Hey all…
Ok, I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday looking for a new Tamiya Humvee kit to build for giggles. Of course, they didn’t have it, but I was amazed at the line of 1/35 Hobbycraft kits they had there. Challenger II, AS-90, M-1A1 with Plow, M2A2. Are these kits any good? Are they reboxes of someone else’s kits? Are they worth getting? I think I’m going to pick up the Tamiya M2 Bradley kit just for the interior and then rip apart the M2A2 I have to get the proper armor, etc for an OIF vehicle. Of course, this all depends on me finding time…
Off to PT!
Sounds like Trumpeter kits reboxed by Hobbycraft… They have done so with aircraft kits, so I would not be suprised to see the AFV kits getting the same treatment. One good thing to come out of this though is that some earlier AFV Trumpeter kits were molded in a plastic that would not glue with ‘normal’ polly glue. I’m sure Hobbycraft will use their usual plastic…
Hmm… price seems to be about the same as the Trumpeter kits… Maybe I’ll go for it!
Still wanna build that SF Humvee though. Its amazing the amount of crap they carry on those things!
Mmm… Those things are HUGE!
The HobbyCraft armour kits are all reboxed trumpeter kits. They’re not bad kits. Definitely not the flawless fit of Tamiya, but at an average of half the price, you can’t go wrong. The t-72 is a fairly old kit. It was first released under I forget which label (triangle, with sides representing stylized tank, airplane, and ship) at which point the Trumpeter logo came around, and they recently released the t-72. This is the same kit. Same as all of them, including all the M1 tanks. They’re not bad. I got the trumpeter m1a2. Haven’t built it yet (waiting for gb) but it doesn’t look like a bad kit.
When it come to bargin basement kits and Hbby Craft I know. Started building a few of them a couple months ago because i’m a newbie and didn’t want to spend big bucks and screw it up.
Yeah the Abrams with the mine plow is good [a reboxed Trumpeter] and comes with a little detail set of metal chains, nylon screening, and rubber tubing. I love mine. It’s not done because i’m going to use it in the group build but it as gone to gether nicely. I haven’t built the plow yet. It also comes with optional snorkel kit and two figs. The detail on the figs is a little soft but workable.
The HC Bradley is another story…[V]
It is a Tamiya copy with poor turret fit and the front drive wheels are too far back because of the motorization gimmics they added. I’m still working with it though and its coming out fine but it’s taken some work. All my comments and pics are right here… http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15151
“I also have several of the hummers. Here are my comments from an earlier post…
I just picked up a couple of the Hobby Craft Hummer “Liberators” [standard ‘fast back’ hard top with machine gun mount] from the Iraqi Freedom Line at Hobby Lobby for $6.49 [which may have been a pricing error on their part]. I mainly bought it to see it there was a diff between this kit and Hobby Craft “Commando” version in the same series. From what i can tell the only diff is that the Commando version has an extra sprue with the canvas top and a diff set of decals.The Liberator has decals for at least 3 versions though. I see no purpose in selling the two kits in different boxes. They just might as well add the decals and the last page of the Liberator instruction book [for the hard top] to the “Commando” kit. Where kit makers get their marketing ideas is beyond me!
Anyways, I bought these kits to make the whiteUN version that has been floating around in pics on the net. I keep hearing bad things about this companies armor [which I don’t doubt because I know jack about armor] but as far as I can tell I see no problem with the Hummers. I’ll admit I have yet to build the tamiya Hummer [I don’t have $35 bucks to blow on a hummer] but I have bult the Italeri Avenger and I feel that the HC kit ranks just below it. The plastic quality and sharpness isn’t as high as the Italeri but you get pretty much the same result when you are dome. I only noted two bits of flash in the whole kit.
But just a word of warning about the so-called “Commando Hummer”. The box art is misleading. It depicts what appears to be a hard top with a box-shaped rear and clearly displays a machine mount [I believe a .50 cal] on the roof. However, in the box all you get is a standard square canvas top [which of course you cannot mount a machine gun on] and an optional standard slanted hard top with machine gun mount and optional .50 cal or M60 machine gun. It appears they just “doctored” the box art for the standard “Liberator” Hummer by coloring in the slanted portion so that it looks like a boxed hard top but didn’t bother to “erase” the machine gun mounted on top. Go figure…”
So to make a long story longer I have three of their kits [Abrams w/t plows, Bradley, Hummer Liberator, hummer Commando. The only probs i had with the hummers was that the suspention fit required some very minor “adjusting” with an Xacto knife and the rubber tires have no tread. Odd thing is the tires still look more like Hummer tires than either of the “donut” tires you get with the Italeri or any of the older kits. So NONE of the kits have correct tires but the NEW Tamiya kit. The tamiya has correct tire size and shape and the new style mirrors and a gazillion extra details which of course that is what you are paying for when you get a Tamiya. I just don’t have 40 bucks to blow on one Hummer kit. Long winded but I hope this helps!lol
WOW!!! Fantastic! Thanks very much MGM!
I’ve got a Trumpeter M-1A1HA and I could definitely use another!
Hobby Craft has two diff Abrams. One with the mine plows and one without. I have no idea what the diff is between the two or if there is one so be aware of this fact. The one with out the plows could be the same kit without the sprue with the plows or something completely diff. Hobby Lobby has onliine coupons every week and every so oftem they have a “1/2 off plastic model kits” coupon. This how I bought mine. That way if I bought a “lemon” I wasn’t out of a lot of money. Also if you want to buy one the Tamiya kits this is the time to do it when you don’t have the scratch (or when you suspect the missus is watching your model spending budget!LOL[:p]). My Hobby Lobby sadly doesn’t carry the Tamiya Hummer yet.[V] But I’m hopful because I’m not forking over the $40 to my local overpriced hobby shop!lol