Did the Osaka LHS circuit today, and found Dragon’s new 1/35 Panzer IV E on the shelves. Like their Tigers, the box is simply bursting with plastic, aluminum, and PE! I had a quick rummage through the box, and it all looks good to me. Seperate tires and tons of other options! Price here in Japan is 3,129 yen ($27.69 USD)
2005 has been a great year for fans of the Pzr IV!
Dragon usually releases worldwide fairly simultaneously, so you all should be seeing these kits in your various necks of the woods any time now.
Haven’t heard from my favorite shop about it . Hopefully I’ll get by there
tomorrow to check. Last time there I picked up the Tristar Mk IV Ausf D. The
molding on that kit is incredible (just couldn’t pass it up) ! Is the Dragon kit
the African version ? Does it have the new majic tracks ?
Harry
Yes, Magic Tracks are included. It’s an Afrika Korps version. The tires are separate, but they are not rubber, if that’s what you were thinking, Zok. Separate, but styrene.
According to Armorama and the LEM, this kit has been out for a while. I hadn’t seen any posting about it anywhere, so I thought it hadn’t hit the shelves yet.
Nope, didn’t think they were rubber, I did see their features page, and it stated styrene. Still, it’s a great feature, it’ll make life a lot easier when painting the roadwheels, and makes it alittle easier to take chunks out of the rubber portions.
After 4.5 hours work I have the lower hull finished…simply amazing engineering on this kit. You can pose the fuel filler ports open and they have enough “interior” it looks good, you can leave the idler tensioners partially disassembled and have the crew adjusting them (yes they even have the jam nuts and serrated lockwashers as serparate pieces). You can leave the final drives disassembled and even have conical nuts to strew on the ground for the armored covers and if you really open them up you get a geared drive shaft, friction disk, bearing retaining ring, the back side of the cover has bolt hole recesses and all the parts separate so far would have been separate parts on the real vehicle, no need to fill anything if you’re careful building. The working suspension is fiddly but it works and builds well once you think about it for a minute or two. I have only used a scalpel once to clean a touch of flas from between two gear teeth that are hidden anyway if you build the final drives closed up.
Detail freaks will also love the “Continental” and snap retainer rings molded into the return rollers.
Opinionated editorial rant mode on: At this point Tamiya might as well just give up 1/35 armor and melt their molds down. Trumpeter’s latest efforts are now close to or exceeding Tamiya’s latest efforts, Academy is a bit behind Trumpeter, AFV Club is a few steps above and DML is shifting into lightspeed…$41 for a Tamiya late Tiger I with minimal extras, $45 for an AFV Club with a fair number of extras or $38 for the DML with just about anything you could want and DML has engineered both the Tiger I & Pz IV E kits so you don’t have to use the extras if you prefer an all plastic build…Tamiya’s bang for the buck isn’t even close, the detail isn’t even in the parking lot and DML’s engineering for buildability is now better than Tamiya’s…opinionated editorial rant mode off…
I haven’t built any of Dragon’s new Tigers, but I have built a couple of their 3 in 1 halftracks and they are incredible. I built the Tamiya Ausf D halftrack last year and, while it wenttogether nicely, the extras are minimal compared to the Dragon offerings.
instead of giving up, hopefully Tamiya will step up to the challenge and make an even better product than Dragon is offering. easier said than done given the cheaper labor and costs in China and Hong Kong (Dragon, Trumpter) vs. Japan (Tamiya). But that would truly be great, a win-win for us consumers.