The Lousiest Fitting, Most Poorly Molded kit you have ever Tried to build

[Eugene_Rowe]

[Trabi]

This:

https://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/4/t/190319.aspx

[8o|]

[Straycat1911]

The worst kit I’ve ever started(not sure if I’m ever gonna finish it) is the Collect-Aire 1/48 F-108 Rapier.

Last time I picked it up, the wing cracked at the join. (AGAIN!) It almost went out the second floor window at that point.

It currently sits on the Shelf of Doom and will likely be the absolute last kit on there that I finish.

[Omni_Yomni]

The worst fitting kit I ever tangled with was a Vampire in 1/48-don’t recall who made it. Glencoe, maybe? I bought it in a bag at a show, and it turned out to be a short fight because the thing came with two right side fuselage halves. Guess that qualifies as lousy fit. A shame, too. Had a really nice decal sheet.

[Eugene_Rowe]

Worse yet,what if a beginner buys one of those poor kits and thinks that he or she doesn’t have the skill to build them and gives up scale modeling entirely!That would really be bad!

[Tojo72]

I could never make the Hasegawa 1/48 Tomcat work,complete fail on my part.

[Straycat1911]

1. I tried that RPM Minenraumer too - a singularly terrible experience. I’ve never encountered a plastic that genuinely weird and awful to work with. I ended up in the garbage in short order.

2. I don’t celebrate a company going out of business but Kitty Hawk should have been ashamed of that first generation of kits they put out. I have no idea what their design philosophy was but “let’s not bother to ensure that anything in the kit fits together” wasn’t much of a business model to build a new company around. I tried their 1/48 MIG-25 PD/PDS Foxbat and it was a miserable experience from the beginning to then end when it ended up in the trash. Absolutely nothing fit right in the slightest. I’m not a rivet counter so inaccurate details don’t bother me too much. But someone producing a kit where almost all the fits were terrible bothers me a great deal. I’d like to think that Kitty Hawk could have gotten better but the contempt they obviously had for the buyers of that first generation of their kits indicated that going out of business was the only way they’d learn. Not much sense IMO in putting out new kits of subjects that have been ignored too much if the models turn out to be near-unbuildable even for experienced modelers.

3. Most of the old AMT Star Trek kits can really get under my skin. They’ve pushed a lot of those ancient molds for far too many years and really need to retire them. I tried the reboxing of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 refit recently and had trouble with it all the way through. Large distortions along the lenght nacelle seams that even a ton of putty couldn’t fix. The attachment points for the engine struts to sit in the engineering section were wildly off-level. The viewing port inserts along the rim of the saucer section all sunk inwards too much and needed lots of work to bring them level to the rim surface. AMT couldn’t even bother to mention that weights need to be added to the rear near the shuttlecraft bay to prevent the model from leaning forward due to the saucer section wildly out-weighing the aft portion of the ship. All it all it was unpleasant. I didn’t bother finishing it and am using it instead as a test bed for airbrush practice. I wish someone else would get in the game and produce some brand-new Star Trek models. AMT’s been complacent for far too long and they need someone to come along to give them a good kick in the pants to make them stop it with the ancient, inaccurate, and burnt-out molds they keep using to churn some of their kits out.

I have the Kitty Hawk 1/48 Russian airfield service trucks. They look nice in the box; hope they don’t give me too many fits.

Have you looked at the 1/350 Starship Enterprise refit by Polar Lights?

[Straycat1911]

I could never make the Hasegawa 1/48 Tomcat work,complete fail on my part.

Tojo, I’ve heard they modified the molds on the later kits to make them more user friendly. Only have one in the stash so I couldn’t tell you how much easier it is.(If at all).

[Tojo72]

Tojo72

I could never make the Hasegawa 1/48 Tomcat work,complete fail on my part.

Tojo, I’ve heard they modified the molds on the later kits to make them more user friendly. Only have one in the stash so I couldn’t tell you how much easier it is.(If at all).

Thanks,I recently completed a Tamiya Tomcat,much more fun.

[Real_G]

Aww you guys…

I challenge anyone to find more exquisite moldings than these, outside the realm of resin kits produced in caves, with fire heated plastic forced by hand into old rubber molds.

Mach 2. The best of the best of the best. With honors, sir.

[Rob_Gronovius]

The worst fitting kit I ever tangled with was a Vampire in 1/48-don’t recall who made it. Glencoe, maybe? I bought it in a bag at a show, and it turned out to be a short fight because the thing came with two right side fuselage halves. Guess that qualifies as lousy fit. A shame, too. Had a really nice decal sheet.

Glencoe was a company started by a modeler in Massachusetts that found and reissued a lot of ancient model kits made by companies long out of production back in the mid 90s.

These were kits that were going for a lot of money for partially built glue bombs on eBay. The decal sheets were by far the best parts of a lot of their kits. Very high quality.

[Monogram_Madness]

Worst I’ve ever done…easy. The revell 1:48 F4U Corsair. Not only did nothing fit, it didnt look correct once completed. Most of their “build a toy” kits were bad but this takes the cake.

i built it and gave it to my 5 year old to destroy. Absolute trash