"Worst kit ever?" Topic

Been trying to get hold of the 1/144 Dragon kit for 38(t) tank for ages. Finally managed to buy 4 lots of the 38(t) and Panzer IV AusfD set on Ebay. Started to put the 38(t) together this afternoon. What an awful kit. For some reason they decided to make the track assemly in a flexible material. This means that (a) it's hard to bond it to the subchassis, which is polystyrene type plastic, and (b) the track bits are curved and need clamping along their whole length to get them to stick without curving. The definition of the parts is terrible; there is loads of flash and moulding stubs. To add insult to injury, when I tried to cut the main gun from the sprue, it pinged off into the darkest recesses of my hobby room and I still haven't found it. Overall it is the worst kit I have ever tried to put together in neraly 60 years of kitbuilding. I had a quick look at the PzIV in the same box-it looks just as bad. I have built loads of Tigers in 1/144 from the cando/dragon kits and they were a dream to put together. What has gone wrong. I paid about £8.00 GBP a piece for the sets and I reckon it is money down the drain-should have bought Arrowhead miniatures or Pithead's version instead.

Even better, there was at least 1 batch of the 38(t) that had the main gun from the Panzer III instead of the correct 1. I bought 4 packs of that batch. Took me a while to figure that one out and how to modify it to look right.

Are you asking or telling?

If asking then my vote goes to the Military Wheels 1/72 VW Type 93 with ambulance body and trailer. I've been making plastic kits for over 50 years. Heck, I've made an Airfix Churchill, so I've earned my spurs. I could not complete the VW Type 93. Shame, because the box art was so good.

Sounds like the trouble I used to get sticking the Airfix Panther together, they always lost wheels when attaching the tracks and the barrel of the 75mm gun always bent or broke!

ESCI 3/4 ton GMC truck. So much unnecessary detail. A far cry from the new fast build kits!

Airfix Churchill, is the worst, lots of little road wheels. Track covers that never fit properly. Turret that does not go together well. A nightmare really.

ACE Kit of SD KFZ 69 towing truck. Had to build 3 and never EVER wish to go through that again.

Anything made by a company called RPM -worst models ever!The problems I encountered were: 1.Overly complicated instructions 2. the parts were not numbered 3. Parts did not fit 4. cheap plastic broke if you just looked at it the wrong way. I bought three models in a lot an FT-17, FT-17 command tank and a WW1 Mac AC truck -they all had the same problems. I will never buy another RPM model again!

wrgmr1,

Indeed. The turret on the Airfix Churchill is also plain wrong!

I've built quite a few Churchills. Fiddly, yes. Worst kit in the world? Not by a long chalk.

Any 6pdr A/T gun in 1/72nd. kit

Well the kits I avoid are ACE and Military Wheels. Any Eastern European kit I would buy with caution until I have seen a review. The best of the Eastern European bunch are probably UM, which in the main are quite decent kits .

Airfix are easy peasy :)

Yes, I was trying to recall what was actually the worst kit I'd ever built. Anything made of white metal with lots of little parts is usually fairly nightmarish, particularly if they don't have any instructions.

Two recent candidates spring to mind, one was an east european (can't recall the manufacturer) 1/72nd scale K18 gun which must have had, ooh, 200 parts? Even the breech block was in multiple parts, and of course everything was covered in flash and the parts didn't fit well. It was more fiddly and tedious than anything else.

The other was a card model Schneider CA-1 (there weren't any proper ones available for much less than 25 quid, at the time). That really was nightmarish, must have taken me two weeks. I did get it together in the end, but it was hardly worth it and the gun still fall off all the time. Perhaps I'll replace it with a Lancer one at some point….

Oh the horror….I'm still undergoing therapy after getting too close to one of those RPM FT-17 kits, however if you do make it, it's a useful item. Therefore my vote goes to the Airfix German armored car which, once assembled is completely wrong!

(Dis)Honorable mention goes to the Eastern Express T.34/76 (road wheels with no axles or locating holes, just a conical nub of plastic in the center of the wheel), and the Katyusha rocket launcher where the instructions only bear a passing similarity to most of the parts.

A dreadful experience with one of those Eastern European/Russian kits of a Katyusha rocket launcher. Instructions useless, fit of parts nightmarish – I ended up replacing some of the spindly tubular launch frame supports with wire and rod.

Swore I'd never do another. And then, of course, I did, to complete the battery.

Surely the answer is… "Anything made by ACE".

They do some exotic subjects in their 'Carve Your Own' range.

Unkind but true Mr P :)

I passed an ACE kit onto my kit builder friend who builds for me when I am busy painting .He nearly through it at me the next time I saw him and he did a decent job of building it ( Soviet Staff Car)
When if send him kits to build he always checks them first for dodgy Eastern European kits with the exception of UM .

Second the 'any Ace kit'….( lol-carve your own)…..closely followed by Revell Humvees……the plastic was so brittle that the axles 'shattered' getting them off the sprue…..did 'finish' the ambulance…..the other is still in the box.

