Just throwing this out there. What kits do you find absolutly horrible and stay away from. Which kits are the hardest to put together. I know it’s a preference thing. I myself would like to know this so I don’t go and dump my money into somthing and have someone say that kit is junk. I read the modeling kit reviews and just want everyones opinions.
Let’s hear it!!!
Wes
You will only get useless answers.
No one company makes only great kits nor does one company make only bad kits. Some companies make on average better kits than others. One company may make the best Type A tank yet have the worst Type B tank kit known to man (Esci did this with the best M60 series kit and the worst M1 series kit).
Other companies get dogged out because their kits are junk. Glencoe is a company that acquired the rights to old 1950s era kits that had been out of production for decades. They reissued old kits that previously drew hundreds of dollars for a MIB kit and even large amounts of money for badly built kits missing parts. They made these rare kits available for $10-15, but they were for nostaligic value only and most had been passed by as serious model kits. Mention Glencoe to anyone today who does not know the history of the kits but has bought and tried to build one and you will hear words like junk, dog, POS. Back in the mid-90s, they were welcomed with open arms.
When Trumpeter first hit the scene in 1999-2000, their kits were extremely bad knock offs of Tamiya and Academy kits. I bought and tried to build one of their M60 series kits. It was a waste of glue. They learned very quickly and now make some respectable kits, some of which are the best of their type.
Even the Mighty Dragon has a whole closet full of bad kits, many of which have now made appearances in boxes by Revell, Italeri, and Zvezda. These bad kits now reflect poorly on the companies that reboxed them.
Tamiya has some of the greatest kits produced in plastic, but for every superb Char B1 bis they make is an old 1970s era kit that they continue to produce (Panther A comes to mind).
Don’t have any gripes about any company, just specific kits at times, from about all of 'em I’ve dealt with…
Ditto to what Rob said as well…
Then there’s the guys who dog companies because the model they bought didn’t fall together when they threw a tube of Testor’s into the box and shook it…
I’ve found myself preferring to experiment more with eastern companies: EE, RPM, Mirage, and I’ve even got a CERTI one being painted right now; plus the others. While lots of people dog them, I find their subject material a lot more interesting and intriguing. I would buy and build a BT-2 over any german tanks from Dragon, Trump, Tamiya, or Italeri. It isn’t uncommon these days to have two or three to compete to release the same kit essentially, plus they are releasing some kits that were basically 1-off productions IRL. But enough of my soapbox…
I tend to stay away from Italeri due to kit quality (I think its mediocre at best, but some of their newer stuff is more promising…?) I like tamiya, but they’re two simple in my mind. Dragon is my preferred kit producer when I’m looking for something run of the mill. I know that I can trust them, both for a presentable model, and to give me enough spare sprues in their older kits to allow me to scratch together a space ship or something equally awesome. 
Everything produced under the “Tasca” trademark had been “great kits”. [:)]
Always one sharpshooter in the bunch. The downside to Tasca is that their kits are double the cost of any comparable kit made by Dragon or Tamiya. Even their Kubelwagen was the price of a full sized panzer tank kit. Their superb Sherman series are pushing the $100 mark for a plastic model kit. No bells & whistles included, just plastic. Their Luchs was another small tank that cost as much as the latest Panther kit produced by any company. Directing someone who asks as basic a question as who is the best/worst to Tasca is like directing someone looking for an entry level car to the local Ferrari dealer.
I agree.
[:)]
I’ve attempted to build two Maquette kits and both were horrible.The only reason I’ll try another is because I have it in the stash.Several T-34’s that I got on sale to be exact.
Wait… they don’t do that… Hm… maybe that explains my lack of completed builds in the last few years… [8-]
I’m not really looking for answers just opinions and I think nothing in the forum should be considered useless. Crabs over Castles.
And yet, with time, effort, patience and a modicum of aftermarket, they can be built into something reasonably OK:
If we’re looking for a range of kits without too many redeeming features, (other than, in some cases, only game in town) might I suggest Airfix’s 1/76 tracked military vehicles? And yet, a large proportion of their 1/76 wheeled military vehicles are pretty good. And if you’re looking for an example of ‘best’, may I suggest Accurate Miniatures? Especially their 1/48 aircraft? And if you want to see what’s possible if you push the boundaries of injection-moulding, check out the hard plastic figures - and their accessories - that Dragon are beginning to include in some of their 1/72 military vehicles. Quite superb!
Cheers,
Chris.
Even this statement is misleading. Maquette habitually reboxes other companies’ models as well. The Zvezda/Italeri T-26 is generally a pretty good kit and the best available for this subject. Maquette reboxes the kit, adds a resin turret, white metal gun tube and produces the support howitzer version called the T-26-4. Prior to the more recent 38t series of tanks by Dragon, Maquette’s 38t was superior to the old Italeri kit. So even Maquette has some nice kits in their line.
