The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Here's mine...

Good: Dragon's Elephant (not the one with magic tracks... single run!)

Bad: Revell's 1/485th scale (don't even know if i'm right about the scale...) U.S.S. Missouri 

Ugly: This really old kit from the 70's by some early Russian manufacturer of a 1/35th scale T34/85, (actully looks a bit bigger than 1/35th...)

the good:  got to say the revell/monogram p-40b, p-51d, and b-17g.  for the price you cant beat something you can cut, reshape, and just plain play with.

the bad:  I believe it was an icm (not sure of that) p-51.  the gaps for the wings were horrific.  the overall fit was nightmerish. 

the ugly:  just about all my finished work, i know i am my own worst critic but i have yet to turn out a build that i looked at and said that it passes the eye test for me.

joe

The Good: Dragon's Jagdtiger Premium. Great fit and my best build to date.

The Bad: Those super tiny links on my Bronco H-39 kit that shortened and then broke on me after they were dry.

The Ugly: Mirage German armored car. Thank goodness it was given to me. Tons of flash and nightmare to clean and assemble. Part of the molding was missing on one piece. Still haven't and may never finish it.

The Good: Revell PV-1 Ventura. Interesting subject, solid detail and excellent fit at a good price. 

The Bad: Monogram Dauntless. 

The Ugly: Lindberg F7U-1 Cutlass. Dear god awful. 

Good:

Tamiya 1/48 P-47D Bubbletop - loving it!

Bad:

Hasegawa 1/72 TBM-3 Avenger - the kit itself was great and i loved building it and, to be honest, it turne out quite nicely.  The bad was my attempts at weathering paint chips - i waaaay overdid it, and ended up ruining what was one of my best builds at the time. 

Ugly:

The cheap 1970s molding range of 1/72 Hasegawa kits, including the A-4F(?) Skyhawk, A-7 and A-6.  Really cheap, poor fit, lacking detail.  If i had more skill and patience, maybe i could have built them better, but they are kits i don't ever plan on wasting money on again.

Good: 1/48 Revellogram B-26 marauder. honestly, not a super awesome kit, but i loke the look of the B-26 and with very little work (barring interior detailing) it gives you a great built that will occupy you for quite  a while for around 25 bucks.

Bad: Testors WWII fighters in 1/48 (Mustang and Thunderbolt) their 1/72 fighters are pretty good IMHO, but their 1/48 has everything but detail.

Ugly: some of the old "dirt track stocker" kits...they may be AMT reboxes, but ugh they are terrible.

Good...Accurate Miniatures 1/48 TBF

Bad....Modelcrafts 1/48 F-82

Ugly.... Try anything from "StarFix"........BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'll talk about three kits I built around the same time, 1999-2000 time frame.

The Good: Tamiya's Leopard 2A5, one of a new breed of their modern armor kits. At the time, probably the best modern tank model kit available.

The Bad: Trumpeter's M60A1/A3 tank kit. They were new to the scene and this kit was a blatant, albeit poor, copy of the Academy and Tamiya M60A1/A3 series kit. The model looked like it was made from a wax mold of the original kits that was left under a heat lamp. It even used copies of the Tamiya instruction sheet pointing out the placement of Tamiya parts that Trumpeter molded in place. Add to it the permanently fixed motorized gearbox and this kit was destined to be airbrush target practice.

The Ugly: Zvezda T-60 light tank, designed and released before the collaspe of the USSR, it was their first model tank kit. An horror to build consisting of mainly flat, ill-fitting slaps of green plastic, you could probably build a better version with strips of sheet styrene cut out with scissors.

The good: the new tooled Monogram and Revell kits, reasonable prices for quite good fitting aircraft

The bad: Indeed, with Doogs on this one, The monogram Dauntless... just a lot of old Monorgram kits (not all of them, but still, a lot)
Also the hobbycraft F4U Corsair, cool shemes and all, but god the overall fit is downright painfull!
Cracks and holes anywhere, and the wings won't line up with the fuselage at all!

The Ugly: Planes with raised panel lines on places they don't belong!

Good- Revell's 1/32 Hawker Hunter FGA.9. Engineering, fit, and detail OOB are simply stunning.

Bad- Maquette T-34/76 STZ. Poor fit, engineering, lots of effort required (and an AM turret for a proper STZ     T-34), but with persistance and patience in liberal amounts, it is possible to make a decent build

Ugly- Lindberg 1/32 M46 Patton. In a vain attempt to replicate an old FSM article on how to have a 1/35 M26 Pershing, I bought one and followed the article. I dont know how the author of the FSM article did it. Even as a M46 it is horrid. The only kit I ever pitched before completion. Thank God Dragon released their T26E3.

Here's my Good, Bad and Ugly models...

