Their kits can range from really bad to decent. The 1/48th Corsair is a gem, but Tamiya has a bunch of 1/48th Corsairs so there’s no really good reason to get the HC ones.
HC probably has some sort of licensing deal with Trumpeter with packaging their plastic. HC is also sueing Academy on some kits. Seems like the company HC sourced to make the plastic also shipped Academy the same thing.
Hi
Hobbycraft is definitely not ‘worthless’. I find the notion of any kit being worthless absurd. THeir aircraft kits are decent, I"ve built a few of them, and they’re on par with monogram and testors kits, so that’ll tell you much. Definitely not Tamiya quality, but as tigerman said, you get what you pay for. They’re fairly accurate in their overall shape and detail, but will need some basic improvements. If you build straight OOB, they’ll build into fair representations of their topics.
As for their armour, most of it that you can find on the shelf today are reboxed Trumpeter kits, most notably their t-72 (which is a fairly old tooling) and the M1 Abrams. Not the same for their Bradley, which I’ve heard is pretty crappy in quiality. Give it a try, they’re really not all that bad. At an average of half the price of Tamiya and Hasegawa kits, you can buy two HC for one Tamiya or Hasegawa.
I built HC twin mustang, and it was…painful, lots of work for an average model. That being said I am sure a better modeller could have done a better job.
I guess it boils down to how much of a ‘challenge’ your up to.