J.Norad Reviews: 1:6 scale Dragon Browning M2 Model Kit

Went to Brickworld 2011. Ended up browsing the local shops after lunch and I picked up this: a 2008 Dragon 1:6 scale Browning M2 Heavy Machine Gun model kit. I wanted to add this to the collection for some time (an M2, not particularly this one), and here was my chance. Not quite the best decision I've made regarding model kits, unfortunately.

I've seen one review of this model kit floating around. Not too surprising since not a lot of people review model kits, especially model kits of infantry weaponry. However, I've gone through the joy horror of building this kit to tell you how it really is.

Phase 1: Misinformation
I picked this up at the cost of under $19 at a hobby shop, all ready to get me a heavy machine gun. I opened up the box and beheld the presence of a foul and unholy mass of injection molded plastic and metal. Yes, there's metal. Is it awesome metal, as in "metal barrel and other assorted parts to enhance the flavor and detail"? Hell no! It's the "purely decorative but essential to make the kit annoying to build properly" type. We'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at the biggest problems with this kit: the instructions.

 Here's the first sheet. Top gives you an overview of the model, same as the box cover. Middle covers the runners and what each part is, in case you cut them all loose and have no idea what they're called afterwards. The bottom covers a painting color guide, which luckily is composed of 5 colors, and only two are essential to the gun. Take note at the grey section on runner set A. That designates parts that are not used in this model. My first question is, "why do you even include parts on the runners if this model doesn't use them?" Second, "what set does this get packaged with that uses these parts?" And lastly, "why the hell are these spare parts not duplicates of essential but potentially fragile parts?"

The answer to these questions is "they're actually used in this model kit, but the instructions writer decided to troll the kit builders who actually bother to look at the sheet". Because, who reads the instructions anyways? Certainly not the 4-13 year olds who buy this model, since this package certainly says that it's for 14 years+ only. We all know that getting a 14 year old to read a book is not particularly easy, so they added a visual instruction sheet with numbers on it. That's what the back side is for!
 

Phase 2: Deception
Side 2 of the instructions is where Dragon likes to whip out the middle finger and also take the time to poke you in the eye. I don't know if they fixed this for subsequent releases, but there's numerous errors with the instructions. I've handily corrected them in red. Notably, I've labeled where the "unused" pieces actually go on the model. Part A19 corresponds to the swivel tripod lever handle. Optional parts A29 and A30 turn out to form the "integral" leg clamp assembly for the right side of the tripod. Of course, you could have figured that out without the drawing by looking at the spot at the end of the leg and then at the runners. The handle isn't integral, but it's actually depicted on the cover photo, if you notice.

Per the numbers, you're supposed to be issued three B17s which correspond to the gun's firing mechanism assembly, and are supposed to glue them into the tripod legs. Great! I always wanted my tripod to shoot holes into the ground so I can have an easier time digging them into the ground. In a pinch, they will also serve to provide a last point of defense for the tripod carrying guy, so he can at least get some shots off. Dragon thought of everything.

Lastly, the instructions conflict with the product photo. The tripod feet per the instructions have the feet one way, and the photo has them the other. Which is correct? The product photo, apparently. I checked with what the actual M3 bipod looks like and it matches the photo, with the spades pointing all the same direction.

Phase 3: Lack of Information
At this point, you can argue that I'm being nit picky and deliberately bashing a decently designed kit for the sake of your entertainment. Now here's the point where Dragon takes their other hand and gives you the finger, and also jams it into your other eye. The METAL PARTS. Nowhere on the kit does it say that you need to have needle nose pliers for this kit. YES you need them. Why? Because the metal parts can't be assembled onto the other parts otherwise. And they're tedious.

The metal parts are all confined to the ammo box lid and a carrying handle on the barrel. The barrel requires you to clamp the loops tight otherwise they'll come off. Not too bad. Next part are the lid handle hinges. You'll need to pry them apart to fit them around the lid loops, then close them while the strap is in the hinges. I have decent dexterity and I had issues keeping the parts aligned while I clamped the loops closed.

 Last is this little gem here.

