The Lunchbox Craze

Do you have a Tamiya Lunchbox? Do you know what all the hype is about? Do you care? I personally didn’t know much about the Lunchbox until recently. Yes, I have had a NIB vintage kit in my closet for years, but I never really gave it much thought. Recently I saw a discussion on a Discord server about the Lunchbox and it surprised me that there were so many that carried quite a bit of passion for the kit.

The Lunchbox is a small kit when compared to some of the other Tamiya monster trucks at 1/12 scale and it always struck me as a bit odd looking. However the unique van body shell and playful motif allows for lots of imagination; from hippie tripping Kaleidoscope, to army green, to Homer Simpson, to the Mystery Machine, the color schemes are endless. No one is going to build a Lunchbox to race at the track but then again that’s not its appeal. Its fun look combined with its built in wheelie bar make it both fun to drive and to look at.

Lacking an idea for my next YouTube video I decided to pull my 58063 out of the closet and do an unboxing. As I always do when I create a video, I spent some time doing research on the kit. The more I dug into the history and the fan base, the more I started to understand the craze. So I decided to do a three part series on the Lunchbox. The first was my vintage unboxing.

I didn’t want to get rid of my NIB so I decided that it would be a good idea to buy a re-release of the Lunchbox since they are readily available and also fairly cheap. This way I could compare the vintage with the re-release. I had seen online that the kits were almost identical so I decided to see how close they really were. Although they do share many of the same parts, I was able to determine that the parts are actually different in some key ways if you have the entire parts tree or bags. This kit delta was presented in the second part of the series where I did a detailed comparison of the vintage versus the re-release unboxing.

Since I have limited storage space I do not collect Tamiya kits beyond the 58100 number so I decided to build the re-release instead or just reselling the NIB. It had been a long time since I had built a car that came from a box so it was an exciting change of pace. This build became the third and final part of my series. The video was too long for a single video so I split it up into two parts.

Finishing the paint job on this project turned out to be a disaster but I will probably leave that for a later episode on hard body painting tips. Some problems I encountered were the light body color and prominent black trim. Things kept bleeding under my masking tape because the tape points are surrounded by dips and grooves in the shell. I have not painted a body in a really long time. I am clearly out of practice. Ugh. I avoid painting my restorations because that would involve finding a vintage decal sheet in order to repaint the body and the vintage decals are either impossible to find or very expensive, or both.

I was working on my Tamiya Lunchbox Giveaway promotional video and was messing with some video editing. I came up with a Vintage re-release montage. I decided I am not going to use it for my giveaway but decided to post it anyway. Giveaway promo coming soon! The build in this video is what I am giving away. For full details on the giveaway head over to the official rules.

I just couldn’t resist, I had to drive it! The Lunchbox is sooooo much fun to drive. Take a look at a little fun time before someone takes this home as a their own from the free giveaway.