I got this kit back in 1972 and assembled it as only a child of 7 could…badly. Somehow it survived my childhood and multiple moves to eventually return to my hands when my parents retired. I don’t know how accurate it is but I thought it was a nice sculpt so I decided to rebuild it.

First I disassembled the kit and gave the whole model a coat of primer. I reassembled the legs and puttied the seams while re-scribing the hair as best I could.

My original intention was to merely clean up seams, paint and then build the kit as designed. Once I put the legs on, however, the hips seams are quite pronounced and looked too “toylike” I puttied up the seams and then put it aside to dry.

Hours later, I was able to carve the hair into the putty seam and it matched pretty good.

Even with the seam covered, it still looked like a toy. I researched elephant muculature and built additional mass to the hips and shoulders.

The head on the original kit was built to pivot on a ball joint for a limited range of movement. This created a massive gap in the neck area that I would need to fill. I chose to turn the head slightly to the left and tilt it. The seam was filled with epoxy putty.

For realism I added little dangling clumps of hair from the bottom of the neck, hanging off the belly and from the tail. To disguise a pronounced belly seam I added a row of hanging fur down the belly.

Naturally a snap-together kit would not address an animal’s genitals. Seeing as the mammoth looks male (to me), if I didn’t do something about it it would look strange. I based the penis sheath on modern elephants (You don’t want to see what’s inside…think “Dune”) and according to a REAL frozen mammoth find, the testicles were internal…probably a good idea during the Ice Age

During research, I read that mammoths only had 4 toes whereas modern elephants have five. Naturally the kit had five. In the end, it was a good thing as I could make the toes protrude a bit and add bits of hair hanging over and between them.

The mammoth was ready for painting. I painted the tusks with a basecoat of ivory paint (duh) and the rest of the beast with semigloss acrylic black.

So the mammoth would seem to be standing firmly on the rock, I coated the soles with epoxy putty and pressed it into the cliff (covered with Saran Wrap). After the putty dried I painted them with black washes.

I added model railroad gravel to the base of the cliff and little bits in crevasses. I watered down Elmers glue and sprayed it over the gravel to lock it in place. I added some railroad grass (very fine green threads that you cut to size) to the base as well as a dead tree that I recently discovered in a box.

I based the painting of the mouth and trunk opening (?) on those of modern elephants, making them a pale greyish pink. The tusks were weathered with multiple washes and the eyes were painted to match a modern elephants (strange, I know).

Here is the final kit.

The rest of the fur was drybrushed on with various shades of brown, leaving the underside black. The toenails were painted with a light grey and weathered with various dark washes.