Metal Earth Premium Series Model Cyber Wolf
review by Alapai
Metal Earth models are metal model kits from Fascinations that are constructed from flat sheets into 3D models. The Premium Series models use larger sheets for their pieces and are generally more intricate than the regular ones. The Cyber Wolf model is one of the Premium Series models and an original design from Fascinations.
To assemble the Cyber Wolf, I used Fascinations’ Tool Kit, which contains clippers and needle nose pliers. The clippers are incredibly helpful at getting the parts off of the sheet. Without clippers, you can get the parts off of the sheet by bending the part back and forth at the point of connection, but it does require more finagling than I like. The pliers are very useful at bending the metal as needed, but are essential for bending and twisting the tabs. I would not recommend trying to assemble one of the Metal Earth models without needle nose pliers.
I’m not new to assembling Metal Earth models, but it has been some time since I last tried one out. When I started building them, they were relatively new and there were no Premium Series (or IconX, Premium Series’ previous name) models and all of them were just the metal sheet without any color. The only ones that weren’t a pure silver color were the ones that were a pure gold color instead. Now, the metal will often be etched with colors and patterns to make a fancier model than the old ones.
This is not one I would recommend for a first-time assembly, as the very first step requires some complicated manipulation. The first piece is part of the main body and asks you to fold the first piece into an upside down U where you have to connect the piece to itself in a very complex way. Next, you have to add on more of the back of the wolf as well as a bunch of greebles (the entire model has a decent amount of greebles). You follow this up by assembling the neck onto the body. This is where I first messed up.
While a lot of pieces end up symmetrical, most pieces are not. Unfortunately, some of the pieces were confusing in the diagram and I ended up messing up which side faced out. For this model, while the etched pieces face the outside, it can be confusing as to which side is ultimately going to be facing out. As a result, I ended up putting two pieces for the neck on the body the wrong way. Once I realized this, I was fortunately able to unassemble those pieces and attach them correctly, but a couple of the pieces broke off and were not able to be assembled exactly as they were supposed to. Unless you pay real close attention, you won’t end up noticing, but it’s very annoying to me.
The next thing you do is assemble the head. This mostly went well for me, although one of the ears had some issues. Both ears had some difficulty staying in place, but one of them ended up having too much difficulty and the tabs ended up broken. While you don’t need superglue to assemble Metal Earth models, because a tab broke, I did if I wanted the ear to stay on the model. After fixing up the ear, I attached the head to the body.
Next, you finish up the main body by attaching plates for the forelegs to attach to later and finally close it up by adding the stomach. The rest of the assembly was making the various components before the last step of attaching them to the body. The plates for attaching the legs were pretty annoying to assemble as “in-universe,” the legs would be attached to the body with multiple rods that are represented on the model as tiny cylindrical pieces you barely see between the body and plate the leg attaches to that are all at different angles and are all unique pieces that have to be attached in the right orientation on both the body and plate side.
Making the legs themselves wasn’t too tricky, but there was an annoying part. Step 14 is to create the claws for the feet and involves making all 4 sets of claws as the model uses the same claws on each foot. Each of those 4 sets of claws is made up of 4 separate claws, each attached to a separate digit, with all the digits connected to a single piece. All 16 claws are a very small piece that you can find copies of across all 3 sheets of metal, which makes finding them annoying. Mostly, it was tedious, as once you’ve completed the first one, the other three are pretty easy.
The tail was frustrating because it consisted of hexagonal prism-like shapes that you’re supposed to bend into shape, but leave open until you’ve put all of them together. You start at the tailhead, attaching each piece from there until you attach the tip, then finally close the tail at the bottom. The instructions show blue arrows at the attachment point and I assumed that you were supposed to put them together, you know, like the 143 previous pieces.
The final step was just to attach all the pieces to the main body, so the rear leg connectors attach, the tail attaches, then the legs attach.
Putting it together was a long experience. I did it over multiple sessions, but it ended up taking around 10+ hours to assemble. While there are parts that were trickier than others, such as the beginning assembly having some complicated maneuvering, mostly it is just a lot to do, with there being 151 different pieces, a few of which are on there multiple times, each of which has to be attached by at least one connecting tab to at least one other piece. Because of where and how I was sitting, it was also easy for me to drop pieces and have them be difficult to find. I am lucky that where I was assembling it, we have a retractable magnetic pick-up tool that I could use to get pieces off the ground or in the boxes they fell into.
If you like the assembly aspect of models, but aren’t a fan of the painting, Metal Earth models are a pretty good way to skip the paint and have a reasonable looking model when you are done. They can be tricky, with some more complicated moves, especially when you have to curve the metal and you don’t have a good estimate of how far you have to bend it, but that ultimately makes it more satisfying when it is completed. They are also finnicky and can be fragile, so I don’t recommend them if you’re low on patience as they can take some time and rushing them can lead to them breaking and being difficult to finish if not impossible without having to break out some superglue.
Metal Earth models including the Cyber Wolf are available now from our webstore.
