This is my Polar Lights model #5019. Dr. Smith and The Robot from Lost In Space. I did Dr. Smith first, as I thought he would be the easiest.  I could tell right away from looking at the whole model, that the robot was going to be a tough one. Dry fitting Smith together, I discovered a fair amount of putty would be needed to fill in some of the gaps. Then I sanded him down to get rid of a lot of seams, and painted. The face was hard, because I don't have a lot of experience painting flesh. I mixed flesh with some grey and painted the whole face with it. .

Then I mixed flesh with white and applied lightly to bring out the lines in his face. I used a push pin to deepen his forehead wrinkles, by scraping lightly (about 4 coats of paint on his forehaed). I even painted the nostrils and ear canals. It really brought him to life. I basically used the same painting technique on his coat.

Now for the fun part. The Robot. I was not pleased with the way the Robot's neck and arms looked. The neck was too cone shaped for me. I cut the tip off of the cone (you need that part so his head will fit later) and put it aside. Then I cut the rest off down to about where the 6 supports are at the base of the cone/neck. Cut a piece of .20 white styrene in the shape of what was left of the neck and drilled a small hole in the middle. Then I replaced the neck with the bending part of a sippie straw (you can get them on any juice box from the grocery store). I put the straw through the hole and glued it it in. The I glued the top part of the old cone on top of the straw to hold his head on. When I painted the triangle in his head, I added a lot of little white dots for the "lights" and two big white dots on each side for "eyes".

The arms that came with the kit are good, but I didn't like the way they were positioned. I basically scraped them. I cut off the ends where the claws are attached and put them aside for later. What I used instead, were bending straws that you can get at Chick-fil-a or Friendly's restaurants (if you buy their cups). They are the perfect size (after cutting the non bending parts off) and look great. Not only that, but you can position them any way you want and the can reposition them any time you want.

I then painted his front panal using Joel Tavera's guide.

I did, however, reverse the pink and green lights after watching a few video tapes of the show. I discovered they were backwards. Still the best guide out there!

I knew I wanted his chest to light up, and I found a pretty good solution to my dilema.  Don't attach his chest to the bottom piece of the upper torso yet if you want to do this. After attaching the grilles, paint them black on the inside so the light won't shine through. On the bottom piece of his upper torso, the are 4 protusions that fit into the ring on the lower torso.

I cut 4 small grooves that are the size of the protusions in the lower torso about a half inch away from where the protusions are and filed the protusions down just a bit. Then I put the protusions over the grooves and it went right on. Turn it a bit and it will lock into place. I bought a safety strobe light from a local hardware store for 2 bucks. If you pop off the reflector, it will fit right in the lower ring of the upper torso. (You'll have to cut the clear part of the body grilles that are seen. It looks like an x). Whenever you want to turn it on, just take off the upper torso and push the button to light him up and put him back together.

Ken Meekins