I am thinking of building some 1/72 scale armor to kind of improve my airbrushing skills instead of something bigger and more expensive. Was curious who makes the best 1/72 scale kits? Airfix? Italeri? Revell?
Hello!
As always it depends on the subject. But if you insisted on one brand, I would say Dragon - some of their 1:72 offerings are just amazing. Again - a check on scalemates.com can’t hurt you.
Then again - airbrushing in 1:72 can be a really tricky exercise…
To ilustrate - here’s my Dragon Hanomag, airbrushed, too!
Good luck with your builds and have a nice day!
Paweł
“Best” is very subjective. Are you looking for most accurate best? Ease of assembly best? The first two are often at odds with one another. Retail price best? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Some companies go all out and try to replicate the parts count and engineering of larger scale kits into 1/72. Those may be beautifully detailed, but will have lots of tiny parts and may be frustrating in engineering, assembly, and quite pricey. If you’re looking for simple paint mules, you may want to stay with older, more basic kits.
Then what’s you’re preferred subject area? Generic WWII armor and you’re in luck, lots of choices. You prefer something more specialized such as current, WWI, or Cold War armor, and the choices drop off quite a bit. If you don’t care, and any tank will do, then you’re in luck.
Check out Scalemates for an idea of what’s out there, and links to reviews on those kits.
Revell makes very good 1/72 scale armor, but many of the kits in their range are old Esci kits from the 70s and 80s. They’ve also released some of Matchbox’s old 1/76 scale range of kits.
But, the “best” company doesn’t exist. The best company is the company that makes the best kit of the subject that you want.
One company might make the best Sherman, another the best Tiger, and a third the best Abrams. But if you like small scale esoteric kits, it might be an entirely different company.
Dragon makes some great kits and they make some dogs.
Google is your friend and many small scale modelers use the website http://www.onthewaymodels.com/ as the premier site for 1/72 scale modeling.
You gotta consider your limitations,they may not be an issue for you,but for me 1/72 armor can be really small depending on what you want to build. After building 1/35 and 1/48 armor for years,I found 1/72 for me to cumbersome and hard to handle because of its size,and it was a Paladin which isn’t a small vehicle,but for me the parts were so tiny in my hands.Again it may not be an issue for you,but something to think about.
I always share this photo when discussing the size of 1/72 scale armor. Notice the machine gun on the penny. It consists of three photo etched parts.
Over the years, I’ve built a collection of US tanks in 1:72.
(One of theses days I’ll learn how to insert an image here, but here’s an image link instead.)
Unfortunately, most of them were built long ago and I no longer remember which kit they are from. Here’s the one I do remember:
Trumpeter M26A1 - Excellent kit, hard tracks (which I prefer), good detail and fit.
Esci M60A3 - Pretty good for an older kit, hard track.
Hasegawa M24 - Pretty good, slightly better than the Esci M60
Airfix M551 - Not so great. Soft detail and poor fit. Crappy vinyl track.
RPM M1918 - Trash. Plastic so brittle that smaller parts often shatter when removed from sprue.