Ok, I know I have been asking a lot of questions lately, but I would rather hear from all of you than spend the money and realize I chose poorly.
I was at my LHS and was looking at what they had and low and behold they had two Sturmgeschutz. The Sturmgeschutz III Ausf G Early from Tamyia, which was my planned purchase for $20 and the Academy Sturmgeschutz IV SdKfz 167 for $18. Now besides the tank being different models, what is difference in model quality? I thought I heard that Academy kits were actually tamiya kits rebranded, is this true? What quality are the Academy kits since the seem ratehr affordable. Thanks for the help.
the old Academy kits are copys of the Tamiya very old kits
tamiya has the Stug IV that the academy is a copy of
get the stug III G, if its got figures holding a dog its a new Tamiya kit (90s not 70s)
The Stug III G, Fruhe version by Tamiya is one of their better kits. For $20, you’re doing fine. (If it’s the old one with a bunch of paratroops, avoid it). The Academy StuG IV is a knock off just as Jon has said. It’s a copy of a early 70s era Tamiya kit. Buildable but for the few dollars more, you’ll really see state of the art engineering in the StuG III G.
Academy started their 1/35 line by pirating Tamiya kits: Jagdpanther, Panzer IVH, M4A3E8, Mobelwagen, StuG IV, M10 Tank Destroyer, M151 Mutt, M113, some others I believe.
They later came out with a very respectable series:
Tiger I, M113, M51 Sherman, M12 SPG, M36 TD and others.
Their recent kits have been misses in lieu of the high standards being set by their competitors: M18 Hellcat, M551 Sheridan, M4A2 Russian Sherman.
Unless they really commit to some quality designing (like AFV Club, DML & Tamiya), they’ll fade back to obscurity IMHO.
I’ll second the vote for the Tamiya StuG III Fruhe. Great kit.
Academy did get their start making copies of Tamiya kits. This trend continued into the early 90s. Their original M1A1 was almost a dead copy of the Tamiya M1 with some retooled parts added. Their initial MUTTs and Bradleys were copies as well.
Many of their recent kits are great, some not so great (new tooled M551A1 Sheridan for instance). All of their recent Sherman kits have received good comments.
Crap…the one I was looking at was the older Stug. The new one is about $15 more, but I think I will suck it up and pay the extra for a good quality model. So, is there a way to find out which Tamiya kits are the more recent releases and which ones are the old 70’s molds?
most of the Tamiya boxes have the year the kit was released on the longer side panel above their brand symbol. else you can look for the kit number. pretty much anything above about 150 (35150) has superior fitment and crisp details (shows up on the included figures more obviously).
oh man good point joe. I was only thinking about the special editions which starts with 89 something something numbers. I guess the sure shot way to get a good answer for the kit is to post the question here. Most of the newer better kits have reviews available online so google.com would be your best friend there as well. Or you can be like me and own two Tamiya catalogues and look at the english verison of tamiya.com all day long trying to remember every armor kit they have available then root out the old reissued ones. Aside from buying the newer trumpeter and dml kits that were generally agreed to be the best in its class (unfortunately nonstop) I found myself lately turning into an avid Tamiya collector and trying to dig out some older out of production and limited edition kits just to have them (n make them later OOB of course).
Well, Tamiya has offically won this battle. I ended up spending a little extra cash for the superior model. Now I need to get a tank crew that is not petting a dog and to sneak this in past the wife. If I get caught oih well. As I always say it is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission.