Doll & Hobby 1/8 scale The Hunchback of Notre Dame plastic model kit review

Doll & Hobby’s special edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame comes attractively packaged in with a plastic slipcover that, when removed, reveals the box art unadulterated with words. That means you can hang it on the wall inside. The plastic is from the Polar Lights kit originally released in 1999 as The Bellringer of Notre Dame. That kit was itself reverse-engineered to reproduce a new mold of Aurora’s Hunchback kit, first released in 1964.

The kit’s 25 tan plastic parts are cleanly molded, with no flash present, and include the rotating pillory and two styles of nameplates. To dress up the display, Doll & Hobby has packaged this kit with a double-sided backdrop that can place Quasimodo either in front of the same rooftops seen in the box art or before the Notre Dame cathedral.

I superglued the various parts of the figure together, taking care not to attach the lower part of the arm shackles so I could add the rope at final assembly and make painting easier. After lightly scraping the seams on the clothing areas with a hobby knife, I applied Mr. Hobby Mr. Dissolved Putty with a stiff brush, mottling the material, much like adding cast texture to an armor model. I smoothed the flesh areas by sanding them and removed mold seams on the ropes by brushing on a little liquid cement.

The turntable of the pillory is designed to rotate, so caution is needed when gluing the parts. I put a little petroleum jelly on the inside of the pedestal to prevent glue and paint from locking it in place. The bushing needed to be thinned with a little sanding to move freely.

I painted the model in subassemblies using Vallejo acrylics and artist oils.

During the final assembly, pay close attention to the instructions to ensure the correct placement of the ropes.

I spent about 10 hours building and painting The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a tribute to how well the parts fit and the lack of cleanup. It is an extremely nice collector kit that took me back to some of the first models I built. I just needed my mother yelling at me not to spill paint on the table to complete the memory.