10 worst model kits of all time

Having seen the recent thread of 50 worst cars of all time, I thought about what we could do ...at least as well as the car guy... of the 10 worst model kits of all time. (let's keep it to injected molded styrene)

(Al S would have loved this thread)

Have at it!!

---Stephen

Reply to
Stephen Tontoni
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How do you want to do this --

a) Accuracy b) Assembly c) Choice of subject

Seems we better refine this up front or it will go one forever...

Cookie Sewell

Reply to
AMPSOne

Testors/Italleri 1/48 F/A-18E gets my vote in categories a) and b)...

...otherwise, I can think of a few subjects I may not have built except for the fact that the kit offered was a fantastic feat of engineering and quality - so I'd vote category c) as irrelevant.

Reply to
Rufus

Reply to
Hub Plott III

Starfix (a & b) Any additional Bf.109 or P-51D (more plastic than actual aircraft - by weight!)

Reply to
The Old Man

The only kit that I ever tossed in the trash after trying to build it was the Merlin Kaman HOK-1. The clear plastic fuselage was so brittle that it cracked when a drill bit started turnng on it. The fuselage halves didn't fit, rotor blades were a bad joke, nothing fit and it wasn't even a decent paint horse.

I should have guessed that it would be trouble when I saw the box art with the star and bar applied upside down.:-0

BTW, the Starfix HH-3 copy of the Aurora kit was nicely done.

Tom

Reply to
maiesm72

There are certainly a lot of contenders from the 50's, 60's. Especially from the former East Germany and the Soviet Union. KVZ, LFI, MCCNE, Krugozor and the like all produced many unbuildable kits. Some actually appeared in the US under the Plasticart and even the Revell label.

However, I think these were even worse:

Ruch, 1/72 PZL P-23 Karas (Poland, c.1967)

Puky, 1/63(?) FMA IA 58 Pucara (Argentina, c. 1983)

Veeday, 1/72 Yak-15 (UK c. 1980)

Anyone who even thinks about nominating the maligned Williams Bros B-10 doesn't know how bad, bad can be!

Greg Reynolds, IPMS

Reply to
Greg Reynolds

I'm going to go with the...

Williams Bros. B-10!!!

The monkey and his tricycle agree!

Reply to
Drew Hill

I'll put in a second on the Ruch P.23. Once Heller's kit came out they were only good for paint practise.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Stephen Tontoni wrote: : : Having seen the recent thread of 50 worst cars of all time, I thought : about what we could do ...at least as well as the car guy... of the 10 : worst model kits of all time. (let's keep it to injected molded styrene) : You almost need to divide this one up by era, although you can lump most eastern european kits together as just plain "bad", at least until the mid 90's or so.

You also need a way to distinguish between multi-media ?? kits (Gunze Sangyo) and the all plastic DML re-releases - the Gunze kits were/are a pain due to the clean up of the white metal involved, but the DML kits were not much better.

On second thought, DML kits w/out the "Dragon" on the box can probably all be lumped together. There was a reason DML was thought to stand for "Do Me (MUCH!) Later!" Fortunately, they got MUCH better. DML SCUD, anyone?

Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Burden

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: : How do you want to do this -- : : c) Choice of subject : I would give the Trumpeter Monte Carlo kit this nod. Why would you make a model of this POS?

Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Burden

I'd nominate the old Fujimi Crusader. Companies that did OK kits, yet throw our a real stinker at times, that what the worst list should be, not kits that really didn't get produced in larger numbers in the West. Now some of those limited run east-block kits--brr. you had to nearly chisel parts out of the plastic, like you do with knocking a statue from a block of Marble.

Bad yes, but face it, you really weren't expecting much in that box, now were you? Worst of the Worst, should be expecting a lot when first opening the box, start the build, yet that sinking feeling that you're building a turd of a kit as you note terrible fit, outlines/shape are just plain wrong, like some of those old Combat Vacs, a roll of the dice, like early DML

Or stuff like the rubber wheels that dissolved any plastic they touched, or the unglueable chinese kits

** mike **
Reply to
mike

I think you mixed the Paul and the Norm. My Norm kit did not have folding wings; my Paul did.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Now that Merlin is gone, how about Mach 2?

A lot more esoteric would be the sometimes hideous copies of the earlier Czech resins. Sometimes even the color of the resin (translucent green, especially) proved to highlight the immense air bubbles. The vacuformed clear parts were also barely even a rough shape.

Tom

Reply to
maiesm72

The Tamiya Leopard 1 has to be one of the worst tank kits ever made in

1/35th.

I agree about some of the old Dragon kits.. .

Lance

Reply to
Bluepen

I *would* agree (screw Dan's monkey) but the 247 was worse. I got several to make one, and still gave up. At least I got a B 10 done, and for long enough to blow up with firecrackers within a month of completion.

Still find 247 parts turning up round here from time to time......

Reply to
AM

The worst one I ever built was the Aurora 1/48 scale Me-109; this "thing" was made in metallic red plastic covered with huge rivets, and managed to combine features of a Bf-109B, C, D, and E into one model. It had obviously designed by someone who had only a vague idea what the real aircraft actually looked like, rather like a artist's conception of some secret enemy design based on verbal descriptions and very fuzzy photos:

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model was completely beyond fixing - there was no way to modify it into a acceptable model no matter what you did to it. Despite that, Aurora marketed it for quite some time, thanks to the popularity of the "Twelve O'clock High" television series. They made a pretty miserable model of a FW-190 also:
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's pretty impressive exhaust, isn't it? It looks like it has RATO under the nose cowling. Another model which I never built, but had a terrible reputation was the Artiplast Macchi M.C. 72 seaplane racer. That one rated a whole article in Scale Modeler magazine due to its awfulness.

Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

Oh, that's another one- the VEB Plasticart Su-7 from East Germany. The instrument panel looked like some sort of Wurlitzer jukebox. The whole thing was very crude and had very poor fit. They made a AN-2 also, and I'll bet that was the one you had:

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Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

I got some horrible Russian model of a Yak-28 in 1/72 scale that had a odd dark protrusion near the back of one of the fuselage halves that wouldn't sand down correctly no matter what I tried; it was a metal shaving that had gotten into the mold and been cast directly into the fuselage. I had to pull it out and patch the hole. This was the work of a very minor company, so I don't know if it counts as one of the ten worst, which I think should maybe be limited to bigger companies, who somehow make real disaster areas despite being a fairly substantial firm.

Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

I thought that was a great kit of a very interesting subject. Remember the Glencoe reissue of the FROG 3 rocket launcher? Sucky model.

Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

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