV-1).

There’s a future project for you! Especially the infamous Soviet “flying tank” that was supposed to be able to cruise into any battlefield.

9

Awesone as always. I especially like seeing the in-progress of the scratch-build one.

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Sweet job! I love to see what you make. Never heard of the show before but just now watched trailers on youtube.

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Incredible job on the Jungle Cruiser, I collect Tim Tyler’s Luck lobby cards. I’m really surprised no one came out with a model kit for the jungle Cruiser.

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Note that this is an almost year-old thread, Georgeraft.

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Thanks! It was a fun project; the pivotal moment was when I realized that it wouldn’t be much harder to scratchbuild a complete Cruiser than to convert the Juggernaut I had to a Cruiser–and then I could have both!

14

Nice!
I love your work.