The kit includes four figures and accessories including hand extinguisher, hose, and fire hydrant. Facial expressions of three of the figures have static straight-ahead looks, but the fourth figure has a much better expression with an open mouth like he’s shouting.

The parts are molded in tan plastic that is a little soft. The figures’ hands, faces, and accessory pieces have nice, sharp details. Mold seams are minor and well concealed when the figures are assembled. ICM does a nice job of concealing the mold seams in folds of clothing or sharp edges of the figure. ICM even overhangs the belt buckle over the coattails, so be careful not to remove the buckle prior to fastening the coattails.

ICM has an interesting way to combine the body’s torso and legs. The coattails are molded separately from the body and conceal the joint between the legs and the torso. This provides a nice recess behind the coattails.

ICM has nice detail on the accessories such as the fire extinguisher, reel of hose, and fire hydrant. Small pieces of chain need to be added for the fire hydrant and are not included with the kit. I drilled out the ends of the nozzles on the hose reel.

The fit of the figures is pretty good and they went together well. The hands of the figure opening the fire hydrant grasp the wrench nicely. The left hand of the figure holding the hose grips the nozzle well, but the right-hand did not fit the hose tubing. I needed to twist his arm and break his thumb in order to get his hand to close around the hose. The figure with the coiled hose fits very nicely and his hands do grasp the hose.

I initially drilled out the hand of the figure holding the fire extinguisher to grasp the plastic handle, and split the handle to fit within his fingers. This did not work, so I replaced the plastic handle with a piece of brass wire drilled into the top of the extinguisher. His arm did not seem to fit with the extinguisher on the ground.

On several of the figures with more visible hands, I opened up the sleeves using a micro drill and X-Acto knife blade tip to provide some depth inside the sleeve. Check the fit of the heads to the helmets, as some adjustments might be necessary for a good fit. The figures’ poses are very lifelike, and they went together well with only minor filling of the arm shoulder joint.

Paint colors are referenced in Model Master enamels. The box top does not accurately reflect the colors of the fireman's uniforms, which are better depicted on the box side panel. I painted the figures with Tamiya acrylics and Model Master enamels. For the faces and hands, I used LifeColor acrylic base flesh number 1 and artist oil colors for the shadows and highlights. The instructions call for the hose fittings to be aluminum but I chose to use Alclad brass instead.

The directions show painting instructions for the figures’ epaulets and arm badges that are much more detailed than molded into the figures. Colors were shown for the helmet emblems but the emblems were not molded onto the helmet. I chose not to attempt to paint the emblems and instead used decals from Alliance Model Works. The epaulets are too thick and should be trimmed before painting.

A pink color is called out for piping on the tunic. The piping is nicely molded to assist in painting, but it is still very challenging to paint.

The fire hydrant and fire extinguisher are identified as Model Master 1524 green, but this color number is no longer available. Online references suggest that Model Master 1524 has been renumbered to 1124. This green looked too bright. Other online references suggested that Model Master 1524 is similar to a British racing green and is matched very closely to Tamiya X-5. This looked a little dark, so I ended up using a mixture of three parts Tamiya X-5 and one part white XF-2.

ICM’s WWII German Firemen is a very nice figure set and will be a nice complement to the fire truck models from ICM and Miniart.

This kit is distributed by MMD Squadron, who graciously provided a sample for review. I’d like to thank them for the sample and IPMS for letting me do the review.