MiniArt is a Ukraine company that was established in 2001 and released their first kit in 2003. They are well known for their Diorama series, but the have released many armored vehicles, figure sets and accessory sets over the past several years.

This figure set comes in a end opening cardboard box. The instructions for assembling the figures is on the rear of the box. The kit comes with two sprues and these contain the five figures and equipment for them.

The figures are molded in a light grey plastic. There is just a slight amount of flash on the parts, with the biggest issue being the clean up of mold lines. The figures are pretty well detailed, just be careful in your clean up of the mold lines as you might lose some details. Painting instructions and paints are called out on the rear of the box. They list several different paint manufacturers.

MiniArt is a Ukraine company that was established in 2001 and released their first kit in 2003. They are well known for their Diorama series, but the have released many armored vehicles, figure sets and accessory sets over the past several years.

This set comes in a end opening cardboard box and it contains six sprues of parts molded in a light gray plastic. The molding is clean with no flash, but there are a few minor mold lines that will need to be removed on some of the parts. The attachment points on the parts to the sprue have been well thought out even though some are on the large side. This should make clean up easy. These pieces have a high degree of detail even though some are relatively small.

What comes in the kit is as follows:

Mars Attacks! Most people will first remember 1996 Tim Burton film. it really started as a trading card series released in 1962 by Topps (the baseball card people). It became the most popular non-sport series ever. Mr. Burton kept the Martians in the film very similar to the trading cards and Moebius has duplicated that in this kit.

The kit consists of 43 gray parts and 2 clear parts for the Martians helmet. The kit has a nicely detail base with toasted human on it, a lamp post and a Martian warrior straddling the corpse. The kit assembles in four parts- the base, the victim, the lamp post, and our Martian.

Background

During the 17th through 19th centuries, Grenadiers were considered the shock troops of an army. In addition to their muskets, they were equipped with rudimentary hand grenades. Typically, they were chosen from the tallest recruits for the sake of intimidation, and this was visually increased by the use of tall mitre hats or bearskins. The kit represents an enlisted man from the Dutch Imperial Grenadiers circa 1810. Some quick research in one of my older references, as well as online, shows that this kit indeed represents a Third Dutch Grenadier. This unit was part of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard at Waterloo. The colors recommended in the kit seem to be accurate for an enlisted man. According to Wikipedia, “This regiment was created as the Royal Guard in Holland, when Louis Napoleon, brother to Napoleon, was made King of Holland.

Being fresh off of the review of the 1:72 scale MiniArt “Building w/Garage”, kit #72031, we now have the “City House” kit, #72030. This is a model of a typical European multi-family dwelling. Like the previous kit, this kit represents a complete, undamaged building and not a ruin. It is also all injection molded styrene with none of the vacuum-formed parts found in some of their 1:35 scale releases in the same genre.

The Box

The 13.5’” by 10.5” by 2.25” box is the preferred top and bottom (lid) type. There is a nice artist’s rendition of the building on the box top which can serve as a helpful painting guide, although colors can ultimately be left to the imagination of the individual modeler. However, considering the weight and quantity of the box contents, and like the last kit, I felt that the box top was a bit flimsy, although this one has managed to stay together thus far.