Tamiya re-releases

Sorry Tom the other way around, The M41G is the Skybow kit with a few new parts, the M41A3 and M41A2 are AFV Club’s own:

Just remembered their M8 HMC. That should definitely be re-engineered!!

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…or we can hope AFV Club fulfil their 20+ year old promise to deliver one… :crazy_face:

I am also all for newly tooled kits, not band-aid releases. A lot of those kits have too many issues to upgrade. The SdKfz 251 Ausf C is too narrow and to correct that would be almost a total new kit. Same with the Ausf D version, it lacks any of the internal wall detail, etc. Dragon and AFV Club have it covered.

The old quad 20mm used on the SdKfz 7 is simple chunky and lacks the right details. The rear deck and screens, wheels and tyres, etc, are almost a new kit on their own. As previously stated, the Dragon one is light years better.

The GPA was “updated” with Russian figures. Even so, the hull prop tunnel is still completely wrong, it should be offset, the seats are wrong, etc. The rear shape is wrong, the front deck is too chunky, etc. To fix this requires a new kit, not another re-release.



If you are going to all this trouble, just do it right and make a new kit from the ground up.

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How about an all new correctly sized Ford Quad FAT . The only thing out there that I am aware of other than the ancient Tamiya one are the Morris ones by Mirror Models - try to find one - and Bronco’s promised but not delivered Morris as well .
I’ve got the nice 25 pounder/ limber/ caisson but nothing to drag it around …

I took it to mean that the OP was talking about new tooled kits,not simple reboxes.The Lang he mentioned is a brand new kit

@BringupthePIAT i agree on the old tamiya churchill.
Ive been updating the crocodile variant , it needed allot of work



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I think Chris meant both, only his examples after that shifts the focus to upgrading existing moulds.

They did & it was re-released by AFV

Seems like I got it wrong! But I’ll dig them out of the stash to check… :thinking:

Sorry if this upsets anyone, it by no means is an attack, but… you all are spoiled rotten. Older modelers grew up or “cut their teeth” on kits that stunk to high heaven. I had a lot of fun reworking Tamiya’s 251 C as well as the PZ II and III. For the record, the earliest version of Tamiya’s PZ III, (circa 1974), did have short 5.cm, it wasn’t even close. My point without offending, is… consider yourselves fortunate. The Panther A from Tamiya circa the 70’s was crap, it wasn’t even the right scale, let alone all the holes for motorized parts, and huge gaps or missing fenders. With the advent and proliferation of 3D there isn’t a vehicle that can’t be put out on the market, I for one waited 30 some years for the 251 D crappy or not.
Sorry I guess I really am the cranky old guy yelling… “get off my lawn”.
For the money Tamiya’s 88 is still in a class all by itself, so 45 years later…

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No, we have another guy who does that all the time. The sad thing is he’s not even that old.

I still build old Centurions once in a while. Tamiya could bring out an entry level kit to get kids back into the hobby. I don’t care about the slight misproportioned upper hull, or the slightly wrong angle of the lower hull. Neither will a twelve year old.
Remove the cast on tools, add hoods over the driver’s periscopes, maybe a 105mm gun option, and fix the notches on the side plates. Tweak the smoke discharger mounts and add bolt detail to the idler mounts while you’re at it. These are all basic things that you have to do anyway with these kits, but it would sure save time. Put a $19.99 price tag on it next to the Monogram Patton in Hobby Lobby and I bet it would sell.

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thier m48 patton could do with some love as well.

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Awesome thought though, get kids back in the hobby… nice really nice

I would love to see a Tamiya M60 slick, a new M48, maybe another version of their Challenger 2, even the Challenger 1. I know Takom has a nice M48 on the way and RFM does a superb Cr2, but there’s just something about Tamiya engineering and kit design.

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Ha ha. Yes everyone is entitled to their say and their own opinion. I am not offended.

As a modeller that was building kits in the 1960’s, well before Tamiya even started their Military Minitures range (but had other even more dreadful kits), I am well acquainted with the kits of the time and I have to agree I did enjoy building them immensely. Even with correcting what I knew needing correction.

However, saying those old kits should not be replaced by better more modern ones and we should still be happy with them, and just scratch build details, is like saying we should have stayed with an ice box and buy ice everyday, instead of buying a refrigerator, or staying in the middle ages and bleed ourselves with leeches to cure all our ails… :rofl:

I still have old kits. I still build them. I still do scratch building, like on the GPA, to bring them up to my satisfaction. However 60 years on, like most things, my modelling tastes have matured… I have to say, why buy a cheap awful soda to have with dinner, when you can have a fine wine and enjoy it? :crazy_face:

These old kits are great for young modellers and releasing them with extra parts just adds a cost to the kit. It is not a cheap ‘pocket money’ hobby any more like it was when I was young. Leave them be and leave the cost low. Otherwise your future clientele will not exist.

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Yes, another good choice. Until then James Lee has us on this side of the pond covered with his updates.

Actually, this thread has helped me make a decision not to spend any more time working on some of the older kits. I’ve got newer kits to replace the old kits and I’d rather work on those.

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On the other hand, this thread has given me renewed desire to work on the eight Atlantis Fuel Truck kits I’ve been working on when I get home from my trip. You’ll be hard pressed to find older plastic kits as these were first released in 1956. Except for the addition of clear parts for the cab windows, these kits remain unchanged.

Gotta agree with @petbat on this.

I certainly don’t begrudge Tamiya rereleasing any of their “moldy oldies,” but even when they tart those kits up with a new sprue or two, the fundamental issues that they have still remain. Peter’s example of the GPA is a really good one.

Tamiya has popped out a couple of newer rereleases of that one, they added engine parts, newer figures, etc, all of which were good. However, the basic design of the kit is… well, let’s just say “less than accurate.” One of the easiest things Tamiya could have done to it, just provide the correct sized replacement wheels and tires, has still not been changed.

They have done similar things with other really old kits, like their Italian “M13/40” which was dolled up with new link-and-length tracks, new figures and decals, and even a little PE fret. However, fundamentally, the kit is neither an M13/40 nor an M14/41 (having an unnatural, never manufactured mix of features from both versions). The overall kit is also dimensionally incorrect (the hull being both too long and too wide) having apparently been designed around one of Tamiya’s motorization units and c-cell batteries (even though it was never released as a motorized kit).

All the lipstick in the world won’t make some of these old pigs into beauty queens.

Tamiya kits are engineered with the modeler in mind. Their instructions pretty much set the standard. Their production standards are some of the best in the industry. Every evolution of new releases are genuine improvements or advances in accuracy and detail over their older versions of the same subjects or as totally new subjects in the Tamiya stable.

However, they get away with a lot on some of their rereleases, mostly I think because there are no other competitor’s versions of the same subjects (like the GPA). Again, I don’t begrudge them from capitalizing off of these older kits, and as long as those kits remain the only game in town for those subjects, fine. The Tamiya GPA may not be the best POSSBLE kit of that subject, but it is the ONLY kit of it. It still fills a gap in kits.

It would be better, though, if Tamiya redesigned entirely new kits of these subjects and released them.

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