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Vehicles / Military - 6mm to 49mm
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Displaying Reviews: 1 - 1
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Average Reviewer Rating:
 
Number of Reviews:
1
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Excellent Cast Resin Components
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Reviewer
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Reviewed by Antar Howarth (info@totalmodel.com) July 20, 2004
Matador Models have a fine reputation for crafting some of the very best military vehicles in the small-scale community. I'm already familiar with many of their white metal models, but this is the first full resin kit I've encountered. The Hummer also marks something of a turning point in the Matador range as it is the first modern kit to appear in their catalogue. In the past the company have concentrated almost solely on WWII and earlier subjects so this kit represents a refreshing change from the norm.
Like almost all other Matador kits, the Hummer is packed in a sturdy black cardboard box emblazoned with the orange Matador logo. The first thing I noticed upon opening the box was the smell! Resin kits can be notoriously whiffy but this kit has a most interesting perfume. It reeks of mothballs! I do not know if this is some sort of new secret ingredient but the actual resin castings are superb. They also rank as some of the cleanest components I have ever seen. I could find only the merest traces of excess material around the mould lines which required very little attention. One of the reasons for this appears to be the way in which the components have been assembled on their sprues or runners. Each is only an inch or so wide and carries - at the very most - only three different pieces of the kit. This approach also seems to make it easier to remove the components from the sprues - as there aren't so many other fiddly pieces to get in the way!
(NB: Click the thumbnail image at the top of the page to view castings.)
The front and back halves of the Hummer are formed from two separate castings which butt together just in front of the dashboard. Once these are in place the rest of the kit goes together very, very nicely. Indeed, at times it was a real pleasure to see some the components almost fall into place! Detail is crisp throughout with some particularly fine touches around the front grill and body work. In places some of the castings appeared a little too thin. This was particularly evident in the foot wells of the main body which - like fine bone china - were almost translucent. This was easily rectified by using some thin plastikard to reinforce the underside of the floor.
The only criticism I've ever had of Matador's white metal models in the past is that some of their wheels appear too skinny and slightly out of proportion to the rest of the vehicle. This - I am told - is an optical illusion caused by a number of factors, not least the often lofty eye-view of the observer. Even so, it is not unheard of for some model makers to widen tracks and wheels simply in order to correct the anomaly. Thankfully, no such problems concern the Hummer. Once assembled it looks every bit the real HMMWV M1025 that it is intended to represent.
I really like this kit. Some modellers shy away from resin kits for fear they may present too much of a challenge. The Hummer, on the other hand, was easy to assemble. In many ways it was more like building an injection moulded plastic kit than a resin model and I certainly hope that Matador will go on to produce many, many more!
Highly recommended.
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3
out of
4
people found this review helpful
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