Andras Donaszi takes a look at the US soldiers at rest offering from MiniArt in 1/35th scale.

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Thanks!

Thanks for the review, there does seem to be a lot of flash. How is the plastic? I reviewed the German tankers with the pig, and the plastic was VERY soft.

I am not sure what is going on with MiniArt, but their last couple of figure sets, while great subjects, have been less then desirable with molding issues, soft plastic, lack of detail, etc.

The plastic is soft, but I think it's good. I took close-ups to show the detail; it's really crisp. Obviously I'll find out how good the plastic is during building, but I prefer the softer plastic to the brittle one. (Remember, DML used to issue figures from DS plastic, and they were quite brilliant- obviously an extreme example.) The flash is indeed unfortunate.

I can deal with soft plastic. The main thing is that this is GREAT subject matter!

I am building this kit now, and one thing that is totally unusable are the rifles. They are horrible. Its best you look thru your spare parts bin for ones you can use.

What makes them horrible? They look fine on sprue. (OK the barrels need to be bored out if you want them realistic, no straps are given, and there's flash to be removed.)

Building these figure too - only problem with them is they are tiny when compared to Dragon GI's - both shorter, and slimmer - if you mixed them it'd be like there were a bunch of 12 year old GI's!

My opinion..? I WISH that DRAGON would produce some separate "Gen2" US and British WWII Weapons sets...

I'm not gonna hold my breath, though...

You mean an actual realistic portrayal of the variety in human proportions? Perish the thought. Everyone knows that every soldier in the US Army in World War II was 5 foot 9 to 5 foot 11. Noone was shorter or skinnier except Audie Murphy.

;)

Dragon figures run tall and husky so they are hardly average.

There doesn't seem to be such a difference between the Dragon/Masterbox and MiniArt German figures, and British figures - but these guys are very petite

I really like these as they are great natural poses! Hope that the flash issues are early quirks as cleaning them from soft styrene is an invitation to losing that incredible detail.

Interesting... My Dad served in the Polish Cavalry, and later in the Horse Artillery during WWII. He was 5 feet, six inches tall, which was about average height in the WWII Polish Army. He was built like Charles Atlas, though... I know, now I'm dating myself...

I am well aware we are all different sizes - but when you mix them up with some of the Dragon figures they just don't look right - they look like 12 year olds - don't get me wrong - they are a fantastic set of figures, you just have to be careful if you want to mix them up with other manufacturers figures, just something to be aware of!

These look to be really nice figures but now size has been mentioned I'm thinking twice about getting some. I was going through my figure graveyard a couple of days ago looking for some particular figures to paintstrip and found some early DML SS ones. They must average out at about 6 foot 5+ and are built like body builders. I couldn't use those now for anything as the sizes are ridiculous. While there is a difference in height/build between people one of the main problems I find with figures is that sometimes manufacturers scale down things like ammo pouches etc so that they look right on the figure. This in turn throws out the possibility of using them with other figures unless you change all the pouches. I'm using the Tamiya marching MG team for a column of infantry. I've had to decapitate all of them as their heads were tiny and also their rifle pouches are tiny so they'll have to be replaced with DML ones. Once I stick Hornet heads on them they are visually the right size. It would just be nice if all manufacturers could produce figures in line with a standard size and equipment size. Don't get me started on stick grenades....

Just throw the odd tallish and smallish figures into your mix, but keep all their equipment standardized, ie; use all Dragon weapons and equipment.

Biggles, even DML are buggars for changing kit sizes. I've noticed that their Gen 2 G43 pouches are really small compared to the old ones they used to put in sets and lack the same detail. Bizarrely they put some spare mags in with the weapons and there's no way you could fit them in the pouches! Stick grenades have changed size as well as they've got smaller and thinner. You'd think that a manufacturer would have consistency with their own figures. A nice solution would be if they did sets of ammo pouches akin to their Quartermaster set years ago with medic packs, torches etc. I think they still do one for the 120mm figures.Shame they stopped doing them as I only bought one at the time as I only dabbled in modelling then. If they did ammo pouch sets you could have matching kit for dozens of figures. Pie in the sky though.

The detail on the rifles are almost non-existent.