tiger I kits

Don't have a single tiger kit. I've got their Panther kit, and it's not bad. Not the greatest, but not the worst. I guess that pretty much sums up all of the Italeri stuff for me. They're the middle ground. I built a few kits by them, and some were really nice, and others are just crap. Their m-925 Big Foot, being one of those, is ridiculous. The cab and everything else is ok, but the wheels on it are a joke. Completely undersized. Looks like they just took the wheels off the m-923 and stuck them on the same kit. As I said, they're the middle-ground of detail and price. Some of their kits, however, are superb. Finished their German Flak 43, and it really is a gem. A lot of their recent releases which are based on the Demag truck are great too. Italeri uses a lot of molds that are either ex-Esci, and have a lot of common moulds with Revell of Germany.

Hmm, when you have build the Tamiya and the Academy kits, the Italeri kit leaves something to be desireed. Its not like the worst of all kits, but compared to the other 2......well its just as good as they are.

However, Italeri makes the only Tiger I (P) kit, I believe, so if that's the one you ordered, you got the only game in town.

Italeri's plastic seems a little harder and more brittle than Tamiya's, to me. Closer to Trumpeter's.

Whose kit would y'all recommend for an early Tiger? I read somewhere that there is some accuracy issue with the shape of the turret.


M

Apparently, all the Tiger kits have an incorrectly shaped turret. So in that respect, it probably doesn't matter which kit you get. If you want to go to the trouble and expense, Tiger Model Designs sells correctly shaped resin turrets for the four turret mods. They sell for about $20 each and can be found at:

http://www.tigermodels.com/shop/tmd

(Warning, they seem to have either a slow server or a slow i-net connection.)

As far as kits in general go, if you want an easy, great kit, without an interior, Tamiya's can't be beat. If you want to do an interior, Academy is the way to go.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

I am painting the Italeri Tiger now. There were some definite issues with accuracy and you will need to invest in some putty. The fit was not that great. I dislike the tracks so much, that even though i decided to make this a test bed and build it OOTB (for the most part) the tracks are going in the trash.

Don't get me wrong, i really think that Italeri makes some great kits, but if i had it to do over, i would give the Tiger 1 a miss. Anyway, keep us up to date with lots of pics. I would love to hear how the build goes for you.

good luck

I've only built one Italeri kit thus far - Elephant - and was not overly impressed. Their detailing was hit and miss and the instructions were good, but their molding had a couple of bad errors, quite a bit of flash, and a gazillion poorly placed injector pin marks. The tracks were pretty good, actually.

I think for Tiger I's, I would also recommend Tamiya or Academy.