It has been many years since I last built a Sherman (life just gets in the way of the fun stuff sometimes), but for a long time, I was a certifiable Shermanaholic. Although a lot of nice kits were released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it always struck me as odd (and very annoying) that they all still used the same crappy molds for the bogies and wheels that have been around forever. Has anyone ever re-tooled those parts for newer 1/35 scale kits? Also, just in general, are there any great new 1/35 scale Sherman kits out there that I should know about?

Check the Reviews section under the brand name Tasca . They make about the best Shermans going IMO . They have had a company name change lately , I think it's Asuka now . A couple of the Asuka kits have been reboxed by Tamiya, so might be easier to find in smaller hobby shops .

Tamiya has the Tasca/Asuka Sherman VC Firefly and US M4A3E8 kit in their boxes with some of their own figures thrown in, and the Tasca/Asuka mid-production M4A1 is now being offered by Eduard. When sold in their own boxes, the kits are quite expensive in the US and Europe. For the price, I would have expected at least some turret interior detail, but there is nothing. The size of the turret ring opening is close to correct, unlike older Dragon and Tamiya kits, so you can fit in an aftermarket interior without much surgery.
I find Asuka's suspension system to be overly fiddly, and they insist on using a foam rubber spring insert to make it "workable" (you can insert a layer of styrene to defeat this).
Dragon has stuck with the general parts layout they inherited from Italeri for their suspension, but they now mold the volute spring vertically instead of horizontally, so you don't have to sand off a mold release line on each side. I quite like Dragon's recent Shermans, though I am in the minority amid the many fans of Tasca. There were numerous small errors in Dragon's earlier kits, but to their credit, they have been quietly correcting them, and even incorporating corrected parts into older kits on rerelease. They never mention this, by the way.
It used to be that all Sherman kits had late war bogies with the upswept return roller arm, but Dragon now offers the mid and early types as well (as does Tasca/Asuka). Academy offered the mid production type with the straight arm, and now it even appears on kits that ought to have the late type (the opposite of what Tamiya used to do).
Wheels now have rear detail on most kits, instead of being hollow, in the case of the stamped-type wheels.
Academy, AFV Club, and Dragon all have HVSS suspension systems, and AFV Club's is about the best, though all are usable.

Good to see someone NOT bashing Dragon Shermans!

I'm with you guys. I've built a bunch of the Dragon Shermans and really like them.

I built Dragon's new(ish) M4 Hybrid Firefly a couple years ago. While it might not be on the same level as a Tasca Sherman, it was also a whole lot cheaper (at the time, probably still is) and a very good kit for the price. I have no regrets, will probably pick up another Dragon kit when the itch for a Sherman model comes again...

Damon.

The newer Tasca releases have plastic inserts for the VVSS suspensions. The sprue is also sold on their Tasca Parts website.