Resin Punks, the newest Zimmerit ‘zine, is available now on garagekit.club.
Much of this new ‘zine comes from a project I began years ago, before this current run of Zimmerit books and at a time when the site was only a year or two old. What began as an article turned into something much larger, a growing text document that I had hoped at one point to turn into a book or something similar. Over the years I rewrote parts and used sections of it elsewhere (like the article about the Gundam doujinshi Universal Century 0087 or the inside back cover of Hobby Shopping that covered the Garage Kit Guide Map). I think there’s a lot more to say about the early years of the garage kit hobby in Japan, but for now I’m really happy with how this one turned out.
Before it became commercialized, garage kit culture was spread out among disparate groups and hobby shops. Broadly speaking, it was a niche occasionally covered in hobby magazines but tough to research outside of looking at the kits themselves. While more established manufacturers produced catalogs, paid for ads, or were even interviewed in magazines like Do-Pe and B-Club, small-time outfits or groups that only sold kits at Wonder Festival aren’t well documented at all.
With Resin Punks I try to capture a bit of that chaos; the idea that someone could fall into DIY model kit culture by accident or carve out their own niche. The kits themselves are easy enough to find, but documenting the trends, interests, and even the shops they were sold at can be harder to document.
Resin Punks is 40 pages, digest sized, and includes both color and black & white pages. Writing and layout by Sean O’Mara. Translation by Matt Schley and Maud Duke. Photos of General Products circa 1989 by William Smith. Back cover by Alex Connolly. Renzo Adler came up with the name and provided design and distribution support.