The Good:

Any 1/72 scale Dragon armor model (except for their metal hulled ones which I've never bought and built). This particular one is Dragon's 1/72 scale Panther G done up to look like Cuckoo. I especially love how Dragon was the first company to actually mold on the Zimmeritt:

The Bad:

Maquette's 1/72 scale C-75 Stratoliner. Molded so bad you couldn't tell model from flash! The fuselage seam had so much flash on it I felt I needed a belt sander to grind it down. No window were provided for the sides so I had to use Testor's Clear Parts cement and Window Maker to fill them in. The fit of the wings were atrocious, requiring 1/8" plastic sheet to fill the gaps between wings and fuselage. It's amazing a halfway decent looking model came out of this. I always describe this as building the kit and then carving the model out of the assembled block of plastic:

The Ugly:

Armageddon's 1/72 scale Panzerzeug BP-44 German armored train. With thirteen cars of pure ugliness, this kit made the Stratoliner look like one of Tamiya's finest! Molded so bad you couldn't tell where the part ended and mold began. On top of that, the detail was molded so softly, you couldn't tell what was detail and what was just pits in the surface of the mold! Overly thick parts were warped pretty badly; one assembled car I had to stir around in boiling water and clamp between two boards to get it to straighten out! Took me a year and a half to finish (not including down time) and at least two large bottles of gap-filling CA glue to fill the gaps on this model. I won't go into the metal parts that went on this thing....

Those are my Good, Bad and Ugly models. This was an awesome Thread, thanks Reasoned for starting it!

Well since I've just gotten back into the hobby I don't have a lot to go on.

Good- Bronco 1/48 MQ-1 Predator. Easy quick build.

Bad- Italeri 1/48 MV-22 Osprey. Lacking in detail inside. Not quite accurate. Decals are for a pre-production airframe. Pain in the butt build.

Ugly- Revell 1/48 F-14A Tomcat. LAWN DART!!!! The whole kit is horrible. Nuff said.

TheWildChild

Bad: Testors WWII fighters in 1/48 (Mustang and Thunderbolt) their 1/72 fighters are pretty good IMHO, but their 1/48 has everything but detail.

Re-pops of ancient Hawk kits, originally issued with chrome plating; those kits where IT back in the day! LOL

Duke Maddog

Here's my Good, Bad and Ugly models...

 

The Good:

Any 1/72 scale Dragon armor model (except for their metal hulled ones which I've never bought and built). This particular one is Dragon's 1/72 scale Panther G done up to look like Cuckoo. I especially love how Dragon was the first company to actually mold on the Zimmeritt:

 

Mark, good to see you again. I hate to say it, but your barrel is 90 degrees off.

Duke Maddog

Any 1/72 scale Dragon armor model (except for their metal hulled ones which I've never bought and built). This particular one is Dragon's 1/72 scale Panther G done up to look like Cuckoo. I especially love how Dragon was the first company to actually mold on the Zimmeritt:

No, Dragon wasn't the first. Aurora issued a retool of their 1/48th scale Panther back in the 1970s with zimmerit molded onto the surfaces. Monogram reissued that kit in the 1980s along with their P-51 Mustang in a display base made to look like the tank was getting strafed (they also reissed the Aurora M4A3E8 in a similar scene with an attacking Fw-190).

In 1/72 scale, AMC Models released a Bergetiger and Sturmtiger both with molded on zimmerit way back in 2001, several years before Dragon entered 1/72 scale armor.
http://www.internetmodeler.com/2001/march/first-looks/amc_bergepanzer.htm 

I've built a couple of Dragon's metal hulled kits; one is falling apart, the other is just fine. The Panther G's front hull is beginning to crumble and separate at the seam. The Sturmtiger is doing just fine and looks like it did the day it was built. Both sit inches away from one another, untouched in a glass display cabinet.

I do recommend avoiding the metal hull kits. I started an AAV7A1 with metal hull but set it aside when Dragon released the all-plastic version.

Yes, but I think Monogram was the first to mold on Zimmerit. It was on their 1/32 Jagdpanzer IV and Sturmpanzer IV kits. Back around '74 or so.

You're right, Monogram did issue those kits with zimmerit surfaces. My book shows they were first issued in 1970. Bottom line, Dragon wasn't the first.

I also recall a few Italeri kits in the 1990s that included thick, flat pieces of zimmerit that required you to cut them to size. I think their Tiger and Panther came with this (depending on the variant you bought). They also sold the zimmerit sheet separately (I've got one somewhere).

Mostly a sci-fi builder here, so here's my 2 cents, mostly based on projects I've completed...

Good: Tamiya 1:700 Shinano.  Zero flash, excellent fit between parts, and the planes molded in clear plastic so you don't have to do the usual painting canopies light blue or black.

Bad: The old kit of the Enterprise that is usually referred to as a "roughie."  While I'll agree with what's already been mentioned about raised panel lines, if you're going through the trouble of adding recessed lines, they should match or at least resemble the actual pattern instead of being completely random.  It also had some issues with subassemblies fitting badly.

