Matthew Lenton provides an In-Box review of the new WWI Female Mark I Tank from Airfix in 1/76 scale.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

erm, 1:76? what am I missing here?

Matthew, congratulations on an excellent review. I have followed your build of the old male version and hopefully you'll grace us with a similar build article of the female. It is very nice to see Airfix not rolling over and throwing in the towel.




Matan, there are other scales besides 1/35!

Cheers,
tread_geek

Thought your article about building the Mk I Male is great but now you have an obligation to do equal justice to it's mate. Fascinating read.

AJ

yeah I know that, I just thought that it was always 1:72, not 1:76.

Glad to see armor from other eras being released (and reviewed!). Congrats, Matthew.

Matan, Airfix has always built their smaller scale vehicles in 1/76 scale. The former JB models, Matchbox and Fujimi also released in 1/76. BTW, Airfix acquired the rights to JB's moulds, Revell releases the former Matchbox and as far as I know Fujimi is still in business selling their 1/76 kits.

Cheers,
Jan

There was a period, in the years shortly before their acquisition by Hornby, that Airfix reboxed their armour kits and claimed that they were 1/72. Some sort of marketing move, perhaps? Not very helpful to their customer base, certainly ....

This was not improved any by the fact that a couple of their kits (particularly the ones acquired from Heller) actually were 1/72.

Hornby, fortunately, are not continuing that nonsense and have accurately labelled the scale of their re-issued kits. (Sadly, that appears to be as "accurate" as they intend to get, with no efforts being made to "repair" problems with the older kits, just tossing in new sprue attachments.)

Note that Revell, when re-issuing the Matchbox armour kits, accurately label them as "1/76", which sets them apart from their other 1/72 kits.

Can anyone point me in the right direction of some reference for the Female MK I tank? There is a reason why Airfix changed it back to 1/76. One of them that they had been sued for not being true to scale or something along those lines. Also 1/76 is 00 gauge for model railways. Now that Hornby have taken over Airfix I guess that might also have something to do with it.

Jaymes.

"British Mark I Tank 1916" (New Vanguard) by David Fletcher and Tony Bryan - Amazon currently have this on offer, new, for £6.99. I found this book to be pretty good, though as usual, pretty short. As they say on the BBC: other products are available.

It would be a bit amazing if anyone actually managed to sue a model manufacturer over their models not being to the scale they claim, but you could be right. I guess you are obliged to label your goods accurately as far as you are able, so changing the scale would be a clear admission of inaccuracy.

There are doubtless those who know far more than me on this subject, but you are right, 1/76 originates from Airfix creating kits to be compatible with HO scale railways. I seem to remember their small polythene figures being labelled "00/H0". That in turn reveals the link between 00 which is 1/76 and H0 which is 1/87, and is something to do with model trains in these scales being able to use the same gauge track.

No doubt there has been some indecision by someone at Airfix over whether it would be better to stick to the same scale they've always been, or to try to fit in with the ever expanding number of small scale vehicle kits being released in 1/72. As stated above, it has been complicated by the fact that a few of their kits originate from other manufacturers and really are 1/72.