Italeri has released a special version of their T-55 with four decorations for the Iraqi Army.

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Thanks!

Are the sprues also 25 years old?

It has link-and-length tracks. How bad could it be?

All it is the very old Esci kit.

If you are willing to put in a bit of work with it,you can produce something reasonable out of the base kit. There's an old Mil Mod article on Accurising/correcting the old ESCI/Italeri - in the 2nd AFV special IIRC..

Again they hijack this anniversary as an excuse to squeeze a little more profit out of their old-ass moulds

I guess there is a market for these out of date kits. People who don't know any better and those who want an inexpensive build for the sake of nostalgia must buy them. I am newly back at this and can't see myself spending any money on a kit I know to be from when I was a teen. These ESCI kits were bad back then. I put major work in and want something as a base that is already accurate but needs some fine tuning.

Regards,

Eric

P.S. I hope the above doesn't sound too snobbish. I just dislike the practice of companies reissuing another's ancient kit. Tamiya did this with Italeri's HMMWV kit before they did their own. Italeri is capable of better but they are as a previous reply says getting th most out if a mold.

Hi;

Unless Italeri was given the Tamiya molds, then this kit if it is the old Esci molds is really not worth investing in ! Now Tamiya and Italeri have shared there molds in the past, so it could happen again. Now just maybe they have come up with something that we have not seen as of yet. Well lets Hope So !!!!

CHEERS; MIKE.

Hi;

"HUH"--I guess I should have looked, before I Opened MY BIG MOUTH !!!!!!!!!
Well in any case, if Tamiya can still Market there T-62 then Italeri can still use the Old Esci kit !

CHEERS; MIKE.

maybe is direct copy of the esci kit.

The original Esci kit in Italeri packaging, in fact.

While it's true old kits like this would be good for new, young people entering the hobby, it also looks like a cynical revenue-raising scheme. Re-issuing old, un-updated models is fine as long as they aren't re-released at similar prices to current generation models. Italeri, Tamiya and Dragon are all guilty of this.

This is disappointing, really. I gave up on Italerei back when I was a kid because some kit's MG34 looked more like a Browning .30 cal on the box. I guess there's no reason to reconsider them.

I.P. Knightly

Is Italeri in financial difficulty? That could explain why they are trying to squeeze income blood from these polystyrene turnips.

The LHS has lost my business because they stopped stocking new Takom, Meng and others and instead have a ton of Airfix, Tamiya, and Italeri reissues. The Sgt York was a junk kit that bore almost no resemblance to the actual vehicle and came out after the program was cancelled. It is on the LHS's shelf! Tamiya can't be hurting that bad. The only reason anyone buys these kits is on impulse with no idea of the age or inaccuracy of the it.

Regards,

Eric

This is exactly how I ended up with the Tamiya M60A1 RISE/Passive w/ ERA. I had no idea that the lower hull and running gear dated to the 1970s (and believe me, it shows its age).

I don't think this is because they are financially hurting.. I think it's because they concentrate more on aircraft kits.. I got their latest new kit, the LMV Lince, and it's a very nice kit.. so, when they want to, they can put out good AFV kits.. So, I think they just choose to concentrate on aircraft.. and they re-issue these old kits just to have some kind of a place in the AFV kit market.. I actually know people who prefer to buy these old kits because of their somewhat lower prices, even though they know about the low quality and all that... That's why I always say.. there's a buyer out there for all kinds of kits, no matter how low the quality is.. otherwise, many of these companies would have gone out of business a long time ago

Hisham

You know the Esci T-55 was state of the art when it came out. It is only by comparing it to more recent releases that it loses out ... and loses out badly. Actually the Lee near copy of the Esci kit is marginally better adding a few details the old Esci missed. But it's still an ancient kit from a different time. Should be on the shelf next to Monogram/Revell SSP program re-releases of ancient kits for nostalgia value only.