this has happened to me since i was about FIVE years old,you can however avoid it by buying tamiya kits you get great artwork & a kit you can build in under a year!!
Yep . bought the amphibious armored vehicle from (AFV I believe ) the cover showed an excellent interior. When I got it home and discovered there was no interior. Oh well it is a good rendicion. Son-of-a- gun I see the same model in a different box showing interior! Guess what? I bought the damn thing. Only it was the same vehicle and no interior. Now I look closer to what I buy.
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Ha ha! It would be a Nitto kit Robin! I remember buying the Nitto Sdkfz251 - well it was the only game in town before the Tamiya Ausf C. Hard to believe now but it made the Tamiya one look good. What really did it was the totally spurious trailer for the batteries to drive the electric motor.
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Some of these tracks are so tedious they take the fun out of modeling . I build to relax not go crazy with these tracks. having arthritics in my hands and fingers I avoid some manufactures completely . Ill buy armored cars, or research the tracks , or buy a airplane lol. guess Im getting old .
While I can build high part count kits, I avoid them normally like the plague. 600-700 parts for two tracks…lol my time is too valuable for that sort for monotonous building.
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LOL. I replaced track and running gear with Tamiya M41 parts as the tractor was based on a M41 chassis etc… Well actually two M41s as the M8A1 had a lengthened chassis. Looked good when completed. Sorry no pics. Model long gone to a new owner.
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M41 was hard to find back then but I managed to locate some aftermarket track
I share the widespread aversion to overengineered kits, and too many tiny pieces (especially photoetch). Just because something can be offered as a multipart assembly, doesn’t mean it should be. Nowadays I always go to Scalemates and read or watch the kit reviews before I order any model kit. If Tamiya made kits of every subject I would probably buy nothing else.
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Alright everyone take a breath. Don’t be afraid of the newer well engineered kits. Buy and build them. However there are many who want the “highly detailed” tracks. Just offer them a trade for the track you want or sell them and buy a friendlier set of track. That way you get a good kit with out the pain of a weeks labor constructing track.
As far a box art, as a kid there were no reviews we just bought the coolest box art hoping the kit inside would be OK.
I was doing the HobbyBoss Leopard 2A4M. You know how Leopards have live tracks? Yeah, HobbyBoss knows this because their earlier 2A6M kit has some excellent vinyl tracks.
Guess what the 2A4M (a tank where less than half the track run is visible) has?
Four part per link tracks.
I looted the tracks from my 2A6M, when I get to building that I’ll buy Tamiya’s 2A6 just for the tracks 
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I’ll say it again…as Dennis pointed out, MOST live tracked tanks these days have most of the run covered by skirts/armor/ERA, etc., so why bother…?! The only real place for floppy individual track links are on old Russian or German tanks to get the nice “sag”. I returned the Border Models British Cruiser tank yesterday because it had stupidly tiny links with the extra stupidly tiny pins to connect them…a nightmare truly avoided…!!!
No reviews? There was always Military Modelling magazine. It even had the new Tamiya releases on the back (two or three new kits a month!). There was frequently a build by Francois Verlinden inside to egg you on! Mind you, seeing how little competition there was to the Big T in those days the reviews were always positive!
Back in 1965 Toyland didn’t carry any modeling magazines that I remember. I only remember them carrying the Autoworld catalog.
Is now not the time to say I just assembled tracks for half a dozen Panzer IIIs in less than a day?