You may not have heard of the Shizuoka Hobby Show, but it is massive. It's held annually in Shizuoka, Japan (the city where most of Japan's model kit industry is based, the headquarters of Tamiya and Hasegawa are there among others) and it is where a lot of the most exciting new releases for the coming year are announced. And it's on right now... this weekend... I'm excited.
Part of the reason I am excited about this is that I will be visiting Shizuoka in December, and I'm going to visit the
Tamiya showroom (so much history!). I will admit it, I am a massive fan of Tamiya.
Another part of why I'm so excited is that new kits are being announced left and right. I'll restrict myself to what I am interested in, so here are the highlights of the 1/35 scale military releases and 1/32 aircraft releases.
1/35 Military models
Fine Molds - Japanese type 3 Medium Tank Chi-Nu
Who doesn't love some Japanese armour? Apparently the tracks have decent sag moulded into them. Nice, interesting subject.
ICM - French infantry in gas masks 1918
An interesting addition to all the cool 1/35 stuff that has been released in the last five years. The centenary of WWI has really brought about a long, long-overdue renaissance of WWI subjects in modelling.
ICM - WWI Australian Army Model T
Another unusual WWI subject. It's not quite my cup of tea, but I'm Australian, so I had to include this in my list. You have to love that Australian coat of arms on the radiator, though.
Revell - Stug IV
Meh.
Another Stug. There would have to be something pretty damn special about this release from Revell to excite me, and I can't see what that is...
Meng - Cartoon tanks (yes, I know, these aren't 1/35 scale...)
The cute little Sherman and Tiger I which were released by Meng recently are now joined by a King Tiger (Porsche Turret) and a Soviet KV-2. I'm torn about these. Yeah, they're cute and clever, and I have seen one cool diorama done with the Sherman (see bottom of this post), but I don't quite get why you would spend your time on these? Great for
indoctrinating introducing kids to the hobby though.
1/32 Aircraft
The only one I can see of merit released at this stage is a new Wing Nut Wings release, although I had been hearing rumours on social media of a revised Tamiya Corsair for the last month or so.
Wing Nut Wings - Fokker D.VII "Early"
Man, I really needs to get me a Wing Nut Wings kit to see what all the fuss is about. Everything I've heard about them says they are a joy to build. All I know is: a) they are ruinously expensive, and; b) they clean up awards in the model shows I've been to! This new release is a good looking machine.
Tamiya - Vought F4U-1D Corsair
This is a re-tooling of the F4U-1 Corsair that Tamiya released a couple of years back. I dunno, it's a plane I've never loved the look of. If I haven't bought their first 1/32 Corsair by now, I can't get excited by this re-worked version. Sorry, Tamiya, I was hoping for a big, game-changing entirely new release like your Mosquito was. But that's just me, maybe some obsessive out there wants to build every variant of the Corsair in 1/32 scale?
C'est la vie.
So there you have it. I wish I was in Shinzuoka this weekend! But December will have to do.
Chime in with comments below if you think I've been too harsh on any of these new releases!
Cheers,
Dave
Bonus content:
I promised you I had seen one really well done Meng cute egg tank diorama done. Here it is, sourced from Instagram. It has an amazing sense of motion, it's fun, and definitely skillfull. I tip my hat to this unknown modeller!
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