Lucky13 Skeletons

Welcome to the seventh review of Girlpla Guide Weekly! 

Continuing the Month of Temu Tat, we’ll be reviewing our next set of tat model kits, the “Lucky13” Skeleton model kit!

Also, we did notice we accidentally labeled the last week’s review as the eighth review. We had to edit it in a hurry and did forget how many articles we made. It has now been fixed.

Overview

Obscure kits about whose creator we have barely any information are no stranger to us. In this niche-of-a-niche, we’re no strangers to kits whose creators have vanished into the ether, retreated from the spotlight or who’ve left the girlpla niche entirely after calling it a day. Diving deep into Japanese-only archives or the depths of random websites left to the sands of time has been our bread and butter conducting research for this website.

This kit, however, we can’t even find the creator to credit them properly.

The reason we’re even calling it the “Lucky13” Skeleton kit is that this is the most common name for it across any site that sells these; we have no evidence that soozafone (creator of the Lucky13 open source model kits) or anyone connected with him even made these things, though he does have a poseable skeleton set found here that almost matches this design. These skeletons are usually found with an axe and a pair of maces.

This, by far, is our strongest lead, however; the skeleton designs are very close, though soozafone’s designs are significantly more angular, more filled-in and lack the articulated jaw that these designs do, leading us to believe that if they are the Lucky13 skeletons, they have been remixed and since copied by hundreds of other stores. There are also some designs lurking around on Tinkercad that we suspect might have influenced (or been stolen for) these, but the joint designs are not too far off soozafone’s work (and there are other reasons we suspect these, detailed down below).

In any case, these kits are all over AliExpress, Amazon, Temu, Shein and various other tat-filled marketplaces; we even found multiple listings for them on Walmart of all places.

Construction and Engineering

All of these skeletons, regardless of origin, share the same basic articulation; excellent articulation around the shoulders, hips and knees, iffier around the hands, neck and feet. The jaw being able to open and shut is also a nice touch.

One reason we do suspect that these could be derived from the Lucky13 designs is that we actually did some experimenting (to make a Skulduggery Pleasant-themed custom) and found that the Dummy13 kits can actually be “kitbashed” with these skeletons with a little bit of work and elbow grease.

As with the Dummy13 kits, we won’t talk about material and tolerances; given the huge amount of sellers and variation in quality between sellers, it wouldn’t make much sense. We will, however, talk about difficulty, or rather the lack thereof; these kits can be assembled with just a set of nippers to pick them out of the runners they come in.

Aesthetics:

It’s literally a skeleton. As far as cheap 1:12-scaled skeletons go, before 30 Minutes Fantasy dropped their 2 pack Dlro Skeletons, these were really the best options to go with. However, they’re pretty plain and the weapons they usually come with aren’t all that impressive, not really helped by the fact that their limbs aren’t really capable of holding 1:12 weapons, even those from the Lucky13 series.

Ease of Acquisition:

While, unlike the Lucky13 kits, the CAD files for these aren’t readily available, they’re dirt cheap, usually costing less than a dollar/pound and can be found anywhere where tat is sold; AliExpress, Amazon, Temu, literally anywhere that has tons of unverified sellers have these.

Personal Verdict?

A cheap option to make generic skeletons, these “Lucky13” skeletons are useful for making necromancer customs or trying to make budget versions of the T-800. Just don’t expect them to be much else; if you need something better than this, just go buy the Dlro Skeletons (if you are so fortunate as to be able to catch stock of it).

Overall score: As per our rules regarding garage kits, we won’t rate these.

Up next:

Next week, we will be returning to Lucky13 to write about the Mini13 model kits!

Tune in next week for the next Girlpla Guide Weekly!