Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, conducted by NASA from 1958 to 1963. Its primary goals were to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, investigate human performance in space, and safely recover the crew and spacecraft. The program achieved these objectives through six manned flights between 1961 and 1963, with the first American in space being Alan Shepard and the first American to orbit Earth being John Glenn.

Being a real space nut, when this kit first came out, I was amazed. That a company would produce a Mercury in this scale was incredible. The kit comes in a very large, top opening box. The capsule itself is molded in black, the interior in light gray and the escape system in red. There is also a small fret of clear parts. Oddly enough, the capsule hatch is molded in red. The astronaut is molded in a kind of soft vinyl. There are also some metal parts that are for the retro pack.

The decal sheets are quite large (there are 2) and contain markings for all 6 of the Mercury flights. They are very detailed and include all the various warning and stencils required. It also includes the ID stripes for the retro pack. (more on that later)

The instructions are a large fold out style and include instructions on the various modifications needed for the different capsules. They are very detailed on where and how to add the decals... follow it carefully.

A couple notes here... the flight control handles are molded into the astronauts hands, so if you choose not to use him, you will need to scratch build the controls. Also the instrument panel does not conform to any actual Mercury capsule. To me it appears closest to Gordon Coopers "Faith 7", so that's the capsule I modeled.