"Lee vs. Academy Modern Jets?" Topic

Just curious about the quality between these two.

I've never heard of "Lee" models before, but presume they may be a rebranded, and/or copy of either the Academy or ARII kits.

I seem to have the impression from back in the day, for WWII planes, that the Academy kits were identical to the ARII ones as well, with perhaps slight differences in decals for either the latter, and/or the Lee models. I recall one of them had really, really, poorly made decals to the point of them being very inferior, and unusable, which in order to fix, required the purchase of secondary market decals, negating the savings of the model in the first place.

Anyone know if the above is true, or am I off-base?

I'd prefer to get low cost kits, but would like them to at least have the general shape of the originals, instead of being caricatures of them.

I haven't heard of Lee in a long, long time. IIRC Lee was a knock off company out of China, so whatever they have is not a rebox, but a copy of someone else's kits, with all the inferiority that came with it.

Academy did much of the same. I don't know a lot about their aircraft line, but I do know some of their early kits were copies (sometimes with minor improvements) of Tamiya kits. ISTR the Academy MiG-23 kit is a copy of the Hasegawa MiG-23 but with recessed panel lines (the Hasegawa kit had problems beyond that, IIRC).

That being said, much of what Academy sells now are mostly original kits. I just finised an F6F-5, which was quite good with good decals, & have a P-47D here as well. So it really depends on what "generation" you are looking at, but if you go with the recent stuff, it is good.

Damon.

Never heard of Lee, but Academy is a major player. It's the "Tamiya" of South Korea.

China makes quality kits now with big name manufacturers like Dragon, Trumpeter, Meng and Hobby Boss.