Resin nostalgia?

[Steve Sobieralski]

I have a bit of a “collection” of old 1/32 resin kits.  I put collection in quotes because I do not consider myself a collector, I always buy with the intent to build. But as a ship modeler I am familiar with says “If I buy them at three times the rate I build them, how long will I have to live to finish my stash?” Anyway, in addition to the Marco’s Miniatures B-25 I have a  Scratchbuilders Me 410 (first version unfortunately), TBF-3 Avenger, P-39 Airacobra, Ki 44 Tojo, Boulton Paul Defiant, J7W1 Shinden, Beech Staggerwing; Craftworks Macchi C.202/205 (wish I had their P-40C); Collectair T-38 Talon; TAC Scale Dynamics Mig-15; Essdale Supermarine S5 and Macchi Castoldi MC-72. In addition I have couple of Scratchbuilders conversion kits. Many of these have since been replaced by more recent injection molded kits, or more state of the art resin kits, and will never be built, at least by me.  At the time, it seemed as if these resin kits were going to be the only hope of obtaining large scale models of these aircraft, and some, like the Defiant, Staggerwing and Talon, are still the only game in town.

Regarding the MM B-25, while some of the casting is pretty clunky by today’s standards, it’s a pretty amazing kit for 1992.  I have never seen an Aurora B-25 in person, so I am not sure how much the MM kit owes to that kit, but it certainly goes well beyond it.  Optional noses are provided for both an H and J version, including a complete 75mm cannon with ammo rack for the H, and outfitted nose compartment with a fairly nice Norden bomb sight, for the J.  Cockpit and turret detail is pretty good and ammo boxes and belts are provided for all the machine guns.  Some parts, such as the engines, props and bombs are recognizably copies of Revell parts.  Many of the interior detail castings are actually pretty clean and crisp, the worst castings are the big airframe parts, particularly the fuselage and wings. The vacuformed clear parts are pretty thick, but are very clear with crisp framing and have not yellowed at all.  IF one wanted to build it, some of the available PE and after market resin for the HKM kit would probably provide enough improvement to make a pretty respectable model.  Although with the excellent HKM kits readily available, why bother?.  But all in all, a pretty impressive effort for 1992.

As an aside, Marco’s Miniatures also produced some 1/24 or 1/25 scale multi-media WWI fighters, including an Albatros, Nieuport 28, Fokker D8 and Pfalz as well as real space and sci-fi subjects.

Steve Sobieralski