Mini Art figures ?

AM,

They're pretty good and worth a try. Here's a review I posted some time ago about one of their sets.

Cookie Sewell

• * *Kit Review: Miniart 1/35 Scale Kit No. 35017; Soviet Tank Crew at Work; 37 parts in grey styrene; price about US

Advantages: nice, modern set of figures in casual poses =93doing something=94 around a tank

Disadvantages: =93Not German=94

Rating: Highly Recommended

Recommendation: for all Soviet armor dioramists

For too many years the wealth of figures and figure sets produced have been too closely focused on only WWII German subjects, which has been very frustrating to the rest of the armor and figure community. When the stray American, Russian or (heaven forbid!) Commonwealth set came out, modelers would fall on it like a pack of hungry piranhas no matter how good =96 or bad =96 it was.

Happily many of the newer manufacturers have seen this and now the Chinese and Eastern European ones are filling the void, and with good, high quality figures too. Miniart has begun with a pretty good track record on figures, and now Soviet WWII modelers have been able to get some decent figures to compliment the growing number of WWII Soviet armored vehicles offered.

This set provides five Soviet tankers performing maintenance. Three of the figures are posed as it operating a bore brush for the main armament (which was usually carried in sections inside the longest of the stowage bins =96 =93ZIP=94 in Russian for spares, tools and accessories =96 on the fenders of nearly all combat vehicles. One bareheaded figure is posing with a rag in hand and the commander is standing in a relaxed position with his hands set to drape over an open hatch.

The one thing that I have noticed about the new Miniart figures is that their facial sculpting yields to no one. The five heads in this set are the equal of many of the after-market resin ones offered and can be shown to have individual expressions and even ethnicity =96 one tanker hear looks to be a Tadzhik (central Asian) with a shaven head and it shows. The same goes for the other four.

Anyone with a good set of tank blueprints may want to have the man with the rag working on cleaning out the tank=92s air cleaners, which needed constant maintenance with a good cleaning by the crew every 3-4 hours (until 1951 when UVZ finally created a working design that solved that problem.)

Finishing is provided similar to DML boxing with an assembly diagram and color directions on the back of the box. Interior directions provide a handy sketch of where the parts for each figure are located on the sprue.

Overall, this is a great set and one that any diorama modeler would be able to find good use for with a T-34 or IS tank or other 1943 and later armored vehicle.

Thank You !!!

:)

If I recall some of their building kits come with vacuform parts which is something I did not expect, nor want. So check on that if you don't want to work in that medium.

Craig

not even glass? i am not a vac fan either, but the glass can be awesome. vac canpies and carefull filling can make the monogram do 335 look really good. same with the airfix sunderland. carefull sanding, rescribing and new glass can make it look much better. i would love a good 1/48 scale sunderland but i think i dream alone on this one. there are some great youtube vids of flying models. just google them or youtube search. one that i saw would fool a movie audience easily.,

Shalom.

There are a lot of manufacturers of styrene Russian figures besides Mini-Art.

Master Box makes some really nice Russian figures. Some of them come in pairs with a pair of German figures opposing them. The on-line Master Box catalogue is here:

Check out these sets, Russian tankmen, 1943-1944 /3535/ scale

1:35 =3D "Bail Out!" Russian Tank Crew, Kursk, July 1943 /3532/ scale 1:35 =3D Infantry. Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy, 1944 /3529/ scale 1:35 =3D Frontier Fighting, Summer 1941, hand to hand combat (4 fig.) /3524/ scale 1:35 =3D Frontier Fighting, Summer 1941, Russian Infantry (4 fig.) /3523/ scale 1:35 =3D They also have another set of Russian figures in progress that should be ready soon Who's that ? /3571/ scale 1:35 =3D I have a few of these Master Box figure set as well as a few others and I like them very much. They are crisply and finely moulded and have excellent detail especially the faces.

Besides Mini-Art and Master Box other makers or Russian figures such as Dragon, ICM, Italeri, Tamiya, Tristar, Trumpeter and Zvezda also all have at least one set of Russian figures or Russian equipment that comes with figures too.

Examples:

DML6019 - DML/Dragon Soviet Motor Rifle Troops (Berlin 1945)

DML6068 - DML/Dragon Red Army Scouts & Snipers Figure Set

DML6197 - DML/Dragon Soviet Infantry Tank Riders

DML6376 - Dragon 1/35 Gen2 Soviet Guards Infantry 1944-45

ICM35131 - ICM Russian Artillery 'Battle of Kursk, 1943'

Italeri 347 Soviet Assault Troops WW2

TM35021 - Tamiya Russian GAZ-67B Field Car

35022 TAMIYA RUSSIAN ARMY INFANTRY 1/35

35149 TAMIYA RUSSIAN T34/76 "CHTZ" VERSION 1/35 this comes with a wheeled Russian machine gun and 2 infantry figures too.

35207 Russian Assault Infantry

35214 TAMIYA RUSSIAN ARMY TANK CREW AT REST 1/35

TRI35012 Soviet Tank Crew

TR00411 - Trumpeter 1/35 Soviet Tank Ammo Supply Crew

TR00412 - Trumpeter 1/35 WWII Soviet Red Army on Maneuver

TR00413 - Trumpeter 1/35 WWII Soviet Red Army at Rest

TR00414 - Trumpeter 1/35 Soviet Assault Red Army w/ Winter Gear

ZV3504 - Zvezda Soviet WWII Tank Crew and Officer

ZV3505 - Zvezda Russian ZiS-3 Anti-Tank Gun

ZV3579 Cossacks With Horses

ZV3544 - Zvezda Soviet WWII Tank Infantry

Those are just the ones I can come up with at the moment.

Cheers from Peter

=3D

Frontier Fighting, =A0Summer 1941, hand

info/3524.htm,

the Bail Out Russian tank crew set is one I built last night. Great fit for everything. Remember the days when a hand was sort of close to the rifle, but the soldier was supposedly firing it? Masterbox figures are great. All the hands rest where they are supposed to. Cranked out the 5 figure set in less than an hour. Buy them with no regrets.

Craig

ISTR someone putting out a 1/48 Sunderland but it was resin or something and expensive.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

yes. i've seen it somewhere. prolly youtube.

Thanx everyone for the input.

My kid now has 13 kit's/sets of figures on the way from Scale Hobbiest (great online ship BTW !!) All Mini Art sets.

I'm going to start in on the SU 76M next week.

Theres going to be a diorama full of dead Russians in the works for the next year or so here.......... (kid has this idea for an ambushed Russian convoy)

i have the icm mujahadeen set if you need it. it's yours if you email me your snail address.