January 8, 2019

Meng 1:48
Tiger I

A closer look at the Tiger I in 1:48 produced by the Chinese manufacturer Meng Models. This kit comes from their World War Toons range, which contains models from the videogame "World War Toons".
Last year I built the King Tiger from this range and had a little foresight about the quality of this kit. A nice feature of all these kits is, that they can be build without using glue.

Let us take a look of the parts which were in this nice looking, satin-matte finished box, but please note, this time I made pictures only of the front sides of the sprues.

The first sprue contains parts from the hull and the turret. The quality of the cast is almost perfect. There are no ejectormarks on the front side of the parts.

Next is the upper part of the hull, also nicely made without any flaws. Just to give you an impression of the distorted proportions of this tank, this part is roughly 9,5 x 8,5 cm wide.

Another sprue which is included contains most of the other needed parts to finish the hull and the turret. As mentioned before, the quality of the parts is fine.
There are neither sinkholes nor mouldlines but I was sceptic about the splitted barrel, how it would look when I had finished it.

The last sprue contained in this box is included twice and has all parts for the running gear and the last missing parts for hull and turret. Pretty nice just as the rest of the kit.

And then there are the tracks, flexible but pretty sturdy rubber or PVC pieces with details on the outer side but no details on the inside. As with the barrel, this tracks did not convince me, I was remembering my King Tiger built, where I broke one of the roadwheels while applying them and had to reattach it.
The small sprue on the right is also made from some flexible material, these rings keep the running gear movable if you choose not to use glue on this kit.


Last but not least there are the decals, with sharp edges and a precise color gradiant, but I will not use them since my sparebook containsa good choice of decals which I may use.

Overall, this is a decent kit, with great details and no flaws except for the track and the barrel, but these issuals are my personal opinion
Another time I was surprised by the quality and the grade of details on this kit, for a fastbuilding kit which did not needed to be glued, this kit is GREAT.

This kit was build with no problems and building this kit made a lot of fun. Now it sits on my desk, already primed and is waiting for me to finish this post, then it is time to give this thing its first coat of color.

Update:
Just a quick shot made with the mobile:


-

There is one final closer look at something left that will come online in the next days, as a small hint, a crazy www2 kit is incoming. I made the decision to give some kits from my collection and all new kits which I acquire from now on some closer looks.

No comments: