Monogram has re-released a vintage kit, the Eager Beaver 2.5 ton truck, with the original box art. Here is a look at this new old kit.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Brings back memories of "playing" mine to destruction in the back yard! There's nothing as distinctive as the sound of the lawnmower finding a hard plastic soldier who got left behind...

Hi, Darren,

Thanks for bringing back very old memories.
Very nice and complete review.

Many of us will remember the Monogram boxes, containing lots of expectation.
Armed with mother's kitchen knife, a big brush and absolutely unaware about dry brushing and super detailing, we all started to use glue from a tube in unendless flows, brushed Humbrol in mm thick layers.
And now we are able to hand them over to our young grandsons and nephews, who hopefully will find as much relaxing hours ( no, we do not count the hours we spend creaping over the floor to find a window wiper bolt head ) as we all had.

Again: Thanks, Darren.

A great old kit. I have memories of building it as a kid too.

It is actually pretty accuralety scaled to 1/35. The cab is almost exactly the same size as the AFV Club M35. The tires are pretty accurate and nice as well. With a little work, it can become a really nice representation of an M34 truck.

Is this the same tooling as the truck that came with the Revell M*A*S*H 4077th set?

Yup, same truck.

Thanks Darren for getting this posted.

Thanks all for the comments. I was afraid this kit would be overlooked. I am glad so many have fond memories of it. I wish there were more kits available that could be build and played with.

Nice job Russ; and the canvas tarp on the back of the old girl doesn't look half bad at all!

Built several as a yung'un, and like many other Monogram and Renwal armor kits, were consumed in lighter-fluid fed flames. Good times....

Yep, I built this one, too, in the early 60's. Mine would have remained in the original color of issue and the figures would have had silver helmets with what would have amounted to nickle plated barrels on their guns. I recall Monogram of that period had a set of combat troops, something like 20 or so, a jeep with 37 mm anti tank gun in tow, a weasel, a twin .50 half track.

Revell had a few armor kits, too, in about the same scale. One was an open top anti tank gun.

Renwal, IIRC, had figures that were bizarrely tall and skinny, closer to 1/24 scale. I recall building their atomic cannon, which is now back on the shelves. The one I built may have had a spring loaded firing mechanism for the nuclear shells.

Russ, thanks for reviewing this!

Monogram, thanks for sending this!

The old kit looks better than I recall; I still have a parts bin drawer full of the wheels! I think I'll head to the LHS and buy one.

IIRC Revell scaled them to 1/40. Their M4 Sherman was horrid but the 105 howitzer was...nice. I never built it but the SP Al refers to is the M56 Scorpion. I used to play in one at a college when I was a kid.

Will that tarp fit on thenTamiya truck?

Al, the original ad is on the side of the box, showing the jeep and 37mm anti tank gun, weasel, and a "mail truck" which is the halftrack with twin .50 cal. I loved kits like this that I could add to my "Guns of Navarone" army figure set, along with the Tamiya tanks that rolled on their rubber band tracks.

Yeah, those were the days- The endless summers that flew by all too quickly... The half-dried out tubes of brand-new REVELL Cement... I wound up hating those RENWALL kits- Very poor parts fit. My buddies and I used to call RENWALL figures "The GOON ARMY"...

Does anyone remember the old SNAP Models? They were 1/40 and remarkably detailed (GREAT parts fit, too) US AFVs- Amtrac Water Buffalo, Willys Jeep MB and a few others. They were extremely hard to find in the hobby shops of yore...

I can remember buying countless "1/32" MONOGRAM MILITARY SERIES models- The M35, The Half-Track (a very late M15), WEASELS, The Jeep w/37mm AT gun, the first M48s ever... My friends and I bought every 1/48 MONOGRAM Aircraft kit that we could find. Multi-scale LINDBERG and REVELL Ship models, which were actually pretty darned good kits in the 1960s era... AMT 1/25 and MONOGRAM 1/24 Classic Cars, the first TAMIYA Tanks with the "rubber band tracks".

I can remember the first 1/32 "serious" MONOGRAM efforts in armor- The M3 Lee and Grant kits, a "late" Pz.Kpfw IV, a "Wirbelwind" and a "Brummbaer"... They included a four-paged "How To" pamphlet by noted modeller Shep Paine... The better MONOGRAM 1/48 Aircraft kits also included the same kind of pamphlets by Mr.Paine; Super-detailing, "Imagineering", dry-brushing, AIRBRUSHING, pin washes- a whole new way of modelling!!!

Ah when I was a young lad. I wish I could say I remember them well, not to bad though I do remember them.