Top 10 worst ship kits of all time...

Hello all,

I nominate the Revell Blucher/Admiral Hipper identical twins. Imagine my surprise when I found they were truly identical! I bought and built both in my younger years. The model was designed to give the option of waterline or full hull, and I chose the full hull. Upper and lower halves did not fit together (the lower half was much too wide to mate with the upper half) and the deck did not sit well at all.

Jose Gonzales

JMart wrote:

The 1:700 scale Modern Sub series by ARII. Built two, composed of like 14 parts. Not ONE fit. Anyone with interest in modern subs should get the Hobby Boss line and skip the ARII offerings.

 

Does anyone else besides ARII make a 1/700 Trafalgar class? Hobby Boss seems to ignore British subs.

Once again.....The Glencoe SS United States is the worst ship kit I've ever seen. Simply Horrible bad plastic..... rutted molding.

Another vote for the Monogram Nimitz.... Ugh...  crass details (or lack thereof), bad fits, radar blobs..one kit I got out of nostalgia and ended up with nausea.

The 1:700 scale Modern Sub series by ARII. Built two, composed of like 14 parts. Not ONE fit. Anyone with interest in modern subs should get the Hobby Boss line and skip the ARII offerings.

The  Revell "Pirate Ship", loosely based on an amusement ride, based on a idea, based on something remotely looking like a sailing ship. Got it for my daughter, what an abomination.

One dissenting vote about CC Lee offerings... I got the Bismarck for like 5$. Bad details, bad moulding... but motorized and can be built in an afternoon, which I did with my nephew. Start after BBQ lunch, play with it on the pool late afternoon. Not a "military miniature" but true "toys". As such, they are not bad at all if you find them cheap.

One more "dog" (pun intended) = revel HMS Beagle. Grossly inaccurate; Prof Tilley has posted in the past detailed analysis of everything wrong with this kit.

     Worst kit would be the most disappointing I think. I've bought small ship kits without realizing how small they were. I'm thinking Pyro on this one. When you're thinking magnificent warship for the mantle and you get something more suited to your keychain, oof. Next worst would be my Cutty Sark/Kearsarge duo in 1/96. In memory the Cutty was totally magnificent and like a museum ship model for everyone. Of course now I would probably cringe at the blocks and ratlines, but still it has such a beautiful hull and masts. But the Kearsarge has that somewhat off scale hull shape with spurious holes all over the kit, sketchy/misleading instructions and the misleading box art which should be the Holy Grail to the kit. Lots can be fixed, but who is prepared to take on a better hull? Look at the masts and the fugures and the deck houses. Why couldn't the rest of the kit have been as good? And why didn't they make the deadeyes and the ratlines line up? Total negligence here. So the Cutty as a first effort gets a 10 point zero minus one millionth of a point because it's "plastic." Now the Kearsarge gets...........patience........a rating of "WHY?" If they can make the figures so fine why couldn't they have made the rest of the model as good at least with the data available at the time. Inspite of all this I love the Kearsarge I'm building and I just don't dwell on the flaws. It's just a plastic model I tell myself and that keeps me going and improving it as much as possible. SUMMARY: One of the ten worst, Revell USS Kearsarge.

I actually have a Lee 1:350 Musashi kit and have been having a great time with it.  My wife went to visit her mother in the big city a few years back and, since there are no great model shops in our area, she had asked what I would like her to bring back.  I had seen the Tamiya Yamato kit in some magazines that caught my interest so she was on the lookout.  She couldn't find that kit but the shop owner talked her into buying the Lee kit. When she brought it home, I took a couple of looks at it and saw some (not much) potential. Picked up the Lion Roar PE set with some work "bonus" money and have slowly been working on improving it and have had more hours of enjoyment than with other kits that are so well engineered that they fall together.  Sometimes it is more fun to make a purse of a sow's ear than to dump out the pieces and have a completed model.  (btw - it is so obvious a rip-off that you can almost see the white-out in the instructions getting rid of the original names)

subfixer wrote:

Lindberg's HMS Hood was a real stinker if I remember correctly. Just about any Pyro kit might be a candidate.

 

You can add the Lindbergh Bismark as well. Nasty kit.

Again, it is the modeler.

 CC Lee 1/150 Zhong Shan is a nice starter kit with much potential as is their 1/300 Aurora. At least two built on the web with add-on details belay the $20-25 of the kit.

Not starting a fight. It is expectations vs. observations.

Fairseas wrote:

No, they're still very much in business with a large, modern facility in the western suburbs of Shanghai. Living in China, I see their product everywhere with my LHS carrying most of their offering - all dirt cheap with the 1/400 Enterprise under $18. Their larger kits are motorized, are great for the kids & there's actually a few worth getting as you can see from the following review: http://www.quuxuum.org/rajens_list/shiprevs.html#Lee Who knows, maybe I should pick up their I-401 & send to Lindberg for future reference.

Lee cloned some kits by ARII which were themselves clones of Skywave/PitRoad.   Each succeeding generation away from the orignial master softened their detail.  The ARII wern't too bad.  The CC Lee were much poorer,  but an educated consumer knows the value of a brand.

