"Complex" kits

You have heard correctly. There are other excellent kits as well by the companies you mentioned. If you give us some idea as to what scale and type of aircraft your friend builds we may be able to give you some recommendations

Ron

Note that "lot of pieces" does not neccessarily mean "any good..."

As far as how other companies stack up, almost every company has their good and bad kits. I'd second the suggestion of the new Academy 1/32 F/A-18C, assuming s/he likes aircraft.

If s/he doesn't like jets, the... I forget what scale it was, 1/24 or 1/32 A6M Zero from Tamiya might be their cup of tea.

Something smaller? Hassegawa does make many excellent kits, as does Tamiya and Accurate Miniatures. Revell-Monogram? Depends on the kit - some of them are quite old. There's also a good bit of "kit swapping" between manufacturers.

Testors? Um, well... a LOT of older kits. They're the only game in town for some kits (U-2s, 1/72 B-2 bombers, etc) but - well, there's "challenge" and there's "challenge." Not much detail.

If s/he doesn't mind working with resin, photoetch, and/or other metal parts, you could always try to get a Trimaster kit off of eBay. Many DML/Dragon kits are actually Trimaster kits, with metal parts replaced with plastic. They (Trimaster) tend to go for a premium, though.

Academy F-18 Hornet in 1/32nd. State of the art and probably the best kit designed to date (not kidding). $120 retail, but if you can find it this week at HobbyLobby, $60.

..../V

Some of the Hasegawa kits had LOTS of parts. Their 1/72 F-14, F-4 (not early molds), and F-111 kits had so many parts, it was hard to make them fit back into the box properly after just looking at the trees.

try: