Tamiya and Hasegawa are the same ?

I do believe that wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in the day (early 70s) there was a mold purchase to get Tamiyas plastic line launched and established. some really old Tamiya stuff started elsewhere.

I really dont think that the current Tamiya / Hasegawa linage would be the same considering thier intense rivalry, but Hasegawa has sold molds to Revell in recent years and we are seing those released by RMG and under the Promodeler line. The F4u5N corsair comes to mind and I do believe thier F86s share common molds.

Dragon and Italari have done some mold movements in the past, with the 1/35 OH-6 coming to mind,  differnt decal options and different artwork on the Italari box ( preferred the Dragon markings and box art).

If both companies are  doing thier work accurately and properly following the  specs of the orginal vehicle, the lines should line up. The only time you can honestly say that the molds are truly the same is when you lay the parts of both kits on top of each other, and they line up perfectly--as if shot from the same mold. In this case, the artwork and corporate ID molds will be buffed off the mold and perhaps replaced with another logo. I have seen this several times, and it is quite obvious when this is the case. (often when cheap cheap-0 small scale kits are patterned after a die cast. I have some minihobby models M1A1 kits where this is painfully obvious.)

 HTH

David

Trumpeter & Skywave/PitRoad have a cooperative agreement.   Models branded in a Trumpeter box are sold in the West, while the same kit in a PitRoad box are marketed in the Orient.

Tamiya has several of the old Skywave/PitRoad models in their stable (bought, received in payment of debt ?).  They include the 1:700 RN Onslow-class destroyer,  the 1:700 scale DKM Z-class destroyer, and the 1:700 scale Gato sub.

Tamiya and Hasegawa were charter members of the old waterline consortiuum.  The "conspired" to split the manufacture of models so that there was minimal overlap and competition.   After the consortiuum collapsed Tamiya, Hasegawa, Aoshima, and Fujimi began to make whatever models they thought would do well - regardless of the former agreements.