Part 1: First Look

MSRP: $28.00 Kit supplied by Dragon Models USA: www.dragonmodelsusa.com Talk about a conglomeration. This is it! The basic kit comes from Hasegawa, the brass comes from Voyager and the decals are from Cartograf. The funny part, Voyager and Cartograf are given no credit on the box, the instructions or the decals themselves. The kit arrives with a Dragon USA exclusive sleeve added over the original Hasegawa box. The sleeve denotes this vehicle as a U.S. "Armored" 1/4 ton 4x4 Truck - Battle of the Bulge. Once again…..thanks to copyright issues I am sure. Inside the sleeve is the original Hasegawa box and inside the box, you get the original seven sprues of green plastic, one sprue of clear plastic, the jeep/truck body, five rubber tires, four poly couplings, five page instruction sheet and painting guide, and decal sheet (to mark four vehicles). To this Dragon/Voyager/Cartograf/Cyber-Hobby has added two frets of photo-etched parts, an instruction sheet, a decal sheet and a decal placement guide. This all will hopefully turn into an impressive model. Overall, the detail is somewhat lacking on all the plastic parts. The ejector pin marks that are present will mostly be hidden. The engine, consisting of over 15 pieces, will also be hidden. The detail is not that great and one of my parts was not properly poured and I do not want to try scratch building it. There are very few accessories that can be used with this scale as well. I will try casting one of the two packs that come with it but there will not be much to toss in the rear. Thanks to Keith Pruitt for the www.printmini.com website that does have some 1/24 stuff that I might be able to use as well. One of my two seats arrived in about seven pieces. Other than that, I am looking forward to this build. I want to thank Dragon Models for the review sample and IPMS/USA for a place to display the review so that others may want to go and build this odd scale "truck" and add it to their collection as well.

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