Kits for the Devil or just Kits to avoid

[Nige201980]

The Italeri mirage III and kitty hawk were both really bad kits with loads fit issues soft detail or no detail in the case of the mirage cockpit and unless I know about a kit from review I will not touch another Italeri kit for a long time.

[Lee]

Anything from Airfix pre 2000

[Panzerwolf]

Agree with Lee (lol nice rhyme), old airfix kits suck.
Currently building a Churchill Crocodile in 1/76, terrible, my fingers hurt from sanding!
Might post the build up to show you.

[Rob]

Anything from Airfix pre 2000

even the 1/48 Lightening (late 90s)?

[Lee]

Ha ha I thought it was younger that that!

I have a review of that coming out next week!

[Panzermeister36]

Tamiya's old (like the '70s) Panther ausf A...? *shudders* I've heard horror stories...

[Radzy]

So far, for me that would be Italeri's Tiger Ausf. E that is now a dummy target for my airbrush this kit ... didn't fit
And Special Hobby's Digby Mk.I ... classic example of small company, shortrun series... everything's wrong, starting from moulds, through instructions up to fitting and ... well... I WANT TO FINISH IT NOW AND GET RID OF IT FROM WORKBENCH

[Daishi12]

Can still remember making up the old Airfix Blackburn Buccaneer --- horrible, horrible kit

[chief5437]

1/72 hasegawa a6 intruder. Bloody awful, yet the ea-6b was great!?

[DesertAAModeller]

Italeri 1/35 Flakpanzer Ostwind and Panzer IV Ausf F1/F2, both really nice kits but just more complicated than they needed to be. Some of Dragon's 1/35 armor "red boxes" series. Also I'll add Tamiya's early 1/35 soldiers, they are good for beginners but they are shorter in height if scaled up to 1/1 and also contain ejector pin marks and lots of seam lines.

[Bassman]

I have an old (very?) AMT Challenge Mixer Kenworth. This has the earlier Torsion Bar rear suspension. From what I have read, the assembly is somewhat hampered by a lack of positive positioning. I may summon the courage one day!!

Having said that I had some issues doing the later rear suspension on an AMT Kenworth (my first foray back into modelling in the early 70's). I'd probably manage it a bit better if I did another one.

[FokkerDXXI]

The revell rnlaf tigermeet kit from '88. The flash scared me

[HamilkarBarkas]

The early Eduard Bf110 are quite a pain in the butt, but the Zvezda Katjusha is the most terrible kit i have ever seen so far. Its also the only model i threw in the bin.

[Gav0909]

Daishi don't say that! I have that Airfix Buccaneer. But I am planning on throwing lots of PE and resin at it lol. And rescribing the entire thing as well.

[Paul]

Worse kit I have ever made is revells 1/32 mk22/24 spitfire it was horrific

[chief5437]

Daishi don't say that! I have that Airfix Buccaneer. But I am planning on throwing lots of PE and resin at it lol. And rescribing the entire thing as well.

I didn't think it was too bad, other than the canopy that is! About time they did a new one though.

[MakingModelsAgain]

Anything from Airfix pre 2000

Now steady on there, old boy! Hehehehe Here's the deal. After my little escapade with their old-tool Zero, I would heartily agree with you 100%. But and it's a big but (that's what she said! Ooh err missus!) I was given that Airfix Blohm Und Voss Vb141 thingy from a very kind subscriber of mine and at first, I kinda thought that it would be like that old Zero, but upon closer inspection of the box innards, I found that, yes, it was the old tooling - raised panel lines and rivets a'plenty, but that there had been some, shall we say tweaking with the tooling. There were nicely detailed cockpit instrument fascias way beyond their capability at the time and well-rendered undercarriage struts. In addition to that, the dry-fit of the parts was immaculate - new-tool-Tamiya-grade immaculate. So I'm wondering if Airfix have found a way to refurbish old tools and bring them a little more up to date!

[Gav0909]

Well this is in part true Gary, as the Airfix Bucc in 1.72 does have a newer sprue in with the weapons on it. Now they aren't that great in quality, I mean the fins on the LGBs are way to thick, but it shows they tried to update it somewhat.

Plus all current releases of Airfix kits (in the red boxes) come with Cartograf decals at least.

[WebbyNZ]

I have an old (very?) AMT Challenge Mixer Kenworth. This has the earlier Torsion Bar rear suspension. From what I have read, the assembly is somewhat hampered by a lack of positive positioning. I may summon the courage one day!!

