Both places where I received announcements of it arriving have sold out already. Good for Takom! Anyone here have it yet? I'd love to see a build review....

Hi Phil,
Got it a couple of weeks ago. Haven't started it yet. During the "lock down", when I'm not doing Eldercare, and I get back home for a couple of days I've been focusing on shelf queens. Mostly cleaning up tracks and I am sick of that!
Anyhoo, the kit looks nice ! Not a high parts count, looks to be well molded with link & length tracks (whew!), PE for the schuerzen except for the turret schuerzen (plastic). It has a basic breech.
Good Luck getting it ! I think you'll enjoy it.
I got mine from Sprue Bros., good price too !

Hobby Link Japan has it for $43:cdn.

I was able to get mine from Andy’s and finished building it the other day. Overall the kit is just okay. It’s biggest selling point is it’s price. It’s a very good value. It’s better than the Tamiya kit in terms of detail and features, but the Tamiya kit has better fit. The dragon kit is better in detail and fit, but is pretty much twice the price.

The Takom kit has some fit problems. The spikes on the wheels are too long so the road wheels do not fit together properly. You will need to either sand them down or remove the smaller nubs on the outside halves.

The tool handle clasps are over scale and not the well molded. I suggest replacing them with PE.

The biggest fit issue is with the mantlet. My whole main gun on mine is canted, so pay attention when you are fitting any of the main gun parts. The whole the main gun slides into is too small. It needs to be filed in order to get it to fit. Some location holes are too small for their pegs.

The molding looks great at first and the detail is pretty good. But there is a bit of flash and thick sprue connections

The instruction booklet is oddly small dimensionally, which makes them harder to understand. The color plates/ marking guides are nice but too small to be of much use.

Overall, if I really wanted to build a panzer iii, I’d save the money and track down the Dragon kit. But I would take it over the Tamiya kit.

Mine is ready to paint. My gun mantlet fit fine. There is a little putty on some of the joints. Needed my optivisor to read the instructions while the kit is 1/35th scale the instructions are 1/72nd. I felt the instructions were a little vague in spots. Agree with the little bit of flash comment. There is a little filler in the model but not much. I plan on starting painting tomorrow.

Dave

Thanks Jon for the heads up on the mantlet & wheels. I'll watch out for those issues.
Yeah Dave, those instructions are small ! Looking forward to seeing pics of the completed III.