In recent years ICM has been in the practice of issuing figure kits to accompany their aircraft, armor, and automotive kits. One of ICMs newest releases is a set of five 1/48^th scale figures to accompany their new Ki-21 “Sally” kits. (You can read Allan Murrell’s review of ICM’s “Sally”.) This kit includes three Japanese Army aircrew figures and two ground crew figures. The three aircrew figures are dressed in flight gear. Two are in relaxed standing poses and the third is saluting. One groundcrew figure is at attention and saluting and the other is carrying a ladder.

The kit includes one tree of plastic parts protected by a re-sealable plastic bag. The instructions are a single 8 ½” by 11” sheet with a construction and painting guide on one side, and a parts map and paint list on the other. The kit is packaged in a sturdy cardboard box with the box art printed on a lightweight cardboard cover.

Parts will need clean-up of mold-parting lines and there are no sink-marks or flash. The kit parts are molded crisply with good detail. I was particularly impressed with the sculpting of the faces. A well-sculpted face is far easier to paint than one with vague features. The faces in this kit were a joy to paint. The fit of the kit parts is generally good. The figures are designed so that most seams fall at the edges of straps, belts, or where seams in the clothing would be. I did need to use a small amount of filler on some of the figures’ butts and at the elbows of the saluting arms. Once assembled the figures have natural-looking poses. When assembling the man carrying the ladder, I had trouble getting his right hand to rest against the surface of the ladder. I fixed this by cutting at the wrist to re-position the hand.

ICM has recently branched out into the hobby paint business and they offer a set of six acrylic paints for painting these figures (WWII Japanese Pilots Acrylic Paints Set #3056).

Figures are a great way to add visual interest and a sense of scale to an aircraft build.

Considering the number of 1/48 WWII JAAF airplane kits on the market and stacked up in stashes around the world, this is a very useful figure kit. I would like to thank ICM and IPMS/USA for providing this kit for review.