Hat Industrie, Inc. No. 99002
Hat released their second WWII 1/72nd scale armor kit recently under the brand name ArmourFast (tm). Their first release was an M4 Sherman. This second vehicle is the German JagdPanther. As with the Sherman, the box contains two very simple to assemble JagdPanthers. Instructions are on the back of the box and the JagdPanther retails at the same price as the Shermans at $10.00 USD. I was able to pick mine up on the internet at Roll Models for $8.50 (www.rollmodels.com - no affiliation with them... I'm just a customer).
This is a no frills model with clean mold lines and either eleven or thirteen pieces to assemble. There are thirteen pieces in the plastic sprue, but the instructions only reference nine pieces. I figured out where the reserve ammo storage boxes go on the back of the hull. The instructions not matching the number of parts in the kit is my biggest and only complaint about this model.
There is the gun, the gun, the gun mantle, hull top, hull bottom, the two tracks, the two exhaust pipes, the 2 rear ammo storage boxes, one attachment on the left hull (sorry, I don't know what it is) and then two pieces that look like track guards or something for both flanks of the hull. The picture on the front can be used for placing these items, although I didn't think of that until I attached them to the first model incorrectly.
Having built a few hundred models in my life, I didn't like their suggested sequence of assembly on the back instructions either. I put the tracks on the hull first, then the top and bottom part of the hull together. Afterwards, I attached the gun to the gun mantle and then the completed assembly to the hull. Then I attached the rear hull exhaust pipes and reserve storage boxes, then the thing on the side of the left hull and finally, the side skirts. This sequence struck me as more appropriate so I could correctly mount the tracks while they were exposed in the lower hull and the exhaust pipes are the most fragile (although not very fragile), so I thought they should go almost last. The side skirts are the most difficult to attach, since they are long and thin. There are no decals.
There is some minor mold flash, which I easily removed with adsizing (sliding the edge of the Xacto knife along the mold line) and some cutting. The total assembly time from cutting from the sprue to completed model, using plastic model glue, was about 20 minutes. The Sherman took less time because of fewer parts, hence fewer parts to clean. The model is made up of a medium hardness plastic.
I really liked this model. This is a war gaming model. It has adequate special details and none of the small parts that usually are attached by the modeler. There are no shovels, pick axes or towing cables molded into the hull plastic, although there are more engine grate details than the Sherman. No commander machine guns are provided with the model. The tracks are molded as though gravity is a reality, which I really liked. The top part of the tracks sag down onto the bog wheels very nicely. They have a German Pzkw III coming out and the American M-10 Tank Destroyer. From the pictures, it looks like the M-10 is the late war version.
They also list a Russian T-34 and the early pictures look like a T-34/76 model. Hat doesn't give firm production dates until late in the production cycle. Hat calls these the 'T-series" models and is targeting them for war gaming and younger modelers. Although I am not sure how many JagdPanthers I can use, I really liked the model and will be replacing my wargame WWII collection with the Hat models. One thing that is very nice about the Hat models is the lack of tiny parts to break off and the minimum number of parts to assemble with lots of contact points means you can glue these solidly and they can take some minor bouncing around on the way to the club meeting without you having to glue the tiny parts back on. Also, you can kit bash these by adding jerry cans, tarps, etc. if you want.
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© Copyright 2003 Hal Thinglum
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