Welcome to the IPMS/USA Reviews site!

Introduction: The primary organization of the IPMS/USA Review website is by IPMS/USA National Contest Class. Within each Class there are sub-menus by kits, decals, books, etc. The Miscellaneous Class is for items that are not class specific or that cross two or more classes.

IPMS/USA Members: We encourage you to submit reviews, both here and to the Journal. To volunteer for membership in the IPMS/USA "Reviewers Corps" and submit your own reviews, please read the Guidelines For Submitting Product Reviews.

Manufacturers, publishers, and other industry members: IPMS/USA is pleased to offer your company the opportunity for product reviews. All product reviews are performed by IPMS/USA members, and are posted in the publicly-accessible section of our website. With very few exceptions, we perform full build reviews of new kit releases, aftermarket products, and supplies. If you would care to provide product samples for review, please contact John Noack, IPMS/USA 1st VP.

To learn more about IPMS/USA, please see our About Us page.

Review Author
Joe Porche
Published on
Company
Hasegawa
Scale
Grade A Large
MSRP
$20.00

Wow what a fun little kit to build of a modern USMC war machine. The most interesting thing about the model is this kit can be built as a snap/or press tite build. No glue is actually necessary to construct this model.

Tenax 7 was used to cement all the parts and reacted well to the medium density Hasegawa plastic. Bondo 907 was used for the few seams that needed filling and again worked well with the Hasegawa plastic. I used Testors Clear Parts cement to attach the canopy and AV Plastic Putty for final seam fills and touch ups. The Model was painted overall using both Model Master Enamels and Tamiya Acrylics.

Every part was well and fully molded with no sink marks or pin marks visible. The only clean up on the parts was at the sprue attachment points.

Review Author
Mike Hanson
Published on
Company
Revell
Scale
1/16
MSRP
$58.99

The Revell 1/16 scale Hawaiian Charger Funny Car is a re-release of a kit first available in 1988. The kit is a representation of Roland Leong’s 1973 Dodge Charger “Hawaiian” Funny Car. These cars were essentially a rail or tube chassis with a modified fiberglass body representing the car – by this point in racing history a Funny Car had little in common with the stock car it represented other than a vague similarity and a name. In fact, the origin of the name ‘Funny Car’ comes from the elongated wheelbase and stretched bodywork – far from looking stock, they looked ‘funny’ and the name stuck.

This is a large, 1/16 scale kit, so it comes in an associated larger model box – this one measuring 11 ½ x 17 inches. It needs to be big, because the stretched Dodge Charger body is pretty long, just shy of 12 inches when completed.

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
Company
Tamiya
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$17.00

After a massive scratch building job on my 1/35th scale Werner’s Wings MH-47E I needed something simple. Quick. Easy. I needed a Tamiya kit.

Many of you may remember the old Bandai 1/48th scale series of military vehicles. Until Tamiya revived the scale with modern renditions in this scale Bandai was the only game in town for 1/48th scale armor. One of the unique vehicles that Bandai put out was the BMW R-75 motorcycle with sidecar. Finding these was always a pain. I built one of them a long while ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Could Tamiya do better? That is a rhetorical question.

Packaged in a sturdy 6 x 9 cardboard box with typical quality box art the modeler is treated to a single sprue of light tan plastic wrapped in plastic along with a small decal sheet. The instructions are printed on a long scroll of high quality paper in typical high quality fashion. There is a small decal sheet of license plates and some unit emblems.

Review Author
Mike Van Schoonhoven
Published on
Company
Model Art
MSRP
$13.37

Model Art Magazine is a monthly magazine that covers aircraft, armor, ships and car modeling. Model Art started releasing magazines in 1966 and has evolved from there over the past forty eight years.

The August issue of Model Art contains one main article, a smaller secondary article and several reoccurring monthly features.

Review Author
Jim Stepanek
Published on
Company
Revell
Scale
1/25
MSRP
$23.95

I wanted a small pickup to haul around some of my resin parts and got a real winner with Revell’s Datsun Off-Road Pickup. Very little flash and the parts fit very well together. The instructions are a 12 page document that provides the part number with a description and a chart showing what part should be painted what color.