Worst kits I’ve ever seen have been the old 1/72 fighter series by Aoshima. They are meant to be glued together, but they produce a result that is really more of a toy, and in a very real sense, compared to the comment some have about the old Monogram kits. We’re talking about thick canopies with ejector pin marks, cockpits with a shelf and a pilot silhouette on them.
But as a nostalgia builder, I’ve picked up some, to see what I can do with them.
Best kit, hard to say. I enjoy building some things that some others wouldn’t consider. I do have Eduard’s P40Q in progress, and it’s a well-engineered and nicely molded kit, as are the Accurate Miniatures F3Fs and Classic Airframes’ F4B-4 and F11C kits. But I’ve got the old Aurora and Lindberg examples of those last two subjects, too.
Regards,
Brad
Rob’s assessment is pretty accurate. My take is that Tamiya was the first to pioneer the way molds were polished, and after so many runs, which has much to do with Japanese quality control methods, that are now used by almost everyone, but back in the 70’s, when I started building, where not that common. I would say that Tamiya is widely known for consistant quality over decades. Their Famo with Trailer kit may be the best 1/35th kit ever produced.
Revell Germany on the other hand has subjects that many other companies don’t have. I just built the ship Hermann Marwede and it is exceptional and unique overall, however had some fit problems. Their huge B-36 is also fantastic and unique.
I have built the Trumpeter BR52 and have the Leopold, which are both exceptional kits, however as Rob said their first offerings were junk.
I have the Glencoe SS US because it is the only kit of that ship available and it is frankly a nightmare. I had to cut off and sand all the thick plastic fake handrails and replace with GMM etched rails. A lot of work, but I had no choice if I wanted a model of this ship. The instructions were all but usless as well, and the plastic is soft.
My vote would be that Tamiya is certainly a hall of fame company.
For ease of construction, if I know nothing about a kit other than the name of the manufacturer, I would go with Tamiya. Even their old 1970’s vintage stuff, although usually lacking in detail, is well molded and fits together well.
Andy
Revell Germany’s B-36 Peacemaker is the old Monogram kit from 1980. It is almost 30 years old.
http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=6056&page=2&manu=Monogram&scale=1/72
Glencoe’s SS United States is an old ITC kit from the 1950s. It is over 50 years old.
http://www.freetimehobbies.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=30765
Grab any one of Trumpeter’s old Soviet era T-55 based tank kits and you will see how bad they used to be. Many of their kits had the motorization packs pre-attached into the hull. I think their M1A1/A2 Abrams kits were some of their better kits from the early days. I think that kit represents where they turned the corner from being cheap knock-offs to respectable model kits.
That’s the problem with trying to “rate” the various modeling companies. You will always have people trying to give credit or give blame to a model company based on a reboxed kit that they don’t know are reboxes.
An airplane modeler is singing the praises for Revell of Germany’s B-36 (ex-Monogram kit) and an armor modeler is dogging them out for their T-72 or T-80 (ex-Dragon kits) and another armor modeler says their M88A1G is a great kit (reboxed AFV Club kit).
Personally I think the worst ever would be AMT
I agree! I’m always haunting my local model shop to see what they have on specials and got an Aoshima model, can’t remember the aircraft now but it was a Japanese WW2 Navy bomber (I think) and it was the worse $7 I ever spent. I usually like a challenge but this one was beyond me!
Rob, just out of curiosity, where do you get all your info about kits…who reboxed what, etc? Is there a book or some kind of online reference, or is all of that info stored in your head? (please say it’s a book, I think it would be too hard to read your mind![:D]) Thanks
I believe Rob has pretty much summed it all up. Since I’m pretty much a box stock builder I usually ignore wholesale judgements by others when a kit is described as dog, junk, POS, etc. I’m usually amused when someone claims a kit was so “bad” he hurled it against the wall. I expect that may be a combination of impatience and maybe just a little lack of anger management. I think most models are buildable it just depends on what you want out of the finished product. Like most of the guys here I’ve seen top-name manufacturers produce an occasional dog-in-the-box and every now and then a completely unknown company comes up with the greatest thing since sliced bread. The only thing you can do is watch the kit reviews and maybe look for a pattern spread out over several reviews of a given product or manufacturer. Probably the best thing to do is also take ALL kit reviews with just a little grain of salt too. That’s my opinion and on the advice of my attorney, I’m stickin’ with it. Lets go glue something together. I am a kit assembler who just might be the best damn kit assembler in this part of the universe…RickM