I posted this in the diorama forum, but I thought that I’d pass it on the the display crowd as well, since y’all use figures sometimes…
I bought the 1/48 Tamiya US Infantry figures for use in my aircraft dios, since I needed to replenish my parts box with arms, legs, torsos, etc… Upon opening it, I found them to be a bit small, so I measured them out and found that they scale out to only being 5 feet tall… That’s quite a bit short for the average WW2 GI at 5’10"-6’O’'… The weapons also look a bit long when used with the figures, so use your own judgement on these guys… At about 16.00 bucks a box, you 1/48 Armor guys don’t want to get surprised like I did…
Thanks for the heads up Hans, though I would’nt build 1/48 inf is beside the point. When a manufacturer tries to foist such “shortcomings” lol, off on us they should be taken to task and not be given the $16.00 in the first place. I recently bought a 1/24th Me 109 G10 by “Turdpeter” lol, only to find the Mk 108 cannon and the Db 605 D powerplant are closer to 1/30th scale. The cowl MG’s stink and the “Galland panzer”(armoured glass) is molded in grey plastic, if I had’nt already scratchbuilt very accurate ones for an abandoned project i would be livid. The damned thing sells for $109.00 SRP. We should all watchdog for one another, I for one the cos is high enough, lets keep them honest.
I just can’t believe they screwed the pooch like that… Their aircraft figures were pretty accurate in scale height… Especially since they just reduced the molds for their Infantry… They’re the same poses as their 1/35th guys…
I wish FSM would review stuff like that so I had my 16.00 bucks still, instead of always doing kits… Gotta keep these accessory kits accurate too…
I have built a few of the Tamiya 1/48th armor kits as well. I always place figures next to the subject (whether aircraft or ground vehicle) and have noticed the Tamiya 1:48th MM figures are small. I have bought several of the sets (German, Russian, and U.S.) and they all appear to be smallish. Like you said though, the figures that come with their aircraft are accurately sized… Maybe a problem with a subcontractor, perhaps?
Thanks for the heads up. Now I heard many years ago… now this is hearsay… and probably not true… so I heard that when Tamiya used to measure for figure heights they used their own average national height… and back many moons ago their national average height was probably that bit smaller.
Thats all I heard, please dont scold me for making a comment about race or other crap.
When I heard it, it kinda made sense to me.
I must say that when it comes to 1/48th scale it also happened to CMK, and Andrea, and they are much more expensive.
Regarding FSM doing reviews for things like that, they do what most magazine publishers do. If you can’t say positive things about the product, then don’t run a review. That is to say if there is something in the review that would stop people from purchasing such as a gross out of scale such as this, then don’t run it. You can lose advertising dollars. Is it honorable? No. A magazine is a business though. It’s not the fault of the guys at the FSM office, they do the absolute best they can. Usher, Skinner, etc, they all have families to feed, and if they disobey the orders of the publisher, and cost advertising dollars by doing so, they can lose their jobs and their families go hungry. Which is quite likely in this economy. There are a few publishers who don’t particularly care if they report something bad about one of their advertisers. Although I don’t remember the name of the publisher, American Handgunner does this. The manufacturers who are also advertisers have had more then one product taken to task. Usually the issue gets fixed, but alot of companies in other businesses will instead of fixing the issue, will jus pull all advertising. For a company the size of Tamiya, which has alot of ad space in FSM, if they were to pull their ads, the price of the agazine would have to go up a significant enough of an amount where readership would drop, and it’s a downward spiral from there.
It’s best we keep the issues here, in the forum. This way FSM and Kalmbach can’t be held liable for a “bad review” and that allows them to keep bringing us the magazine, and keep the website and forum up for us. Now if we as a community say get together and create a form letter about the issues, and then everyone takes the time to send it in, then Tamiya will most likely fix the issue, as will most manufacturers.
Then they just oughtta quit reviewing kits altogether… You’re supposed to be working for your subscriber… But that’s another subject for another day… I’m not gonna go into it here…
Suffice to say that I wrote Tamiya USA, and they replied today, but it wasn’t much more than “thanks, we’ll pass it on to corporate.”… I don’t expect any changes in the near future…
That’s just a bummer man. Best you can do now or we can do is just get the word out, and get people to stop buying them. We need to send a stronger message with our dollars, by not purchasing the stuff that isn’t up to snuff.
Regarding the publishing and such, I agree with you 100% on what is supposed to be done. But in todays world of corporate politics and eternal greed…