I see an ad in the current FSM for an I-19 in 1:350 scale by AFV Club.   Their 1:700 Knox and 1:350 Type XXI are excellent.   The reviews of the new AFV Club Type VIIb and VIIc are good, better than the 1:350 Type VII by RoG..  I have a AFV Type VIIc on order based on the review.  Share the I-19 to show them what can be done with IJN subs, on a budget.  Its a quarter of the Tamiya price

The worst ship kits -- probably the 1:720 Arizona by Revell USA (also sold under a Matchbox and Revell/Germany label).  It is probably the single kit which has been responsible for turning future ship modelers into aircraft modelers.  

The other one is the Lindberg Pennsylvania (700-ish).   A lump-o-plastic which bore no similarity to the prototype.

No, they're still very much in business with a large, modern facility in the western suburbs of Shanghai. Living in China, I see their product everywhere with my LHS carrying most of their offering - all dirt cheap with the 1/400 Enterprise under $18.

Their larger kits are motorized, are great for the kids & there's actually a few worth getting as you can see from the following review:

http://www.quuxuum.org/rajens_list/shiprevs.html#Lee

Who knows, maybe I should pick up their I-401 & send to Lindberg for future reference.

CC Lee is (was?) a Chinese company which essentially cloned other manufacturers kits. If I recall correctly, they simply copied other manufacturers' sprues, sometimes with modifications to make them motorised toys.

Their armour kits are notoriously bad, being poor copies of Tamiya (and other) originals. Soft detail, sink marks and "short shots" abound.

subfixer wrote:

Fairseas wrote: Anything produced by CC Lee. They make Lindberg look like another Tamiya. They must be absolutely terrible in that case.

WOW...never heard of them, probably for good reason...

Fairseas wrote:

Anything produced by CC Lee. They make Lindberg look like another Tamiya.

They must be absolutely terrible in that case.

Anything produced by CC Lee. They make Lindberg look like another Tamiya.

Phil,

I'll agree that Italeri does market their Nimitz-class kit as different ships, without much difference between them, their aircraft are bad and that slapping a "74" on a 1975 era Nimitz doesn't make it the Stennis.

But with some research, and a little extra work, no more than most ship modelers would do with any kit, you can come away with a very nice Nimitz-class CVN.

I've only built one, but I didn't have fit problems, bad molding, etc., that one would associate with a bad kit. I haven't tried a Trumpeter kit either, so I can't make a comparison. They may be much better.

I'll admit that it does really disappoint me when I see a carrier model, made from any kit, with no changes to account for the differences within the class, a flight deck painted black with mix matched a/c that never served together, or aboard, that particular ship and little or no attention to masts and rigging. But that's the modeler, not the kit. It can be argued that the kits should be designed to prevent those things from happening, but then so many kits of all kinds of subjects have an issue or two. Issues that most modelers correct.

The Italeri kits are older and perhaps have been outclassed. Still a very good model can be built from one. I guess that would keep it off my list of 10 worse ship kits.

I never saw one molded in blue. I'll admit, that wouldn't be a plus.

Mike

I'll vote for the 1/720 scale Italeri Nimitz class carrier series. All the kits in the range (about 6, I think) are identical and the only concession to different ships in the class is the decals.  The aircraft supplied were a little better than blobs, just... And the original releases of these kits were moulded in a lurid bright blue colour.

 hey!  MANNY--- I thought you were looking to sink my ship? give up?LOL. The worst ship kit without a doubt that I EVER built was by, believe it or not AURORA. The thing didn,t even have proper lifeboats, and no representation of rails. It was a destroyer kit, but I can,t remember the name of it. The second worst is the model boats that used to be put out by IMAII years back, they were terrible!!         tankerbuilder

 Noooo, you said expectations vs. observations. I was expecting a crisp molding ala 1/72 Revell, Airfix, etc. Not that it was a bad kit. I think I have seen one built on the internet. It came out quite nice. It is the modeler. Others do not think it sucked otherwise why the high Ebay price?

Same analogy could be addressed to other newer, more expensive kits, with nice demos,etc.etc.

 

 

 

Okay, so far we have the Lindberg Hood, the Lindberg I-53 and the 1/72 resin G5 MTB from Russia (what company?)...

Well, I have not bought a model since after the Internet became available and so have been typically  able to know what was up regarding  both new and old kits before purchasing.

I did purchase my first wood ship kit based on the in-store expert. I had never previously purchased a wood ship kit. I did not know what to expect. I was assured it would be easy to build. Plank on bulkhead, single plank hull, etc. Then I opened the kit....and realized I am over my head. Nothing wrong with the kit, only the modeler.

I bought a 1/72 resin G5 MTB from Russia. High expectations, my favorite MTB. Opened the box...ugh.Very crude. But now that $14 kit sells for over $70 on Ebay! But it is the modeler again.

 

 

 

Lindberg's HMS Hood was a real stinker if I remember correctly. Just about any Pyro kit might be a candidate.

Tracy White wrote:

This thread is the camel nose under the tent of Linberg isn't it?

Actually, no...you trying to cause trouble in the thread?  I've listed similar threads in Armor and General Discussion.

But if you think the sub should be on the list, don't be shy...

This thread is the camel nose under the tent of Linberg isn't it?