 The ammo box locking plate. It's a metal plate with a metal C that goes through it. They come separated and must be assembled together as shown above. Keep in mind the C hinge piece comes bent as a C and not straight. In order to get the part through the holes in the plate, you must unbend the part, thread it through and re-bend it. It's like unbending a paperclip and trying to bend it back so it looks the same. Doesn't happen, unless you're good. Mine still came out semi crooked.

My last point of the model kit is the plastic itself. You clearly need to paint this. The tolerances are tight without painting. A bit of sanding is needed to get the tripod legs to even slide. It felt like the model I got was late down the line where the mold had gotten sloppy. The ammo insert in the ammo box is wider than the ammo box inside, and requires trimming. The halves of some parts (legs, receiver, part of the barrel shroud) didn't meet up flat. As a side effect, the barrel came out crooked when assembled as is. Noticeably crooked.

Overall

Griping aside, the model's not bad. You just need to know what you're getting into. There's a lot of moving parts. Some of the movement can be nullified by bad handiwork or too thick of a paint job, however. I honestly don't think it's worth buying the kit if your skill isn't great and all you want is an M2. However, I don't think they sell the M2 pre assembled, at least not anywhere convenient. There's a limited number of M2's from other manufacturers, and none are common. So if you're in the market for one, you're forced to go the Dragon route if you're unable to find pre-built ones. If you're absolutely rubbish at painting like I am, you'll hate this option.

 On a last note: the ammo links are too rigid. You can sort of bend them. They'll snap and disintegrate though. You'll be limiting it to just dioramas and not much else.

J.Norad Reviews: Furuta 1:6 scale G11 Rifle

I've been fairly satisfied with the quality of models ZACCA has issued in the blind boxed 1:6 scale gun models. Today, I bring you the opposite side of the spectrum: Furuta's Metal Gun Mania: Assault Rifle Series' secret chase model, the Gewehr 11. It's not the prettiest gun out there, nor is it something that a collector would go, "My collection is missing a G11". It's also a very lackluster secret chase model compared to what ZACCA offered in their series (the M60E1, the FIM-92, the XM-177 with M203, and the M32 MGL, all of which were superior to the listed offerings on the boxes). Why? First, let's take a look at the model.

The item comes with a small collector's card with a photo of the real gun, so you know exactly how bad your model looks in comparison. Luckily, the G11 is all black. There's not even any paint applications for the safety/selector switch. The "S" is black, and not even painted. There's actually no paint at all on this model, an issue that I'll bring up later.

The Good (Lord this model blows)
 
The only way I can describe seeing this model come out of the packaging is "poor". Actually, "lackluster" and "subpar" work too. It feels like I paid $3 to receive a model kit put together by an apathetic child with no access to tools. Or hands. Or vision.

This model suffers from numerous problems, other than the blatant problem of being the most uninteresting model of the set. I've circled the problematic areas on the upper region of the model. The biggest problem is that the model was molded in two halves, and there must have been production problems in the molding process. There are several instances where excess plastic remained and needed to be trimmed. There were a few small spots where glue beaded on the surface near the mold halves. There's a large spot where a blind man let glue run all over the model.

The Bottom Half

You didn't think that the upper side was all that was wrong with the model, did you? Furuta is an equal opportunity half-asser!

Something went wrong with the mold design in the grip, or the plastic deformed significantly during the molding process. There was a 1mm wide gap between both mold halves in the grip bottom. There's also some glue residue and plastic too, but that's overshadowed by the assembly problem. Luckily, I deduced by the poor quality of the overall product that the glue itself must have been lackluster. And I was right.

 After twisting the frame around, I sheared off what little glue was used and separated the gun's front half from the body (by accident), and tried to separate the two halves. That didn't work. I found that the grip gap wasn't due to lack of glue. There seemed to be some interference between the two halves that prevented them from fitting together. I shaved some material off between the gap, which was easy due to how far I could separate the two halves. I tried to glue it back together, but I don't think it mattered whether I'd glue it back or not. A lot of the frame was damaged by me prying it apart with a watch screwdriver.

This is the best I got in reassembling the G11. I can't fix the regions I shaved off the glue and plastic. All I ended up doing was closing the gap between the handle.

The paint

Now...about that paint (or lack thereof). I obtained the full set of Furuta Metal Gun Mania models (all 14), and none of the magazines had the bullets in the magazines painted. There was a bit of extra plastic from the magazine's parting line from the molding process that I had to trim. This was true for half the magazines. The G11 comes with three magazines which required some trimming.

