My brother got me this kit for my birthday:
I just assembled it. The parts are all aluminium, and the nuts and bolts that hold everything together are tiny!
The instructions are clear and very nicely done, with a 1:1 scale list of parts on the other side. It is very easy to know how to put the kit together:
Actually putting it together was quite challenging though. It took me about an hour in total, and most of the time was consumed by trying to get nuts on the end of very tiny bolts with very little room in which to maneuver. Of course I was stubborn, and never went and got tweezers. This particularly step was by far the worst:
The springs are there to make the wings have a bit of ‘give’. Unfortunately although the kit has a lot of springs, none of the others do anything and are purely for visual impact, such as this one:
I did like how some of the parts were made of ‘soft aluminium’ (as described by the manual) and can be bent as the owner sees fit. The antennae are an example:
Here’s a shot to show the scale of the finished mantis:
And here is a dramatic shot showing this mantid golem in it’s natural habitat:
