Moebius Models 1/4105 Battlestar Pegasus BSG Kit First Look

by Michael Benolkin

First Look

Moebius Models continues to produce some great subjects that are mostly overlooked by other kit manufacturers. One of the better moves this company has made was to obtain the licensing to produce the range of interesting subjects from the recent Battlestar Galactica series. Among the subjects released to date include the Galactica itself, the Viper Mark II and Viper Mark VII, Cylon Centurion and Cylon Raider. Upcoming releases include the Battlestar Galactica from the original 1978 TV series as well as the Viper Mark I and Cylon Raider also from that era. I wouldn't mind having model number six, number three, and number eight figures...

So to the subject of this release, the Battlestar Pegasus. Pegasus was a newer class of Battlestar with twice as many flight bays compared to Galactica. Galactica was so old in fact, that in the pilot episode of the series, the Galactica was about to be decommissioned and was already partially converted into an orbiting museum. What enabled the Galactica to survive that initial attack was its lack of internal network and lower-technology Viper Mark IIs that were immune to the electronic hacking performed by the Cylons against the rest of the fleet. Pegasus was thought lost in the surprise attack, but it managed to escape and rejoined Galactica later in the series.

I did not see the Moebius Galactica kit when it was released and quite honestly, I didn't give it much thought. At a scale of 1/4105, I had assumed that the resulting model was really tiny. Wrong! When this Pegasus kit arrived, I was not only surprised by the size of the box, I was also surprised by its sheer weight! There was lots of plastic inside that box! You can see in the images to the right just how much plastic is in there and you're not seeing three trees that are duplicates of the FTL engine tree shown in image three. In all there are six parts trees in the box plus the main hull halves, forward hull halves, the landing bay halves, and the landing bay decks. That is a lot of plastic. Also in the box but not imaged is a steel rod which provides a mount between the model and the Pegasus display stand.

So just how big is this thing? According to the specifications, the Pegasus is 5,872 feet long. That is over 1.1 miles, almost 1.79 kilometers, and at 1/4105, the model is still over 17 inches/43 centimeters long. To put that into perspective, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is roughly 1,100 feet long, so the Pegasus is longer than five Nimitz-class carriers end-to-end. Conversely, the various Constitution-class USS Enterprise variants from Star Trek are roughly the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

If you look at the images of the original Galactica release versus this Pegasus kit, can see that Moebius Models didn't simply change the name plate for this release. The Pegasus has four flight decks, two in each pod, one atop the other, while Galactica only had two, one of which was already converted into a museum. The detailing on the forward hull is significantly different as I'm sure other parts of the model are likewise revised. This is an impressive bit of work here, not only for the detailing, but to also keep the model easy for the average modeler to build.

If you go over to CultTVMan Hobby Shop, you'll see there are already a number of detail sets available for this kit and I'm sure more are coming. Don't waste any more fracking time, go get one!

My sincere thanks to Moebius Models for this review sample!