Does kit quality generally coincide with kit complexity?

stikpusher

 

 

GAF

Ah, what makes a good kit?  The touch of a master's hand.

So many "bad" kits, in the hands of someone with patience and skill, turn out to be pure gems.

 

 

 

 

and that is the absolute truth. Some of the most fantastic builds that I’ve ever seen in person are based off of old kits. 

 

But sometimes we may not want to make the investment in time and effort that a bad kit will take, for that subject, especially if other, good kits are available.

Notice I say good and bad kits, not old ones.  There are definitely some great old kits that are very good.  The old Monogram classic car kits are great builds, no real problems with them. I pick up those whenever I can find one at a good price.

Now, what makes a bid kit to me; errors in accuracy ( contours wrong, parts wrong size, etc.), poor fit (say fairing on fuselage for tail to mount to, with a convex fuselage-end shape, requiring lots of putty) , opening too small in major part that a small part needs to fit through, lack of mounting pins or some mounting aids to locate parts in proper location, misplacement of locating pins, oversize mounting points for operating/moving parts, and so on.

GAF

Ah, what makes a good kit?  The touch of a master's hand.

So many "bad" kits, in the hands of someone with patience and skill, turn out to be pure gems.

 

and that is the absolute truth. Some of the most fantastic builds that I’ve ever seen in person are based off of old kits. 

Ah, what makes a good kit?  The touch of a master's hand.

So many "bad" kits, in the hands of someone with patience and skill, turn out to be pure gems.

Long story short, figure out what subject you want to build first, and in which scale, then see what is available. Some subject areas will have lots to choose from, others very few. 

And as a side note, those “bottom feeder” kits are great skill builders. Learning to overcome modeling challenges in all their forms will make you a more capable modeler.

Even if you choose say, Revell of Germany kit, there are tons of aftermarket stuff out there to make ANY kit brand better to your liking.

Oxboy

Meaning do the kits with more parts/details generally equate to better quality pieces/molds/fits upon building?  

Say you have a 1/48 F-16 subject...and the Revell kit has 150 pcs and an Italeri has 300 pcs.  Could one assume (generally speaking) that the quality of the Italeri kit contents would be of better fabrication?  

Or ..can a kit with fewer pieces still have an excellent mold quality?    Reversing the above: would a 150 pc. Italeri be a better kit than a 300 pc. Revell?  How much of this depends on the model company?

Related: would a ranking of consensus quality of popular kit companies go like this (best to worst):

Top Shelf: Italeri, Eduard

Mid Range: Tamiya, Hobby Boss, Hasagawa, Academy, Trumpeter

Bottom Feeders: Revell

 

Thanks for any insight.

 

No. It makes no difference if you want to claim a certain brand of paint is better than the others. Or type as in enamel, acrylics, or lacquers. But each to his own...

Italeri top shelf? Hardly. I'd rather choose an Airfix before choosing Italeri kit. Besides, Airfix has been banging out pretty awesome kits these days.

Revell as bottom feeder kits? Not RoG but either way they're decent kits for beginners and advanced alike. Lindberg would be my bottom feeder kit over Revell.

I, too, often go to scalemates for reviews and comparisons before buying a particulaar kit of the subject I'm interested in.

Hasegawa can tend to be on the expensive side compared to Tamiya and others as well. Again, depending on the subject.

I don't judge any kit brand as top shelf, mid-range, or bottom feeder types. I will buy what catches my eye and find out more on the kit by researching them.

However, when it comes to top shelf kit for WW1 aircraft subjects, Wing Nuts wins this one hands down not only because of the brand/reputation but cost as well.

Bish

 

 

Rambo

 

 

Bish

But just make sure that Tamiya kit, or Revell for that matter, is not a re-boxed Italeri kit. That often disapoints people.

 

 

 

 

absolutely, I made the mistake of buying a stuka in a Tamiya box didn't realize it till I got home that it had the italeri logo on the box, Tamiya just made a bomb loader and figures to go with it.

 

 

 

 

One of the guys at the club night last night brought in a 72nd Jaguar. Said he was really pleased he had got a tamiya kit for a good price only only to be let down when he found out it was Italeri. But at least tamiya put the Italeri logo on the box. I have the Revell boxing of that Stuka and it doesn't say anything and you don't even get the extras.

 

I'm a reductive thinker. The original premise is that you have a choice within a subject, within a scale, and within your budget.

That probably eliminates 99% of the models out there.

A very few ships (all steel navy), a number of aircraft, and what seems to be a lot of armor.

So take for example the Abrams tank. There must be at least three discussions currently, on this forum alone. Read those and you'll get everything you need to know.

What I look for in reviews is any indication of innaccuracies. Some are pretty obvious, but you'd never know unless you read about them from those who know.

Hi,

I suspect others have already answered your questions well enough, but I will add that to me at least alot of times part count can be more a function of when the original molds were made than anything else, where some really old kits (like Pyro, Lindberg, and Life Like) were often more toylike with fewer parts and molded on detail, in part because that was where the main market was.

As time went on though it appears that the market (and mold making technology) maybe supported a bit more detail, though costs were still a concern so you begin to see alot of late 1950 to mid 1970(?) Revell and Monogram kits (and others) where you might have a plane reasonably accurate looking exterior but limited interior, and maybe even still a but "toylike/maybe not totally to scale" features like "folding wings", "retractable undercarriages", and rotating turrets etc - like the old Monogram TBF with a dropable torpedo or their SBD with openable dive flaps.

