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Porsche Diesel Junior 108 tractor; 1/24 (07820) 'easy-click system'
Topic Started: Nov 30 2017, 11:14 PM (118 Views)
peebeep
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Porsche Diesel Junior 108 tractor
'easy-click system'

Taking a leaf out of Heller's book (i.e., releasing a tractor kit), Revell announced the kit earlier this year. I'm a little curious as to what market research was undertaken to suggest a market for farm vehicles exists, but I'm a bit of a sucker for off the wall genres. I've always thought that combine harvesters would make splendid model subjects (before I get set on by the agricultural fraternity, yes, I know you lot just say 'combine' and skip the 'harvester', but this is for the plebs), but until somebody decides to chance their arm with something exotic, tractors will do. This particular tractor, the Porsche Junior 108 personifies the notion of a 'Little Red Tractor'and was manufactured from 1952 to 1963, powered by an air-cooled 14 hp 822 cc, single-cylinder diesel engine. Revell had the kit on display at Scale Model World with some built samples and I have to say I was struck by how attractive it looked and the decision was made to purchase one at the earliest opportunity!

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The initial announcement gave no clue that this was going to be snaptite type of kit - Revell refer to it as easy-click system - that only became apparent later in the year. This made me doubly curious as to what we were likely to get in the box and whether or not it would stack up against a conventional plastic kit. Despite recent advances in this type of kit there still seems to be a little bit of modeller's snobbery over them, they're being considered not quite 'proper'. Let's find out. First off the box:

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This is the standard end opening type, beloved of Revell and nobody else. You have to be pragmatic, they're cheap and Revell usually price their products very competitively, so we get to live with it. Inside lurk the contents. This is not quite a case of a huge box with the contents hiding in one corner, but the truth is the subject is not a huge vehicle and the box is nearly twice as big as it needs to be. Must be something to do with marketing, irrespective of size the box art is impressive and the overall impression is 'buy me'. To the contents, runner 'A' in red plastic (what else?):

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Runner 'B':

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Runners 'C' - 'G', plus vinyl tyres:

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I admit to being impressed. I was expecting to see a set of Lego thickness mouldings with detail to match. This is not the case, the components are not a lot different to a stick together product, the details and some of the small components are very finely and nicely moulded. I cannot vouch for accuracy, but reference to photos of the original would seem to indicate that a lot of work has gone into this kit to make it look like the real thing. I'm not so sure about the chromed runner, the only bits that look really useful are the trim and grille, but even then the parts are over bright compared to the original. Conversely the lamp and mirror reflectors would have worked well in chrome, but they're not on the chrome runner. The exhaust and silencer are also in chrome, but looking at photos these appear to be finished in satin/matt black. Bearing in mind the likely target market this could be something of a carping criticism. A word about the red plastic, it's a bit flat in appearance and will need a good buffing for an unpainted model. The colour doesn't look quite right to me, so I would paint it in any case. I could only find one sink mark of note, due to the thickness of the plastic caused by one of the male/female connectors - you might be able to spot it in the photos - but it is not very obvious. The wheels are excellent and only need an overcoat of something to make them look a little less plasticky. The vinyl tyres are also excellent, no treatments required other than a bit of weathering if you want. The overall finesse of the plastic parts is such that I'm tempted to think it started out as a conventional kit and somebody decided to turn it into a snaptite now that they're becoming more common.

The decals:

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As with a certain Oriental manufacturer purveying Star Wars kits you get a sheet of water slides and a sheet of vinyl 'stickers' as an option. The stickers are not as complex in design as the water slides, but considering they're supplied with junior modellers in mind I don't see any problem. The water slides are beautifully printed and fortuitously for me there were two sheets in the box, so I'm allowed to make mistakes! The stickers are probably not as good as those supplied with the aforementioned Star Wars kits, but they look perfectly usable and fit for purpose.

Here's a few samples from the instructions:

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Very sensibly, right at the outset Revell indicate that leaving the parts unpainted, or painting your model is very much an option and they include a brief list of paints required. The instructions retain the exact same graphical style as their regular kits, the only proviso is that cement is not required. Ahead of actually constructing the kit I'll qualify that statement, looking at some of the components I'd think in terms of cementing some of them at the very least, to the point where I might run Extra Thin into all the joints to bond everything together. Where appropriate the instructions give colour call outs and even if you were treating this as a pure snaptite some of the parts need painting to be truly prototypical. Finally there are a colour guide/decal placement guides to assist with finishing the model. The only thing I would query is the aforementioned exhaust that Revell show as either the original chrome part or painted silver, most photos show this as being black, sometimes a grey colour. As an aside I love the diagram that includes a finger and exhortation to PUSH!

I like this kit a lot, it is an attractive subject (how cool is that Porsche designed cowling?!) and apart from a couple of little snags, well executed. You have everything in the box to turn out a very nice little model, plus there is an option to open the cowling for which you might want to add a couple of battery leads, but that's just about it. I suspect that snaptite kits are going to become much more common in the future, you only have to look at some of the stuff coming out from the Far East to see that this is likely the case. Revell have made an early pitch at what looks like a product that snaps together without compromising any of the quality you'd usually expect from a glue-it-together product. UK RRP is GBP 22.99, I got mine for 20.00 posted from a well known Facebook group. I'm going to give this a highly recommended rating, because it's just such a cool thing. Go and buy one, you know you want to!

If you need any more persuading, check out a real one: Link

Review sample courtesy of my wallet.

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CPNGROATS
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Paul, great review..I want one.. :woo:
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peebeep
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:like:

I don't know when they'll be available in the US.
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arni
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Looks to be a nice kit.
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jacksdad64
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Aikidoka
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That looks to be a fairly well detailed kit and looks like it will be a fun relaxing build.


Steve

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Martin
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:like: what else can I give ? to this lovely tractor :)
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