This poor kit has a such a bad reputation. But should it? Years ago Cookie Sewell bashed it pretty badly. He scratch built a new hull for it which he said easily fit inside the Tamiya hull.
Years later, bring on the Academy Vietnam version. (not their earlier clone of the Tamiya kit)
He gave it rave reviews, until the Gulf War version came out. Then suddenly it just wasn’t that good any more. I recently, and quite by accident, stumbled across his original review, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
First off, it turns out the Tamiya turret was (and still is) better than either of the newer Academy offerings. You could buy both kits and use the Tamiya turret.
Then you’re left with the horrible (or is it?) Tamiya hull. Let’s have a look:
The Tamiya hull is indeed too long, and the rear details’ proportions suffer because of it. But the rest of the hull? Looks pretty good for a kit from the 70’s. And that Academy hull ain’t fittin’ in the Tamiya one. They’re not very far apart width wise at all. And remember the Tamiya turret got the shapes right.
Personally I found the biggest problem with the Tamiya kit was that the vaunted “slide molds” were not used to create the hull, hence it is missing all of the rivet detail on the sides. A shame - in spite of what every Youtube review would have us think, slide mold technology has actually been around about as long as plastic models.
So I added the rivet detail. I took the lazy way out.
I used my homemade rivet tool mentioned here:
And was not displeased with the result.
The point here is not to say you should run out nd purchase the Tamiya kit over the Academy or RFM offerings, but rather to demonstrate that just because you have one of these old dogs in the stash, there’s no reason to bin it, or attempt to foist it on some poor rube on eBay. You can still make it look very much like a Sheridan, provided you leave your micrometer at home,.
