Friday, May 05, 2006

Yujin - Combat Vehicle Diecast

First of all, I would like to thank Mistuya san (el basser) helping me to get this set from Japan. I really appreciate his help on many occasions.

Ok. Back to business, this is the first Yujin military set in 1/144 scale. Interesting thing is the "Discast" theme. In fact, it's not 100% diecast. It's more like the 1/72 Dragon Armor where a major piece is made of diecast but all other parts are made of plastic. It's good or bad. Good is you get the feeling of a tank as it's much more heavy than a plastic tank. Bad is you almost can't do any modifications.

I pretty like the selections. Although I'm not interested in the Japanese tank but since there is only one in the series, I can handle.

The paint job is not as good as the latest releases from WTM or Dragon but the real things are better than the pictures as the pictures probably magnified the problems. If you look at the real thing on your hand, I think it's acceptable (especially it's only 300 yen then you can get something you normally need to buy a resin kit.) For example, if you look at the Mobelwagan picture above, you don't see any big problem but it you look closer,.... The Sd.Kfz. 234/1 looks ok but I prefer a Puma. Someone said the MG of the 234/1 is too big and I agree as the MG of the 234/1 is almost the same size of the 20mm cannon. Mobelwagan is the one I want but it seems the superstructure is too small that the flak cannot move. The Brummbar is ok as you may need to wait for a while to get the one from Dragon.

I would say, a good set for its selection of tanks. For 300yen each, a must buy for every 1/144 collector. More picture can be found here.

This probably is my last post before I come back from Japan. Will keep you posted if I find anything interesting. Cheers.

3 comments:

wtmblogger said...

Yes, I managed to find some in Japan. Will put them up soon.

bluedonkey99 said...

having recently received mine (no i dont have any spare) I must let it be known that these items actually look a lot better in the flesh than they do on some of the pictures on the web!

I was actaully surprised ho good they were considering the market they are aimed at.

wtmblogger said...

I tried to look for these in Japan and found they were all gone except the yellow submarine shop in Akihabara which sells them with a mark-up. Interesting but understandable, the most expensive is the Chi-ha tank and all the German vehicles were sold with a small mark-up. Since they were sold out in most places, even in those gashapon shops with tens of gashapon machine, I think it's a big hit in Japan too. It's good news in a way that we may see the second series soon because of the better than expected sales.

The Cando Jagdpanzer is also hard to find. The only places I found they only sold loose boxes. Since I prefer to buy a complete box so I have a chance to get the special, I decided to wait for the US release. It seems it's a hit too.