None of these magazines had paint when I obtained them. They looked terrible. I used Testor's gold and copper paint to paint the bullets. Even with my crappy paint skill, I managed to increase the appearance by a large margin with the painted bullets.


Product Summary

Furuta reinforces the idea of "you get what you pay for". I paid about $2-3 a gun, shipped. I don't think that is a price worth paying at all for any of the models when you have alternative options. Only the secret chase models are exclusive to Furuta, and they're both mediocre and need rework to look decent. Whatever you do, PASS on the opportunity to obtain any Furuta 1:6 scale guns. Save your money and buy a better made model, unless you're a glutton for re-working on someone else's mistakes.

I may review the remaining Furuta models all at once, since they're generally all mediocre and not worth a post for each gun. They're almost not even worth a post. The G11 takes exception for how bad it was compared to all the others.

Now, for the miscellaneous statistics!

Price Paid: $2-3 shipped (average cost)
Price worth: I'd rather build it myself with sculpey, drywall and a large wooden cooking spoon.
Defective pieces: 2
Pieces that snapped off during disassembly: 1
Ratio of glue to plastic used to assemble this model: 1/5,000
Ratio of glue used to assemble the model to glue that spilled around the outside of the model: 1/1
Collectibility: 2/10 (who the hell wants a G11?)
Build Quality: 1/10 (I swear their molding machine is damaged)
Reasons to buy this model: 0
Overall Ranking: Above Soldiers of the World, but below Ultimate Soldier

J.Norad Reviews 1:6 scale ZACCA M202A1

Welcome back to the 4th installment of the ZACCA rockets'n'grenades-fest. Today, we have one of the lesser known rocket launchers, the M202A1. This grenade launcher is particularly fitting for the TF2 soldier due to the fact that it fires four rockets, much like the Soldier's rocket launcher. A bit of interest of this weapon is that it's also a flamethrower, by firing incendiary rockets. It seems to be rear loaded with a clip of four rockets at a time. Pretty awesome sounding weapon, eh?

This rocket is by far the worst rocket from series 1 I've reviewed.

First, let's look at the blatant problems.

The Japanese don't speak English for a reason.

Oh boy. I'm pretty stuck up when it comes to proper grammar and spelling. This thing infuriates me so much by existing.

"WARNING
IF TRGGER MALFUNCTION
REMOVE MECHANISM
PROTECTNE"

ZACCA is known for their model detail. Apparently, that's "physical" detail and not their decals. How hard can it be to copy letters off a stock image? Seems like the Japanese can't copy these odd blocky pictograms and squiggles correctly. What's with the "protectne"? Protecting Acne? Pyrotechnic?

The weapon is unusable.

There's a reason why I don't have more than one photograph of the Soldier using the M202A1. It's an absolute nightmare to pose any figure with it properly. First off, you absolutely need to glue the parts together if you must use this for actual posing. As a display model, it's not an issue. The front and rear covers come off fairly easily. Normally this is a problem, but the rear cover is the main culprit in making this grenade launcher terrible. It obstructs your figure's arm from being able to hold the firing handle with his right hand, and limits the ability of your figure to hold the foregrip with the left.

Why is that a problem? Why can't you have your figure hold the M202A1 with one hand?

The model is virtually a giant box of plastic. The handles are thin and unless your figure has spring loaded hands, it will fall out of his hand quickly. You'll have problems trying to pose your figures with this. Only figures I can possibly make this work with is the Scout/Shia Lebeouf and the girls.

The upsides

This is perhaps the only model out there of the M202A1 in 1:6 scale. In terms of workmanship, it's fairly good. There's no cheaply done weathering or odd paint schemes/problems on it this time. If you can ignore the bad decals, it's a good model. Maybe some of you with good painting skills can touch up that problem and make it tolerable. Or alternatively, add wear that conveniently obscures the typos. For $5, it's reasonable to not expect too much from it.

Anyways, as is the tradition with these reviews, time to feature more "Let's attack blue things with rockets".

The Soldier looks to find out where BLU is hiding the intel for their new secret weapon.

We must scour every possible hiding place for the new weapon. They may have put it in places where you'd never think. Like in...HERE!

Negatory! They have not hidden the intelligence inside this blue vehicle.

I do recall them saying that the new weapon was located around here somewhere.

Oh.

I do believe I have found the weapon. Yes, I HAVE found the weapon. Or has the weapon found me?

Desk Vignettes #5: Worst Date Ever.

"And this is where I store all the little maggots I've beaten in combat! That's Shia LaBeouf, Ken, Steve, Capt. Price, Little Susie, Uwe, Hugo, Steve, George, PeeWee and STEVE!"

This Weekend's Project Progress: The Heavy Weapons Guy

Well, I had difficulties continuing with the Heavy Weapons Guy's minigun. I've come to accept that I improperly scaled it to 1:5 than 1:6 scale. Might have to scrap it and redo it properly. However, that doesn't mean that I still can't make headway on him. First, a pic on this weekend's progress, then some notes on the construction.
I still need to work on the gun. The hands aren't properly done yet, and need some epoxy and a coat of enamel for the gloves. If you're wondering about the suit, I can't find maroon cloth. Pink was the best I could get close to, and it's not too off from the in-game model. Actually, it's fairly off, but I tried. I still like how the suit came out, and I'll probably be fine redoing it in maroon. I'll do the stripes for the suit using a colored pencil if I ever get the suit made. The suit still needs some fasteners. Debating using buttons instead of velcro for a better look.

The head sculpt was fairly straightforward. Just two hours of work, and not a lot of problems. However, my sculpey had started to harden/dry out/become useless without slave labor kneading it soft after being exposed to hot and weird weather lately. I should just buy a new box and throw what I have left away. My hands can't handle the additional effort needed to make it workable.

The cigarette comes through the paper mask, and is removable. It's a simple piece of wire with half the insulation removed and jammed into a premade hole in his mouth. The mask was assembled in a similar manner, using insulated wire poking through the mask.
I decided to experiment with the Heavy's body by using a different, more expensive body. I chose The Ultimate Soldier's line of figures, (Retail $35, I paid $23) a British Paratrooper from WWII. For $35, you'd expect something really articulated, but he's actually worse than the $8/$5 figures I bought. Only one elbow point as opposed to two, and barely any waist movement. However, the joints are superbly stiff and he has a lot of heft to it. Not to mention, his shoes are smaller and his right leg is for some reason shorter than his left. Terrible flaw. Always something wrong with the right leg for every figure I've bought.

The default hands were unable to hold anything but a mop and bucket, so I decided to go for it and slice a finger free. Lo and behold, he can now hold a pistol. I got so excited I did it for both hands, so he can gangster wield 1911's now. I'll have to sand down the fingers before I apply epoxy so he can permanently have finger dexterity.

More progress when it comes. However, I like him without gloves right now.

Lessons Learned: So I know what not to do ever again...

Never buy acrylics without checking if they're "translucent".

Good two weeks wasted figuring out why primer wasn't helping this piece of shit paint stick any better. Going to go buy real paint and stop using this inferior stuff. No wonder why the hell yellow looked like piss when painting over light grey, let alone white. The engineer's glove is going to have to wait another week before being close to done.

I was wondering why the hell a darker color wasn't covering up a lighter color. That makes no sense.

Miscellaneous updates

Hip joint is holding up well. The new design does have problems with softened spheres but it maintains poses better than the first two iterations. No scanner or camera access, so it's going to be a bit before documentation can be posted. Might use CAD to illustrate it.

As an aside, came back home to find my model F-18 broken. Not sure what happened, but it's beyond repair value. I've noticed that I really did a crappy job on it, with decals warped and misaligned. The paint job was poor and spotty, and I already ruined the movable tail section during the initial construction job. Rather than buy a new set of rubber cement and fix it, I've trashed it. This only solidifies my stance against any new purchases with fewer than 10 movable parts. (F-18 would have had 3, if I made it right)

Problems with an enclosed and inaccessible structure

Appears that I can't maintain enough friction on the ball joints. Since repair involves me disassembling the entire structure to get access to the ball, it's near impossible. The legs are still operational, but posing is now limited to non-acrobatic non-aerial poses. I still have the old legs as backup, but that involves removing a small part of the hips (the ball and socket pin part) to allow them to be reused.

I also erred on the paint mix, so her legs are slightly off shade. I'll have to correct that later.