Anyone familiar with Mirage Hobby?

I built their 1/72 M3 Lee a few years ago. It was a very nice kit, but the company seems to have quality control issues. This had been the third M3 kit I purchased. The first kit, an M3 Grant, had two suspension sprues (I got the lower hull and suspension twice, with no upper hull) The second, an M3 Lee, had one M3 sprue and one T-26 sprue. I had to return both kits and keep trying. I have read in certain hobby forums that this wasn't uncommon. This was 10 years ago, however, so maybe things have improved. That being said, I don't see their kits listed that often anymore.

Hi;

 I built a few of their kits. I thought they were okay. I don't know about their Armor kits though.

Hi,

I've been happy with the few kits that I have bought from them.

Pat

I have built a few of their kits many years ago.  I got them a local hobby shop, which is still around.  Very odd early WW 2 tanks and support vehicles  They were kits of pre-war Polish armor.  I still have  a few of them.  They built up good, nothing to write home about.  I built them over twenty years ago.  Nice subects.

Hello!

In Poland I've often seen their kits at stores, and many times they were just toy or baby assortment shops, not model shops. It'a pretty old company, their first kits came out back in the nineties, and at the beginning they started with reboxes, so like Rob wrote - better check up their individual kits on scalemates before buying, but they also did some work on their own and some of their stuff is quite good, even if it has a bit of short run taste to it.

As always, if I can help you some with a Polish translation, I'd be glad to.

Have a nice day!

Paweł

They did a decent 1/72 scale run of M3 Lee/Grants and light tanks. Some of their 1/35 scale kits were reboxed from other, older Eastern European companies. So you might have to specifically check a particular kit to know its lineage before you buy.

Not saying the reboxed kits are bad, some are good, but are of typical Eastern European design with plenty of flat parts that must be aligned properly, multiple versions lead to some excess parts, short shot parts, etc.

I'm a big fan of Mirage models!

As you said, plenty of really interesting subjects. They were 'first out' with a 'regular'-production 1/48 injection-molded Halberstadt CL.II -- one of those life-long 'wish list'  kits I wasn't sure I'd ever actually see -- and theirs was exquisite. I've built probably a dozen or so of their 1/400 ships...the V.106 WW1 German destroyer (also sold in several post-war Polish navy versions), and their gorgeous range of assorted marks of the USN's WW1-era 'four stacker' destroyers (which also saw wide service through WW2).

Their level of detail can tend toward the uber-excessive -- such as 2 or 3 parts that need to be assembled to make a simple part like a 1/400 lifeboat davit, that could easily be molded as a single piece -- and is aggravated somewhat by a plastic that tends toward brittleness, making clipping and cleaning up tiny parts an ongoing adventure. But that 'uber' quality doesn't extend to every part, just crops up in odd instances.

Overall, the quality of their molding is generally good to excellent. [The one continuing exasperation is a quirky one -- they seem often to position the mold attachment stubs on the 'detail' side of parts, rather than the flat side that would make cleanup so-o-o-o much easier! Ah, well...]

If you're a ship modeler, their 'multi release' kits (like the four-stackers) are a treat -- stuffed with all kinds of spare and alternate parts, extra gun fit-outs and such that will make your 'spares' box happy.

Their decals, at least as I've experienced them, are also superb. For the Halberstadt kit mentioned above, they supplied the unique multi-color fuselage mottling applied by the factory as a single sheet decal to be cut and fitted in place...over multiple compound curves...and everything worked perfectly, with little setting solution needed, for a really exquisite effect. Whites on tiny fuselage inscriptions were perfectly opaque, and registration of colors on insignia and such were perfectly centered and aligned.

The one thing I can't speak to is dealing with ordering and shipping from them, since I got all my kits through Hannants or US distributors. But judging by the way they do everything else, I suspect they're probably 'on the ball' there as well.

Cheers