Part 1: First Look

MSRP: $37.95 Unbelievable … simply Unbelievable! This has got to be one of the greatest weeks in model building history for me. Last Friday, my local hobby shop gets my Trumpeter Stryker in, the T-34/85 track actually seems to be going together well, and today I receive this kit. I might actually believe I am in model Nirvana. Dragon's latest addition to their ever growing Premium Edition kits is the M51 Isherman. This is the ultimate of ALL Shermans, both in modeldom and real life. This is basically a collaboration of their old kit (3529), new parts from other Shermans, and kit-specific items. The model pirates at Dragon are out filling their chests with loot and this one is looking pretty full. The box is beautifully adorned with a Zippori Brigade M51 driving past a disabled T-54/55. The box sides are adorned with all the goodies contained inside the box. What a lot of goodies you get when you open it up. There are 14 light grey sprues of crisp clean plastic, 1 lower hull, 1 box containing an aluminum barrel and brass springs and rod (for the working HVSS), 1 clear sprue (containing lights and periscopes), 2 etched brass sheets, a small decal sheet, 2 bags of tires (road wheels and idler wheels), and a four page fold out instruction sheet. As stated earlier, this is a combo of their older M51 and a mixing of newer items. I pulled one of my many older M51's off the shelf for a comparison. The first one is sprue B. In the old kit, this came with the turret halves to make the M50. All of sprue B is still there EXCEPT the turret halves. They included the Commander's periscope sprue off their M4 A2/A3 which also includes their slide molded .50 machine gun. All the other sprues are basically the same and the molds just seem to be crisper. Oops, while scanning the parts, I noticed that my upper mantlet dust shield has arrived broken. Hopefully, I should be able to easily repair this. The big differences are the lower hull including the suspension, the track and the barrel. The lower hull is more detailed and for some reason, Dragon molded the return roller mounts onto it. Cool, less parts for me to glue. The suspension is completely workable. I have read reports of how fragile this is. We will see. I see making it workable causing a problem with the track. This is where I almost fell off my chair. They have molded it as a single piece using their DS vinyl. This I absolutely love. However, you have to glue 79 center guide horns onto it. These horns are actually hollow and look incredible. The one piece track could also create too much pressure on the suspension units and cause them to have an unrealistic appearance and possibly stress on the units as well. The aluminum barrel and styrene muzzle brake are both terribly short and undersized when compared to the older kit. The decal sheet contains decals for one vehicle only. However, they do include a blank black backing plate and numerous numbers that you can turn into just about any vehicle. The one neat feature of this kit is that Dragon (for the first time) has included almost all of the plastic parts that were usually removed when they upgraded to the premium edition. This means that if you want to use the older plastic barrel and muzzle brake you can. If you want to use plastic instead of etched brass for the fenders, side rails, and light guards, you can. I would like to thank Dragon Models for both hopping this great classic up and allowing IPMS/USA and its' members the opportunity to review this sample.

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