I am asking for information mostly because the Toy Star would be ( relatively ) much more affordable than a Tamiya kit that would cost, with tax , more than $230 ( IIRC - the shop has a price of at least $220 on the Tamiya box ) vs. a Toy Star at $100 with tax.
I also recall seeing somewhere that the Tamiya kit may be of the prototype while the Toy Star box at my LHS lists the tank as a Mark II.
I built the Tamiya kit back in 1980. I think it represents a prototype, but I am not an expert on British MBTs. The tracks were indie link, molded from a semi-flexible material that snap assembled very easily. The only tedious part was attaching the separate track pads and using a heated screwdriver to melt the pins! I was kind of disappointed that the 1/25 kit didn’t represent a Mk V, but the kit went together without any fuss.
Wow, $230 for the Tamiya kit? I think I paid something like $18 way back when.
Wow, indeed.
Both for the kit price of $230 [:'(]( and probably more - don’t recall exactly)
and
the heated screw driver technique ! [:O]
I remember doing that procedure as part of plastic airplane assembly to ensure that the wheels rotate per manufacturer instructions.
Bet the corporate lawyers don’t let them put that in the instructions anymore…[whstl]
BTW…I have an old Squadron Shop mail order advertisement from 1973 listing the 1/25 Tiger I at $15 and the Panther V / Jagdpanther at $14[:S]
Actually, mine didn’t cost me anything. My uncle took me to a pachinko parlor (even though I was underage) and I got all my “mad money” from that one night! Of course, the exchange rate was something like 240 Yen to the Dollar back then. It was great being in Japan with a wad of money burning a hole in my pocket - Tamiya kits were everywhere and dirt cheap!
Of course now everything has changed; the exchange rate is lower, the base prices are higher, and the pachinko parlors have made it harder to win. [:(]
I built the 1/35th Tamiya version waaay back with my pop, still survives as a ‘range target’ with disintegrated rubber-band tracks>
Let’s just say that it (& this copy) represents the Prototype Configuration, with boxes & splash plates to disguise the nose.
This kit is also older than I am & I got grand-kids!
Sooo, if you want to spend your hard-earned on a 1st generation kit that’s more toy than model.
There are other vendors that offer all sorts of panzers & Shermies, M26’s (NOT Snow-Lepoard), Leo 2’s, etc., all with radio-control, with either pellet or infra-red battle systems for a lot less Dollar!
Thanks for the post.Jon_a_its.
I realize the Toy Star kit is a copy of this .
Buying the Tamiya version is out of the question due to price.
Also, I don’t intend to buy any kit unless i have a good idea what it looks like.
( The primary reason for posting this inquiry )
I do realize that 1/24 RC toy tanks ( Chieftain ? ) exist which may be able to modified for static use but I don’t see any sense in buying an RC tank only to tear out the electronic components.
In any case, the RC tanks I have seen cost much, much more than $90 and are closer to the cost of the Tamiya re-issue.
My interest is simply due to the Chieftain kit being 1/25 scale and would be in scale with my auto builds and 1/25 WWII tanks.
.
.
BTW, you mention vendors sell much nicer RC tanks for a lot less.
Who sells accurate 1/24th or 1/25th scale RC tanks for less than $90.00 ? [:O]
If you know of websites for these vendors, please post them so I can take a look.
Thanks.
As I’ve been unable to locate more info on the 1/25 Toy Star Chieftain and you don’t have an alternative source of accurate `1/24 or 1/25 RC armor for under $100, I will pass on buying a kit. I don’t intend to spend that kind of cash without knowing more about it.
The Tamiya’s original mold for this 1/25 chieftain was tooled in 1967. Tamiya contined this product up to 1980’s, and I strongly believed that Tamiya sold the mold to the Korean toystar. So the same product reappeared in the markert more than ten years ago by toystar. Some modelers often regard the toystar 1/25 chieftain to be a copy of the original Tamiya one. But if you really had got an old Tamiya kit in 1970’s, and then got the toystar kit in 1980’s, just like me, you can compare the old Tamiya kit with that of toystar. I find evidences from the tank hull, road wheel, and the side skirt that, the toystar is not a copy of Tamiya’s, but just used the old mold to produce the same product. Today I buy the Tamiya reissued 1/25 chieftain and carefully examine the tank hull, road wheel and the side skirt, the findings are: Tamiya not produces this classical kit with the original old mold, instead, the kit is produced with a new-tooled mold.
You may feel curious that why Tamiya uses its modern tooling technique to produce an old classical kit? and what are the evidences told from the tank hull, road wheel and the side skirt helped to discriminate toystar use the old original mold to produce its kit? A story to be continued…
Thank you for that interesting information about the Tamiya and Toy Star 1/25 Chieftan kits. [:D]
It is puzzling that the Toy Star kit would show, if I understand correctly, differences in the tank hull, road wheel and the side skirt compared to the original Tamiya kit.
Also, very puzzling that the current issue Tamiya kit would appear to be a re-tooled version of the original kit when Tamiya could have updated the model to a later Chieftain version.[^o)]
Thank you for the information !
The Toy Star box also displays 1/25 Toy Star versions of the T-34 and Su-100 kits
along with a 1/32 scale M-1 Abrams
I am even more tempted to buy the current issue Tamiya and old Toy Star kits so I may compare them.
Perhaps I will find them at a swap meet some day for a more affordable price.
Many modelers would often misunderstand that a model kit is just produced by a set of injection molds only. Concerning the Tamiya kits, I have many experiences (evidences) that they use more than one set of molds to produce the same kit. One example is the 1/35 Churchill Crocodile tank issued in 1977. I bought one which belonged to the first batch of production. I found two faults: the tank commander, the one holding war map with his right hand, appeared too short in 1/35 scale; the side plates had wrong pin position so that they could not be attached to the road wheel suspensions, by aligning the pins with holes on the suspensions. About one year later, I bought another box of the same kit. What makes me surprised is that the two faults were corrected. The tank commander grew bigger, looked good fit to 1/35. Also, some of the pins on the side plates were removed, and some of the holes on the suspensions were filled, so the remaining pins and holes can be aligned accurately. Today, the trace of these faults and corrections still remains in the kit.
Another example is the 1/25 tiger I kit. I bought two boxes in 1980’s. I compared the track links carefully. I found from the “alphabet” imprinted on the link back and the position of sprue cut-off, that the track links were produced by at least two different sets of mold.
So, I won’t doubt that, the Tamiya’s 1/25 chieftain tank would be produced by one or more set of mold from 1967 to 1980. However, three evidences can convince me to believe that the Toystar would be using the oldest mold tooled in 1967 to produce their chieftain kit. One evidence is that I bought one Tamiya’s 1/25 chieftain in the early 1970’s, two faults were found: the left side skirt and the right side skirt had different geometric shape near the frontal track cover; and some parts of the road wheel were punched through by the mold pin. Today the same faults were also found in the Toystar kit. The second evidence can be found from today Toystar kit is that: near the engine cover of the upper tank hull, you can find some cloud-like bas-relief. These are rust-etching effect engraved on the steel mold after cleaning with solvent. It means that the Toystar’s mold had not been used for a very long time (tens of years), got rusted, and then cleaned to be reused again. The third evidence from today Toystar’s kit is: the company stencil located on the underside of the tank hull was latched out. If the Toystar would make a copy of the Tamiya’s kit, it would be clumsy to imprint the company stencil on the part and then lathed them out. The possible explain is that Tamiya sold the oldest mold to Korean company many years, and the company stencil was latched out either by Tamiya beforehand or by Toystar aftermath.
If you are careful enough, you can found that the Toystar’s kit is not produced by the whole complete set of the oldest mold. One evidence is the lower part of the turret, it is produced by a new-tooled mold. This means that some of the mold for this original old kit was unusable or missed, and this probably explains why Tamiya sold them out and re-tooled new mold in current issue.
Why Tamiya spent such a lot of effort on resurrecting the classic 1/25 tank series? This is another story about the company philosophy, which needed to be continued…
I remember hearing similar stories about old molds produced by model companies in the USA; rust damage caused by improper storage made re-issuing some kits impossible.[^o)]