Having said that I had some issues doing the later rear suspension on an AMT Kenworth (my first foray back into modelling in the early 70's). I'd probably manage it a bit better if I did another one.

I thnk keeping clear of any auto that amt/monogram made upto mid nineties is a safe bet, some of them are awful kits and even if they came out the factory ok, they tend to warp and become brittle and lack any real detail.

[Panzerwolf]

So here the pictures of the Airfix Churchill problems:

This is everywhere:





The gun doesn't look very nice:



Some fitting issues here and there:



Kit not recommended!

[rm6239]

Well for me it's the Revell A10- Warthog, sprue attachments you need a chainsaw to get through and a copyright notice on the outside of the horizontal tailplane. Built, painted and binned, pity really as it's such a unique looking plane.





cheers

Rossco

[Daishi12]

Daishi don't say that! I have that Airfix Buccaneer. But I am planning on throwing lots of PE and resin at it lol. And rescribing the entire thing as well.

I didn't think it was too bad, other than the canopy that is! About time they did a new one though.

The one I built was about 1976 --- nothing fitted, flash everywhere, tail-sitter, NHS glasses canopy, decals about 3mm thick, oh and a good thick smearing of Airfix's goat fat mould release agent, --- nearly forgot the rotating bomb bay was about 2mm too short to fit in and kept falling out




Oh gawd,,, I can feel the dodgy cinematic flashback starting...I need to do some modeling on a nice kit but can't 'cos they are all still packed from my house move

[Pir8hnter]

For Christmas of 1955(yes, I am that old), I received my first plastic model kit. It was a model kit made by Revell of a jet fighter. So when you want to talk horrible model kits, well if I remember right, they didn't even have any landing gear. Also, this was before the days of PE, resin, CA glues, putties or any after market kits. No airbrushes, no fancy sanding sticks, you painted them with a brush. You get the idea. In fact, I think I still have a couple of kits somewhere that I started with my grandfather in the 50's. Might have to drag one or more of them out for the Shelf Of Doom build.

[Johni044]

The Spitfire, Hurricane and Stuka from the Revell BOB Giftset which includes a repop of the Frog He111 were truly awful kits who moulds should have been put out if their misery years ago.

The Testors 1:72 B2 Spirit is a big let down, poor cockpit and well detail, poor fit, raised panel lines ??!!!! a filler Queen and right royal pain in the but.

[RobertK]

I have a Pz.II from Alan. This misaligned flashy junk is by far the worst I ever seen. It's simply not possible to complete this kit, the tracks are just....no.

[Neils]

For me, it was the Airfix 1:24 FW190. I'd wanted this kit since it first came out and I was really disappointed with all the fitting errors and stuff. Kinda made me wonder if they had actually tried to make the kit at all or had just made it on paper.

[LTmodelmaking]

The worst kit that I've build was 1/72 Revell Eurofighter. I tried to build it 2 times but it's designed to have its air brake and refueling probe open. If I'll ever build a Eurofighter again I'm going to use the Hasegawa kit.

[jmar829]

I usually try to avoid Revell all together. If they're the only ones that make a certain plane I'm interested in building (B-17 for instance), I'll buy one, but if the same plane is made by a better manufacturer, I don't even consider buying the Revell.

Worst Revell kit: 1:48 scale SBD Dauntless

[EpoxySniffer]

Revell 1/350 VIID U-Boat, the plastic was so brittle the parts were snapping when I was cutting them off the sprues. Shame because it was actually a nice little kit, the plastic was just very bad but maybe I just had a bad substandard kit. The other pig was the Airfix 1/72 Airacobra which I believe was just a reboxing of a 1960's Heller kit, no excuses for that one it was just a crappy old kit that didn't fit together.

[ScaleModelling1105]

Revell 1:72 HH-60G Black Hawk/Pave Hawk. An italeri tooling. Plastic has a horrible translucency to it. Kit goes together ok and the cockpit is good but oh boy the clear parts. Where do I start. They wouldn't come close to fitting and I ended up sanding them down for ever. The windshield was way too small and was warped so that part was almost unrecoverable. Decals were average but not up to revells usual standard. I've built worse kits like airfix's old ones but I would avoid this unless you enjoy sanding and getting annoyed. Don't let the really cool box art draw you in!