Look at the number of people on here who complain about the part count on an AFV Club or MiniArt kit. Maybe the foljks at Tamiya know something after all.
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Tamiya’s just gonna Tamiya.
Mike, you’ve invented a catch phrase for the ages. Tamiya has been Tamiyaing for 60 years and they are at the top of the industry for many reasons. Constantly in reviews we see;
Tamiya-like in molding crispness.
Tamiya-like in fit.
Tamiya -like in engineering.
Those compliments indicate that a kit is of the highest standards in the industry and near perfect. You always know what you’re getting when you open a new Tamiya kit. An advanced modeler can take a new Tamiya kit, add a Voyager photo etch set, an Aber barrel, and Masterclub tracks, take it to an AMPS show, and score a perfect 30 with it. But a novice modeler can take the same Tamiya kit, build it out of box, without difficulty, and wind up with a beautiful model that he can be proud of. Tamiya magic. That’s what Tamiya does.
Guys complain that Tamiya doesn’t do versions of their released models. That’s right, they don’t. Full stop.
Mr. Tamiya wakes up in the morning and decides he wants to produce a Jagdpanzer IV L70A. It gets to market. That’s how they work.
Tamiya’s been at the top for 60 years.
Tamiya’s just gonna Tamiya.
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Unless it is a re-boxed Italeri kit because then you are getting Italeri quality.
Nothing major wrong with that …
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I went beyond that. Anyone who has been in this hobby for five years or more knows what to expect before they open the box. (Including reboxes, Robin, because the part number indicates the mold origin. 
) I don’t know what tank model Tamiya will release next year, but I know how it will be molded, how it will assemble, and the level of detail. If I had any questions I know there will be ample, readily accessible information available beforehand to eliminate any chance of surprise when cracking the box.
My point was that any experienced builder, like the guy in the original thread, knows (and he did know, because he mentioned what Tamiya’s strengths are in his blog) that a Tamiya kit was not going to have all the minute detail and molding complexities that the other companies he compared them to include. It seemed to me to be disingenuous and, well, unfair. (Perhaps this is my AMPS thinking creeping in: Judge what they did, not the extra work that could’ve been done.)
KL
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For those who know the system behind Tamiya reboxes.
On the other hand, 35143 doesn’t give any indication at all that most of the sprues are Italeri.
I realised this when I noticed that the Italeri parts (in an Italeri kit) had the exact same sink marks.
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And if Tamiya did step up into some of the more expensive manufacturing techniques then the price would reflect then they would be catching crap for running up their prices. Then that same group would complain again and say “why didnt they leave well enough alone and keep their kits affordable???”
This is honestly our luxury, we have a wide range of companies, at wide range of prices, accuracy, parts counts, extras and detail. And with same careful planning, shopping and watching for special buys and sales a guy can bide his time and get what works for him.
Don’t get me wrong, at certain price points I think it’s fair to be critical of poor quality and to have an expectation of what’s coming out of the box. But I agree Kurt, that original post was disingenuous and unfair and I would add trifling.
Robin your command of (what I assume is) a 2nd language puts 95% of native speakers to shame, but it looks like my “Ahem” clue following the deliberate mistake didn’t translate 
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Nope, sorry. I said that there is ample, readily accesible information. There is no reason to ever be surprised by what’s in a Tamiya box, even if you buy the kit the first day it hits your local store.
1989, huh? I think it is noteworthy and confirming of my point that you had to go back 34 years to find the single instance out of nearly 400 releases where the rule doesn’t hold, a kit that they never re-released (IIRC) and that they no longer list in their line.
KL
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Sometimes it is hard to distinguish a deliberate mistake from a non deliberate. 
As a side note: The difference between the verb and adjective forms of deliberate took me some time to figure out. It was in a book about the Iowa class battleships firing at a Japanese held island.
To be strictly correct English is the third language I learned (Swedish, German, English, French in that order) but I have practised English a lot more than German so it is effectively my second language.
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Well given my pathetic struggles with grammar, vocabulary, tenses just with French (& let’s not mention masculine/feminine…wtf??), I’m always in awe of higher beings who master another language – honestly, if you didn’t display a Swedish flag I’d assume you were English.
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My wife teaches French and German from 7th grade and upwards, grammar discussions at the kitchen table are frequent …
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Sounds like there’s another moderator on here she’d get along famously with. 
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Maybe … but I doubt it …
Number one Tamiya Business Decision:
Sell lots of kits.
This is me at their facility. Seems to work for them.
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I have to manage your expectations again: We will likely never be friends.
This isn’t because I dislike you or anything like that, it’s simply because we will probably never meet in person. It’s foolish to call someone a friend whom you’ve only met online, or once at a convention for drinks. Doing so just diminishes actual friendship.
Nevertheless, if you ask for help and I can give it, I will, and will gladly offer the information that I can provide, just as I have done for many people on various forums. Sometimes that help takes the form of “Stop: you are wrong.”
KL.
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and kids, remember this:
Only a friend will tell you that you are wrong before you make a bad mistake
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I always though a friend would help you move, and a GOOD friend would help you move a body…
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They have regular dudes whose job it is to build the kits to insure just those things are happening. Robert Pirsig would have been proud.
And then they package them up to send to eager boys and girls all over the world!
I gave my 1/35 Centurion with scratch built interior to Mr. Tamiya as a thank you for the trip. Our hosts said he loved that model
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I think one could argue that Tamiya, to a large degree, helped push the hobby along and sustain it during various lean years. I grew up working in a LHS in the mid 80’s. Many brands we see discuss heatedly, critically and with love sometimes didn’t exist. The exotics back them were Tamiya, Fujiyama and Hasagawa. Lingdberg, Matchbox, Revell weren,t doing anything to sing about. Monogram was the US brand still putting out kit and Testors was bringing in Italeri so it was a toss up if it was a good kit or not.
But one always new w Tamiya they were getting quality. It was a no brained when I started back in the hobby a few years ago with the tried and true guys and they do not disappoint. And the quality and value of the newer stuff just keeps setting the bar it that price bracket, both for accuracy and quality.
Thanks for sharing those pictures, neat to get a little vintage behind the scenes. By no means do I put them on a pedestal but I think we all should recognize their contribution and influence on the industry as a whole.
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Wow - imagine being PAID to build kits! A dream come true…
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