Later as the market and mold making capabilities allowed for more detail some model makers responded by trying to increase accuracy while also decreasing the toylike nature of some kits, but available data for research could still give a more detailed and complex but not yet totally accurate kit.

More recently now though, with advances in "side molding" and such, and increased availability of data it is sometimes possible to have a more detailed and accurate kit with fewer parts than say a kit from just 10 years ago or so.

And, even now some kits are still a bit toylike or simplified for a number of reasons (such as some of the big 1/200 scale ship models recently released which, based on some reviews on the internet, may have sacrificed some detail for simplicity in part because the model manufacturers may be trying to appeal to the R/C market where the simplification of some parts may be desirable.

As such, in the end I'd suspect that, as others have noted, you probably just really need to do about of research to see if any particular kit appeals to you.

I'm with those who say there is no correlation between kit complexity and kit quality.  I, like many others, see more correlation between brand and quality, or between region of the world and quality.

Bish

 

 

Phil_H

This brings up another complexity, that of one company reboxing another's kits. As already mentioned,we have Italeri kits in Tamiya and Revell boxes. There have also been Hasegawa kits in Revell boxes, Fujimi and Italeri kits in Testors boxes, and the list goes on. 

Some of Dragon's armour kits have Italeri origins (eg. some of the Sherman kits are based on Italeri originals), some (Imperial Series German armour) are based on Gunze Sangyo originals. Some Dragon aircraft kits are based on Trimaster originals (and subsequently reboxed by Revell, Italeri and others) 

Research your kits before buying.

 

 

 

 

BIG .

 

Yep if I'm going to spend more than $20 on a kit I will pull out my phone and do a quick search on scalemates first to know exactly what I'm looking at, been let down a few times that could of been avoided if I would of researched first.

Phil_H

This brings up another complexity, that of one company reboxing another's kits. As already mentioned,we have Italeri kits in Tamiya and Revell boxes. There have also been Hasegawa kits in Revell boxes, Fujimi and Italeri kits in Testors boxes, and the list goes on. 

Some of Dragon's armour kits have Italeri origins (eg. some of the Sherman kits are based on Italeri originals), some (Imperial Series German armour) are based on Gunze Sangyo originals. Some Dragon aircraft kits are based on Trimaster originals (and subsequently reboxed by Revell, Italeri and others) 

Research your kits before buying.

 

BIG .

I would have to say no, just because empirically I have built really nice kits with low part counts and I have built problem kits with large part counts.

This brings up another complexity, that of one company reboxing another's kits. As already mentioned,we have Italeri kits in Tamiya and Revell boxes. There have also been Hasegawa kits in Revell boxes, Fujimi and Italeri kits in Testors boxes, and the list goes on. 

Some of Dragon's armour kits have Italeri origins (eg. some of the Sherman kits are based on Italeri originals), some (Imperial Series German armour) are based on Gunze Sangyo originals. Some Dragon aircraft kits are based on Trimaster originals (and subsequently reboxed by Revell, Italeri and others) 

Research your kits before buying.

Rambo

 

 

Bish

But just make sure that Tamiya kit, or Revell for that matter, is not a re-boxed Italeri kit. That often disapoints people.

 

 

 

 

absolutely, I made the mistake of buying a stuka in a Tamiya box didn't realize it till I got home that it had the italeri logo on the box, Tamiya just made a bomb loader and figures to go with it.

 

One of the guys at the club night last night brought in a 72nd Jaguar. Said he was really pleased he had got a tamiya kit for a good price only only to be let down when he found out it was Italeri. But at least tamiya put the Italeri logo on the box. I have the Revell boxing of that Stuka and it doesn't say anything and you don't even get the extras.

Bish

But just make sure that Tamiya kit, or Revell for that matter, is not a re-boxed Italeri kit. That often disapoints people.

 

absolutely, I made the mistake of buying a stuka in a Tamiya box didn't realize it till I got home that it had the italeri logo on the box, Tamiya just made a bomb loader and figures to go with it.

But just make sure that Tamiya kit, or Revell for that matter, is not a re-boxed Italeri kit. That often disapoints people.

Don't think I would put italeri up with top shelf as you put it, maybe on par with older revell kits. The newer revell of Germany kits coming out have been really good. Tamiya make some of the best kits hands down may not have a big part count but they can make something in two to three parts look just as good as dragon would in ten parts or more. Eduard makes beautiful kits some you have to fight more than others same with hasagawa. Imho you can't beat a Tamiya aircraft kit they go together easily, look great and are reasonably priced.

You can't rank quality by brand. Every manufacturer has its gems and dogs. It comes down to individual kits. Complexity of the build by parts breakdown isn't necessarily a guide to overall quality/accuracy.

Check the reviews, ask modellers.

In short, no. A good armour comparison would be Dragon and Tamiya. A Dragon kit may have 4 pieces where a Tamiya one would have 1. The Dragon may be better detailed but that does not mean the fit will be better and of course the more parts there are the more scope for somthing going wrong.

And it is tricky to rank companies, they all have good and bad. Though youcan get a general idea from the majority of a companies kits and a few companies are known for bad kits. And i don't thinkyou would find anyone who would put Itaelri oin the top shelf, certainly not along side Eduard, or Revell at the bottom.