hey im thinking about buying from them are they any good?
I have gotten a few from them and they have good fit and detail. The kits I got are #: 1348, 1327, and 1332.
academy kits are good… i’m building the M10 duckbill right now and it’s outstanding, comes with a full interior. i’d say go for it.
Academy has good and bad. Thier newer kits are great. Some of their older kits are poor copies of Tamiya kits. They do have the best series of M113s on the market, along with most of their Israeli stuff being top notch as well. Depends on what you are looking for.
I’ve built the Stuarts and the Merkava ll. IMHO, great kits.
I agree with Gino. New kits are great, older kits are bad copies of older Tamiya kits. Just because you see a new box, doesn’t mean that it is a new kit inside. They slap old reissue kits into new packaging.
I have recently built three of their kits- the M4A1 Stuart, the M4A2 Marines Sherman and the M60 and I am also currently doing the M10 Duckbill, The kits themselves were decent. The plastic is a little soft, but that really helps when cutting pieces off the sprue. Their brush guards on the Sherman are very delicate, but not too brittle. Their directions are vague in places and occasionally it becomes confusing on locating where to attach parts. Also, the directions will often times give you various options (such as hatches on the Sherman or wheels for the Duckbill), but no explaination as to which would be appropriate. Try to get reference material if you are working on a specific tank to avoid confusion. Lastly, their decals can be poor The Stuart decals would not sit down, no matter how much decal setting solution I used, and with a lot of the curves they were problematic. The Sherman was similiar, but in my case I lucked out as the tank I modeled had few decals. Over all they are decent kits, but I cannot stress checking references before building enough. The Sherman I did had 5 M4A2 options in it, but turns out 3 of the 5 were actually m4a3 and had different hatches and set ups than shown in the directions. Academy did include most of the parts I needed- just no explaination on how to use them, A little research and I was good
I’ve been working on their Stuart off & on for a while now. Have it about 1/2 completed & so far it goes together well.
Regards, Rick
Academy makes good kits. I’ve built a few and like the detail.
A club member in my group has built 12 Stuart kits for a multi-national Stuart series. He also chipped in 3 AFV club kits. He likes the Academy enough to not want to build one of the Tamiya kits (and they are solid…with good reference material).
Yup, for the most part, they make good kits. Even though some are Tamiya copies, they are good copies, so ethics aside, it’s still good.
Their newer stuff is fantastic.
If you want to know more about a specific kit, post a Q here. Someone’s bound to know a lot about it!
[:D] i have built a few of there kits and no probs ,they are good kits.[:D]