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Post by TAY666 on Jun 13, 2010 9:26:48 GMT -5
Please list and discuss the kits Lifelike made in this thread.
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:12:49 GMT -5
The LifeLike dinos were my first dino kits. I remember when I first saw them at the gift shop of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, during my first visit there with my family when I and my sister were very little. I remember looking at stacks of them, and they were about $2 each. I don't quite recall if my dad got me one or two, but I still have them. I'm pretty sure this very Stegosaurs here was the first of them. I built most of it, and my dad added on the plates, carefully gluing and proping them up over a couple of evenings. We painted it with gray flat paint leftover from some exterior house painting, gloss green from some other larger painting project, and touching it up with toothpics dipped into some pactra and testors hobby paint my dad had to add details. The caveman got lost some time much later, when he was mixed in with the box of Marx and other plastic playtime dinos (many of which I still have for my daughters to play with)...  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:18:00 GMT -5
Here's an unbuilt one in a slightly battered box I scored on eBay. When I got these in my childhood, my dad and I cut out the box illustrations and put them in simple wooden frames, and put them around my bedroom. Oddly, of the wealth of old sentimental stuff my family hangs onto, all of those have yet to be found. The Lifelike boxes are fragile. They're the paper quality of cheap shirt gift boxes from local dollar stores. Flimsy, with no printing on the bottom. They open like a clamshell. This one was actually still shrink-wrapped when I got it, but the wrap was torn and something punctured the box face near the Steg's head. The shrinkwrap had contracted over the years, and really distorted the box.  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:21:20 GMT -5
Here's the box open. The instruction sheet is like a poor photocopy - cut and folded wrong. Really cheap. The parts are cast in a swirly, tarnished-silver color. (My childhood Stego is cast in purple.) You can see how cheaply the box is made, and how difficult it is to keep it nice.   |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:27:38 GMT -5
The base on this unbuilt one - and my childhood one - still has the Pyro logo. The caveman is pictured here as well. I recall not using my childhood one with the buildup because there wasn't space on the base for it. I'm not inclined to build this unbuilt one. I have, however, had to resist the temptation to try to 'trim up' my childhood one by clipping off the flash dad and I never cleaned off when we were building it. I think it's best that I just leave it as it was.  However, if anyone should have a spare purple caveman of this style that they don't want, I'd be happy to give him a home with my childhood friend here. ;D  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:39:58 GMT -5
Here's my childhood LifeLike T-Rex. Probably one of the poorest representations of a T-Rex ever, my limited childhood building skills not withstanding... It's cast in a very dark grey plastic. I don't recall if it had a caveman. It did have a name plate on the base, which I've lost. (Looking for a replacement of the nameplate part, if anyone's got one to spare!)  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:41:59 GMT -5
I recall being so impressed by the illustration on the box. I also recall my father and I being rather disappointed by the kit itself, with it's weird head, big lips and textureless body. "Life-like" is not really how I'd describe the product...  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 0:44:10 GMT -5
LifeLike had nothing on Aurora's boxside writeups...  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 8:49:59 GMT -5
The Triceratops is one of the better kits in the series. The pose is a bit uncomfortable, but there are a lot of textures on him, and the sculpt matches the box art somewhat. Or at least, it's more inspired by the artwork. I still have my childhood buildup, but it's missing a leg and is pretty beat up. (No picture at the moment.)  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 8:52:52 GMT -5
This one is cast in purple. The one I have from my childhood is black. Triceratops doesn't have a base or caveman. Just the dino. The kit is really mismatched to the T-Rex in both size, sculpt and style.  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 8:55:29 GMT -5
Here's the instructions' cover side. The kit drawing looks like the kit, but it's a child's rendition of it... You can see some of the other kits in the line. Notice the " Pyro" name is still there rather prominently!  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 9:05:13 GMT -5
Next up is Brontosaurus. It's a nicer kit - large, with a base and 2 cavepeople (a man and a woman). But the style matches the T-rex: no body textures, and a simplistic head.  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 9:09:34 GMT -5
I'm really tempted to build this one because of the unusual purple color - as such I'd probably leave it unpainted as an example of the manufactuer's odd color choice. (The box on this one is also ruined. It's just the top half and sides. It was flattened in a larger lot of Aurora kits I bought once.) I do still have one from my childhood. It's cast in the same dark gray that the T Rex picture above is cast in. But I recall it was purchased much later in a Lindberg photo-cover box. Photo later.  |
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Post by acroray on Feb 10, 2011 9:13:52 GMT -5
The Bronto's two cavepeople. They are ugly and look rather frantic. Maybe they're trying to catch the Bronto's attention before he accidentally steps on them... Oh: it should be noted that the Bronto's instruction sheet makes no mention whatsoever of the cavemen or base! It only shows assembly and painting for the animal.  |
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Post by acroray on Sept 1, 2011 20:29:08 GMT -5
I happened across an eBay auction featuring a built-up Pyro/LifeLike Brontosaurus that has the two cave people attached properly. (So I stole the picture!) Life Like's instructions don't even mention the cave people. The white box edition's art isn't the same as the original Pyro edition and doesn't show the cave-couple. Pyro's long box shows the cave man and cave woman running hand-in-hand from the advancing Bronto. This build-up shows them assembled to the base properly.  |
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Post by TAY666 on Sept 2, 2011 13:35:20 GMT -5
Cool.
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Post by becdecorbin on Jan 23, 2012 18:49:34 GMT -5
This kit (Cro-Magnon Man) was sold under the Lifelike label in the 70s, but I'm told Pyro originally produced. Overall, the sculpt is condemnably disproportionate. His head isn't so bad, but it's plopped onto a body that looks too small and too young and too weak to deserve it. I lost the dead deer and the other kooky stuff he was lugging. No anatomical research went into C-Man; his ribs join his hips with almost no discernable belly. His hands are flattened gloves with no hint of hard work or even bones in them. Same with the feet. Nowadays, I use him to experiment with fleshtones. I made an attempt to modify his head/face with putty and other materials. Head IS salvageable as a stand-alone piece, but the body is a nightmare.  |
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Post by prescenes2 on Feb 8, 2012 21:05:35 GMT -5
I don't remember a whole lot about this kit but I do remember that I took the top part and made a Centaur out of him and a Horse model several eons ago. I know I took a pic of it but it'll be quite a long time before I find it. So, don't count on any pic anytime soon.  |
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Post by desslock on Feb 9, 2012 12:43:38 GMT -5
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Post by acroray on Mar 1, 2012 19:27:48 GMT -5
I just picked up a Life-Like Corythosaurus, opened and with an excellent box. I recall this was one of the last kits I got from this series when I was young. It's #8 in the set, according to the box. This was a mere $10, which I believe is the SRP for Lindberg's most-recent edition.  |
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