Italeri 1/48 F-4E/F

hi guys,
i too made the old testors f4 kit!bad mistake!!
i then made a raf f4 from hasagawa, & what a improvement!!
at one stage i was seriously gonna bin the testors/italeri kit!!
"now indeed,thrive the armourers"

Not all Testors aircraft kits are bad. One thing that most folks don't realize is that they really don't have any of their own molds. They mostly box other manufacturers' kits. Matter of fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a truly original Testors mold.

As far as I know, the only aircraft kits they've actually produced themselves are the old Hawk kits. Many of these are kinda ugly by today's standards. The Hawk 48th P-47, P-51, F-104, F-5, T-33, O-2 & Air Racers are all kinda ugly. The U-2 isn't all that bad, especially for it's age. Low on detail but it's the only game in town at the moment and it looks dang good. Other decent Hawk kits are the PT-20 & Lysander in 48th.

Their F-4's (48th & 72nd) were/are, indeed, Italeri kits. For their time, they were decent. But nowadays, they just plain suck.

Italeri made some fairly nice kits that have been boxed by Testors; the SR-71/YF-12 in 48th (& 72nd), C-130's (both scales), C-47's in 72nd and even the Stealth kits (F-19's & MiG-37's in both scales.) were kinda nice. Simple, but nice. (I believe the Stealth kits were financed by Testors, and may have been produced by/for Testors first, but they were tooled by Italeri.)

I remember building a 72nd testors P-39 as a kid, I believe this was the Heller kit.

Also, Testors boxed several Fujimi kits. MOST of these can hardly be described as junk, though there's the Fujimi F-14 in 48th! (bow-WOW). Also, the 72nd E-2 Hawkeye was kinda 'eh'. Some really nice Fujimi kits that come to mind which were boxed by Testors are the F-86 Sabre, F7U Cutlass, F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder & CH-46 Sea Knight, all in 72nd.

As to the specific question of the Italeri 48th F-4E/F kit, Italeri have done a few newly tooled 48th kits in recent years (starting about ten years ago or so) such as the Tornados, F-14 etc. I could be wrong, but I thought that they had also released a newly tooled F-4 in 48th. Anyone know for sure if they did and could this be it?


Fade to Black...

Please, do not get me started on the Testor's kits. I wouldn't give them to my 3 year old daughter to model, as I would just be wasting her time and a few bucks.
I even tried one again a few months ago, and I think it was even worse than I remember, and it was even an HSO (Hobby Shop Only) kit!

Very, very bad. You have been warned...

demono69

I agree with both comments above. The Italeri/Testors kit is the worst on the market. Nothing fits. The nose gear does not even look like the real strut, no detail or wrong detail every where. The ejection seats don't even come close to looking like the actual seats. I would give it a minus nine on a scale of one to ten.

Most Testor's kits IMHO- suck. They got a lot of noteriety in the 80's for the whole Stealth kit fiasco and then through clever marketing and re-boxing of other manugacturer's kits (Iteleri, Fujimi) found a foothold. I'm sure there are a few good ones out there but the F4 you mentioned is not one of them.

Try the new Monogram Pro-Modeler F-4E - it's actually a re-box of the Hasegawa! But you won't find me complaining.

Are Testors kits aren't any good?

The Italeri F4 is a re-box of the old Testors kit. I built one a while back, and it wasn't very good. The instrument panels and side cosoles were flat with decals to supply the details. If you're looking for a good 1/48 E model Phantom, Monogram Pro Modeler is going to re-release the Hasegawa kit.