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In-Box Review
135
Sd.Kfz.9 18 ton Heavy Halftrack

by: Karl Nualla [ FRITZ ]

For a quite long time I have been trying to grab one of these after reading reviews from the internet all of which are positive. After more than 1 year I finally got it (I got this kit as a reward from my dad in exchange for a favor). This kit is inside a full, heavy, & big box w/ corrugated cardboard as the container instead of the usual thin grey cardboard material. Everything inside is excellent.

 

In the Box
Upon opening the box, you get 10 tan-colored sprues for the main body & figures & 3 brownish gray-colored sprues for the individual link tracks; the main chassis in a separate bag; a bag of goodies containing a 5 foot long length of string for the tow cable (although you will only need 21 inches or so), a sheet of transparency for the windows, polycaps, & 3 tires w/ realistic tread patterns; & a 20 page instruction booklet.

 

The Parts
As expected all parts of this kit are new & very well engineered, well up to Tamiya's modern standards. There is absolutely no flash except for the figures but pretty much minor & nothing that a bit of trimming & sanding can't fix. There are ejection pin marks but they are so inevident that you would only see them if you will put a light in front of them plus the pin marks are all in the underside of the flatbed & passenger compartment w/c most probably won't be seen after assembly. Seams here are minimal w/ only the joint in the fuel tank to be put in consideration.

 

Assembly
The assembly is very straight forward. I made 5 subassemblies namely: the chassis, wheels & tracks, flatbed, passenger compartment, & the engine. There are no misfits & any other problems. Although there are minor warpages that quite distorted the fit but as I said, just minor. As I also said above, the only seam to be put into consideration is just the joint on the two halves of the fuel tank. Many would think that by just looking at the size of this model, it would take some time to assemble it right?....Wrong! it actually just took me 14 hrs (excluding figures) to build but I didn't rush! No, no, not with this impressive kit.

SUMMARY
  DETAIL:90%
  FIT:90%
  MOVING PARTS (HEY!):50%
Percentage Rating
90%
  Scale: 1:35
  Mfg. ID: 35239
  Related Link: Tamiya FAMO
  PUBLISHED: Sep 14, 2003
  NATIONALITY: United States
NETWORK-WIDE AVERAGE RATINGS
  THIS REVIEWER: 90.00%
  MAKER/PUBLISHER: 83.24%

About Karl Nualla (Fritz)
FROM: METRO MANILA, PHILIPPINES

I've been building models seriously for around 10 years now. Started off with all sorts of models until I settled for armor kits (mostly 1/35). I did so because they were not too demanding on a starter that I was back then. Then around late 2007 I just felt like converting to cars and sci-fi, maybe ...

Copyright ©2021 text by Karl Nualla [ FRITZ ]. All rights reserved.


   
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