Until you have built a vacform kit you can't really call yourself a modeller. Having to cut out all the parts from the vacform sheet before you start then sand them down until they were right – constant checking with the plans needed. Sometimes the plastic was so thin that you had to fill it with putty first. Hours of endless fun – not!

I'd like to defend the "Eastern European"s by pointing out I put together a Zvezda Sdkfz 222 yesterday in 1-100 (15mm) and it was stunning, fit like a glove and the detailing was brilliant

I'm going to second PilGrim. I just built three Tiger I models:
- Early prod. by Zvezda – a superb and incredibly fun build (despite my own gross incompetence). The design and fit of this kit (and the Zveda Panther I recently built) are, to my mind, superlative.
- Mid prod. by Trumpeter – excellent in many ways. But not as good the Zvezda.
- Late prod. by Dragon. like the Trumpeter , excellent in some areas, but … Not as good as the Zvezda.

I've also really enjoyed building models by Attack and Ace. Challenging in places, but overall fun and rewarding.

To re-align the acus of criticism, and bring it closer to home (to me: England/UK)The most painful and nearly joyless build (well, I seem to always enjoy model building, even when I screw up – as long as I can rescue it) of late was a Milicast RSO/1.

It made the Ace RSO (with it's very fiddly photo-etched tracks) looked positively Olympean. The crudeness of the Milicast running gear (inc. parts where the resin didn't seem to have mixed properly), and the terribly ill-fitting parts – talk about carve your own; that's exactly what several parts of this kit required – well, it was hard going.

And the Airfix Stugs dad and I recently built… they were pretty awful! The Ace Wespe I'm putting together now fits better and required less cleaning up. So let's not bash 'East Europeans' unduly. I for one love the passion the guys there put into making all sorts of obscure models available.

A recent Special Armour Nebelkraftwagen was rather challenging. And another one lurks in its box, as yet unmade… The 1st was tricky and had its problems, but I salute Special Armour for getting the model into the market. I won't rush into the second one just yet tho'!

Catastrophic fails make good wrecks. Better than pitching them in the trash.

I just built an Airfix Centurian. When they designed these kits, they intended to have freely moving tracks and wheels, rotating and elevating turrets and guns. The vinyl tracks don't work for this, didn't work on die cast models very well either. I see what they were trying to do but the materials didn't meet the design, just impractical. To build Airfix, glue everything, let it dry, then proceed. Do the big assemblies first, add the small stuff after the big assembles are solid. Also, never 'fuse' the tracks. Just staple them together and place the staples where they won't be noticed. After a few years the vinyl shrinks and constricts.

I just built an Airfix Centurian. When they designed these kits, they intended to have freely moving tracks and wheels ………

I don't think that was the case. Granted the instructions indicate not to glue the inner idler, drive sprocket and road wheels. But how are the tracks going to move when all the outside versions of those parts are glued to the axles, especially the drive sprocket?

The worst kit I ever built was the T-26 by {Pegasus? or UM, one of the two}. The sheer number of parts for the suspension was ridiculous and the use of brass made the kit more difficult and was unecessary. Half my drive wheels are wrong (I bought a full company of 10 tanks). I did buy an ACE halftrack tractor with an AA gun on it, replaced the tracks with wheels because they looked impossible.

wrgmr1 wrote:

Airfix Churchill, is the worst, lots of little road wheels.

The wheels and the axles of the Airfix Churchill are moulded in such a way that you can glue the former into the latter before you take any of them off the sprues. They are aligned exactly. So in effect you glue the sprues together, and then when dry, you cut the completed bogie assemblies off the sprue and fit them, perfectly aligned, to the tank. Genius.

See this build thread for details:
link

Randall wrote:

I just built an Airfix Centurian. When they designed these kits, they intended to have freely moving tracks and wheels, rotating and elevating turrets and guns. The vinyl tracks don't work for this

I once got the wheels and tracks on an Airfix Stug III to work. It can be done, although the mystery is why.

number4 wrote:

my vote goes to the Airfix German armored car which, once assembled is completely wrong!

Yes and no. The Airfix armoured car was based an actual extant example. Unfortunately the example was a beaten up /4 restored by REME apprentices in about 1946. It was missing its mudguards, so they looked at photos of a 232, assumed it was the same and duly fabricated the wrong style of mudguards, which Airfix faithfully copied. So it is, in fact, an accurate-ish rendition of an actual vehicle – it's the actual vehicle that's wrong!

They did the same with their 1/72 Fairey Battle bomber kit, which was based off actual Fairey manufacturing blueprints of a prototype version that was not the one put into production and service.

Likewise the Airfix Panther is a fairly faithful copy of the one on display at Houffalize in Belgium.

That specimen was captured in a burnt-out condition and cleaned up for display, collapsed suspension and all – faithfully reproduced in the Airfix kit.

I just finished a pair of Esci Sdkfz 250 half tracks which are guaranteed to raise the blood pressure several notches. Naturally, the tracks are too short, but here PSC came to the rescue with some spare links included with all the goodies in their Hanomag set

Most dangerous thing in the German Army: a Leutnant with a map….

"Well by mein reckoning this road should take us to the dining room"