Aurora's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA model kit first
hit toy shelves in 1963!
...but as Aurora often did, the actual kit didn't exactly
copy the long-box artwork! Instead of the prisoner being behind a heavy dungeon door, he was given the unflattering position down by the Phantom's feet, stuck in a little cave!


Luckily for us, Al Rebioro of Python Kits fame, has casted up a beautiful Dungeon Door base that more closely resembles the long-box artwork!!

He was kind enough to send me one so I could build it up and feature it for a magazine review!

The base looked great!! Only problem was, I didn't own an Aurora PHANTOM OF THE OPERA kit, which is needed to use Al's base!!

So off to eBay I went and quickly found and bid on this Bronze painted item! It was one of four Phantom's on auction at the time, and with a starting bid of $9.95 and no bids placed yet, I put my name on it and five days later won it!

What I also liked about this particular piece was that the hands on the bars were still seperate, which is what I needed to go with Al's base! (and if you look closely, you'll see that whoever originally built this Phantom, had extra Phantom heads, cuz ole Eric is also the Prisoner stuck behind bars!!)

But not to worry... the original Prisoner head was still included, along with a whole left hand to replace the broken one attached to the kit. Only thing missing is his mask, easily replaced with sculpting putty!

Now jump ahead 20 years later to February, 2022. I'm reading entries in a Facebook modeling group when I come across a discussion of Al's kit. Just so happens, Terry Gore has been looking for one!

Since I haven't done a dang thing with this kit in 20 yrs, I tell him to pass me his address and I'll ship it to him for the cost of postage! On March 19th, he shows me his progress so far:

and the finished piece on March 25th:

Happy Modeling - Buc (Mar 02-22')