To the best of my knowledge, this is the first set of injection molded French Tank Crewmen ever released!! This kit contains 45 grey styrene parts that will create five crewmen. Four appear to be from the Battle of France, while the fifth looks somewhat like a young General Leclerc, aka General Jacques Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque. In truth, he is representative of a standard French Armor Lieutenant. Ukraine’s MiniArt Ltd’s artist, A. Karaschuk, illustrates each figure on top of the side-opening box. They are repeated on the box bottom, where they are keyed for parts placement and colors. Paint numbers are color coded for Vallejo, Testor, Tamiya, Humbrol, Revell and Mr. Color paints. A small black-and-white insert shows the two sprue trees and part numbers. Each figure is nicely molded, with distinct faces and accurate uniforms. They have minimal flash and seam lines that are quickly cleaned up.

This odd combination of five Allied soldiers meeting up and serving together seems like something dreamed up in Hollywood. Well, it WAS first dreamed up in the 1943 movie Sahara, starring Humphrey Bogart as the American M3 Lee tank commander. A 1995 cable TV remake starred James Belushi in that role. Ukraine’s Master Box Ltd.’s illustrator A. Karaschuk and sculptor A. Gagarin must have seen the Belushi version and “subconsciously” paid homage to the movie. The American figure happens to strongly represent Belushi, and the others certainly suggest others in the movie’s cast. Unfortunately, we didn’t listen to Shakespeare, and our society is drowning in a flood of litigious lawyers and the movie industry has missed out on an opportunity for free publicity as Master Box plays it safe and any similarity between these figures and that movie is purely coincidence...

AeroBonus is a specialized company from Aires that concentrates on Soviet wing stores. The latest release is a couple of air to ground rockets. Molded on four pour blocks with some exquisite detail, these unique looking rockets are quite impressive. There are two mold blocks with the rocket bodies. The other two are warheads on one and tail units on the other block. I really liked the rocket flutes on the tail which are petite and perfectly cast. Quickboost uses light grey resin that has no imperfections. Removal is easy and assembly will represent no problems, even to beginning resin users.

The Academy Mig-21 kit is a nice kit. However, the parts breakdown of certain pieces is a pain. This is apparent especially on the kit gun pods. The kit part has a seam right down the middle which will be difficult to fill. The kit pod also has minimal detail and some shape issues. The Quickboost resin cannon pod has exquisite detail. The vents and fasteners are perfectly represented, but the best feature is the drilled-out gun barrels. I’m sure I could not drill them as well as Quickboost because these things are so small that I’m sure I would have just made a mess of it.

The single piece is molded perfectly in light grey resin. Removal is quite easy and adding it to the belly is easy enough as long as you don’t cut off the mounting stubs. The Quickboost pod has a more accurate shape, especially around the front portion.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Quickboost and IPMS/USA for the review sample.

Seeing laser guided bombs in action seems to be a staple of the western news stations. What we don’t get to see is the employment of the Soviet equivalent. Well, of course the Soviets have the same technology.

These bombs are molded on a single light grey resin pour block with two large bombs and the laser guidance warhead. There is also a very small clear pour block with the laser detectors. Aerobonus also provides you with decals for the bombs. In this case, they were perfect and did not stick to the protective paper.

Removal of the bombs from the pour blocks shouldn’t prove too difficult as long as you take care on the bomb fins. Because the laser trackers are separate, you can articulate them if you’d like.

Highly recommended

Thanks to Aires and IPMS/USA for the review copy.