Ugly: The Virago from Shadows of the Empire ( Star Wars ).  I didn't even finish this one.  If I remember right, the halves of the fuselage were the only parts that fit reasonably well, everything else was so bad even getting rid of guide pins didn't help, and the wings had gaps all around that were over a millimeter wide.

Shadows of the Empire, great story line, bad model kit, at least the Virago. I never got Prince Xizor. The Outrider would have been an interesting kit. My sons had the action figure toy.

I've wanted to build an Outrider for years.  What I have in mind would have to be scratchbuilt with some bits taken from a Falcon kit, and my skills aren't up to that yet.

Someday, tho...

The Good : Hasegawa F6F-3 Hellcat...beautiful kit.

The Bad: Hasegawa "Skelleton" Frank...PE skelleton was fine, brittle plastic was bad.

The FUGLY : Modelcraft F-82 G Twin Mustang....still have nightmares about that build.....

I can't answer for the Italeri Tiger, but the Sturmtiger had molded on zimmert. I think the Panther had separate sheets.

Yes, the Panther has seperate pre sized sheets for areas like hull and turret sides/front/rear, and then double parts of with or without zimmeret for the schurzen,  mantlet, rear stowage boxes, mg ball mount, drivers periscope flap, etc,.

troublemaker66

The Good : Hasegawa F6F-3 Hellcat...beautiful kit.

The Bad: Hasegawa "Skelleton" Frank...PE skelleton was fine, brittle plastic was bad.

The FUGLY : Modelcraft F-82 G Twin Mustang....still have nightmares about that build.....

I've heard that most of the Twin Mustang kits are that way.

Based on my more recent builds:

The Good:  Monogram 1/48 F-89C Scorpion.  A very pleasing build of the often underrepresented 1950s era jets.  Loads of aftermarket marking options out there!

The Bad:  High Planes 1/48 scale P-51 Reno racer.  Very sloppy molding.  Can't tell where the part ends and the sprue begins and it's up to your best guess.  Extremely large sprue attachment points.

The Ugly:  The Tamiya and Hasegawa WW2 aircraft kits I have in my stash with recessed panel lines.  It makes me cringe to see those oversized channels in the plastic.

tigerman

 

Duke Maddog:

 

Here's my Good, Bad and Ugly models...

 

The Good:

Any 1/72 scale Dragon armor model (except for their metal hulled ones which I've never bought and built). This particular one is Dragon's 1/72 scale Panther G done up to look like Cuckoo. I especially love how Dragon was the first company to actually mold on the Zimmeritt:

 

 

 

Mark, good to see you again. I hate to say it, but your barrel is 90 degrees off.

Thanks Tigerman! Yeah, that had been brought to my attention before and I had fixed it. I just haven't gone back to take another pic!

RobG thanks for setting me straight. I never knew about any of those other kits. I do appreciate the information.

The Good: Tamiya 1/48 Mossie and the new Revell 1/48 Ventura

The Bad: Any of the Modelcraft F-82 Twin Mustangs

The Ugly: Any of the Modelcraft F-82 Twin Mustangs

Yes I put the Twin Mustangs in both the bad and ugly, its that bad/ugly of a kit!

Well, for me it has to have been or still is floating.

The good would be ,to me anywayThe TAMIYA ? PERKASA FAST PATROL boat(at least back in the 70s when I built it.)

The BAD , well lets see that could always be the REVELL 1/485 ? ARIZONA .A rough one to put together.

The UGLY,well that would be an old out of production IMAI kit of a HARBOR COAST GUARD 40' patrol vessel.Definitely more like a toy than a real model.

Nowadays I wouldn,t really know.There are some that come to mind, but asI haven,t started them yet I reserve my judgement.       TANKER-builder

fermis

Bad....Modelcrafts 1/48 F-82

GAWD, yes...  But she's a beaut when she's built, eh?

Mine are kinda generic..

Good: Monogram/Revell B-26... (I'm working on two of them for dioramas, one Marauder is in the process of having some major battle-damage repaired including the removal of a shot-up top turret, with a new one standing by to be installed, the other is a shadow-box that's nod to Shep Paine's "B-26 Factory diorama..)

Bad: The afore-mentioned F-82, but I gotta add the Aurora P-61 Black Widow...

It's good for nothing but a nostalgia-build.. So many parts, and I mean major parts, have to be either scratch-built or kit-bashed that the model would only have about 20% of the original kit left after building it..  You're better off keeping it un-built for the collector value..

Ugly: Renault UE Tankette: Butt-ugliest AFV I ever put glue to (The Jeep in the second photo is for relative size comparison:

While it was a fun kit for me, being mixed-media (Styrene, Resin, and PE), and I got to scratch-build the driver's compartment interior, it was a limited-run kit (I hope) and was a bear to build... But I can hardly look at it, lol...

Yeah, it really is the same scale as the Marder and Wirbelwind..