How good are italerias figures?

alrighty then, thanks for the info, i'kk be sure not to get 'em.

Definately 70s vintage. Considering there are so few US paras in styrene available aside from these and Dragon in the M-1942 Jump uniform, to buy or not to buy is best decide on what you want them for. Replacement heads are a must. You would also need some better helmets and some musette bags. Due to several of the figures having sleeves rolled up, they are better suited to one of the US airborne units (82nd Airborne, 509th, or 1st Airborne Task Force) in the MTO for Sicily, Salerno  or Southern France, as opposed to Normandy. (If you are thinking of using them in a diorama) On the plus side, the weapons (including the M1918 "knuckle duster" trench knife), jump boots, and uniforms are decent. Not up to todays standards, but with some work, some good paratroopers can be had.

Mansteins revenge wrote:

Do you mean, "How bad are they?"

hahahahahaha

Beat me to it, Manny

 

Do you mean, "How bad are they?"

I've never liked the Italeri figures becasue the poses were too manequin-like, the heads were lousy and the faces a joke.. BUT: I still use them for parts, since many of them had good boots, and the US Marine torsos had accurate representations of USMC uniform shirt... Cut up and mixed with other figure parts, Italeri figures are still useful for me...

The figure here is a "Frankenstein" WIP with an Italeri USMC torso & legs, arms are Tamiya.  Don't remember where the head came from. The upper torso was given a second pocket (hard to see here) from epoxy.  The pistol is cut down from a submachine gun, and it's holster is a Tamiya item with the top ground off and a foil flap added.....

I built some of these figures around 1977 or earlier. They seemed okay at the time, today, they'd barely pass muster, but better than Tamiya's of the same period.

TacoBuff wrote:

That pretty much sums up those figures, exploded dough faces.

Or in two words: Transporter malfunction

in general, Italeri figures, and early Tamiya figures look terrible. Imagine you left a can of pilsbury dough out in the hot sun, and the can blew up just enough to have the dough leak out of the can and start to bake into weird lumpy shapes. That pretty much sums up those figures, exploded dough faces.

Thanks thats all i needed

 

Rebox of the early (?) 80's ESCI offering. I haven't seen this particular set but IIRC ESCI figs were often soft on detail and were sometimes awkwardly posed.

Review here: http://www.usarmymodels.com/MANUFACTURERS/Italeri/italeri309.html