Frederick Boucher reviews Aurora''s 1/48th scale MBT-70 kit.

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A good review and a nice trip down memory lane. I cut my teeth on these kits before moving onto Tamiya and other brands, mainly because my parents didn't want to pay the Tamiya prices that I had put on my Christmas list.

I still have some of these in my stash having gone on a spending spree a few years ago buying a handful of the MBT-70 kits. Everything that is said about them is true but they were kits that screamed to be built.


- Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Me too. Glad to rekindle the memories. These Aurora models were the "wow" factor for me when I first started building. Some are only worth the nostalgia (Panther and King Tiger) but a couple of them are actually decent models. And we may consider Aurora and Bandai ahead of their time as leaders of standard scale Quarterscale military subjects. And that box art! Several years ago I started--ugh, dare I say it--collecting them again. The Chi-Ha is still one of my favorite models of all time. I guess I am turning into "one of those" older guys who augments his latest-greatest gee-whiz models with those of his past.

Anyway, I have several more Aurora models to review as time permits. The Churchill is in the ready bay.

Anyone have a Swedish S-Tank they'd like to donate?

This was actually the first tank model I ever built myself. There were two versions of the Aurora MBT-70 produced; the original "smooth" kit and a retooled "textured" kit.

That's the original issue, the second retooled issue came in the small white box. The retooled "textured" kit includes a gritty non-slip texture to the upper hull and turret surfaces. They also added a coiled up cable to the upper surface and some additional suspension detail to the hull sides in between the road wheel arm gaps.

There's also third boxing of this kit. A white cardboard box version that was part of the Young Model Builder's Club and was mailed to members. It included the later "textured" kit but had a sticker with the artwork of the original square box applied to the box. It's the more rare of the three boxings.

I have several of these kits in the three different boxings (only one in the cardboard mail box though).

J-Hulk (Brian Keaney) built an accurized version of the kit about 5 years ago, I then sent him a spare kit so he could do one OOB. I don't remember which one I sent though.

Brian Keany's MBT-70

In this shot, you can see some of my Aurora kits and a couple of the Bandai ones as well.

Did this review ever bring back some fond memories from my youth. I built a number of Aurora kits back then and vaguely remember them with joy. Your darn article got me to finally rummage through some old boxes that have been languishing in the basement for decades. To my great surprise I found two that contained carefully packaged assembled kits. In an envelope in one box was also the original assembly instructions. I thought that I had built about four or five but I found more. The Long Tom, MBT-70, King Tiger, M8 Artillery Tractor (X2), S-Tank, Sherman, Centurion, M109 and M26 tank.

Hope these pictures of the instructions bring back more memories.









Cheers,
Jan

I kept all my Aurora instructions too, but only the armor. I had built the strange offerings by them also, the Buffalo, Sc-Fi stuff, naval ships, horror movie figures ... well, you get the point. I am glad I stuck with armor.

The glow in the dark "Forgotten Prisoner" was the best!


- Jeff

My Mom has all my boxes that I got as part of the Model of the Month club. One of which is the Rat Patrol offering. I recall building that thing on more then one occasion.The models are long since gone though. Nice review that brought back some good memories when building a model under the shade of a tree with your friends was a common practice. Oh for those simpler times.. "Q"