It should be important to mention that the kit has been slightly retooled, i.e. added weld lines. This also doesn't belong to the mainline 1/35 MM series, Italeri/Tamiya tieup kits belong to a different line. No, far from it. They had enough money to build a fully functioning 1/1 scale mini 4WD this year. Tamiya have been reboxing Italeri and other companies' products for a long time, just look at their 1/72 Warbirds series, mostly Italeris. As for others reboxing Tamiya, Ebbro reboxes some of their car kits while Aoshima and Fine Molds reboxed their ship and tank kits respectively. Re-popped and Reboxed Tamiyas are quite rare, I can count more copies such as those by Academy who still make kits based on the old Tamiya toolings. It looks more like Tamiya bailing Italeri out by selling their retools. Good news: Pretty much all parts are made by Italeri. These tie-up kits are all made in Italy.

What others have said. Reboxing that ancient M24 is wasted effort, in light of much better models by Bronco and AFV Club - even if it turns out to be much cheaper (which I doubt). Maybe Tamiya just thinks they're going to lure unwary newer modelers into thinking it's actually a new kit from Tamiya. Their release of a new-tooled (if indeed it is) SU 76, on the other hand, I think is a very good move.

No, it says explicitly on the box top that it's Italeri's old kit with new and retooled parts added. At a regular price of 28USD it's cheaper than AFV Club and Bronco.

Well, you gets what you pays for. I bought the Italeri original + PE and resin AM, then Bronco released theirs. The Italeri kit is still sitting on the "never to build" shelf. It would be OK as an "entry-level" kit.

I wondered why the kit was so cheap on Hobby Link Japan. Now I know why. Sad that the other online sites have it priced so high like it is actually a Tamiya kit. I'll look elsewhere!

It started years ago when Tamiya re-packed the Italeri/Testors M7 Priest (kit 6202) in their box...a kit that still sits on my shelf. Disappointing at best if Tamiya is still doing this...

There's no guarantee that any model company's plastic formulation stays the same over time. These things are custom blended for each injection house and can vary from batch to batch. If there is a new additive that eases moulding or is a touch cheaper, the formulation will change without notice. As for quality, the measure of plastic quality, to the moulder, is how well the parts are moulded and how easy they come out of the tool. That and how low can they get the cost of the resin and still get good parts. Any subjective desires of the modellers are really of little importance to kit makers. On that basis, Tamiya plastic is of equally high quality as Italeri plastic. Personal preferences are really not measureable and can't have too much effect on a model company's choice of resin blends. Unless the blend is too weak to support the shapes during shipping or has too much plasticiser such that the material won't glue reasonably well, there is very little different from one blend to the other from their standpoint as compared to how well it works in the press because that's definitely measurable and affects costs. And, as an indication of how this really is a non-quantifiable measure, I happen to like older Tamiya plastic a bit more than the older Italeri plastic and a lot more than Dragon's recent blends. What the current blends are like for either Tamiya or Italeri, I can't say as I haven't build a new issued kit by either company in quite some time. And, on top of it all, the type of plastic a manufacturer uses has never even slightly influenced my choice in what kit to buy. I may b!tch about it as I build, but it doesn't stop me buying a good subject from that company again. In which case, and if I'm a typical consumer (and I may not be), why should a manufacturer care about a variable that has little effect on sales, no matter how much it might bother a very small portion of the market? And I'm not trying to be argumentative, just exploring the concept a bit for discussion. Paul

It has more to do with let's not spend money on a complete new die than Tamiya having money issues, remember, they make most of their money in R/C in the Japanese market than on plastic kits.

I am a huge fan of Tamiya but I don't purchase their kits simply because they say Tamiya. As has been said looks like the better offering here are the Bronco and AFV Club offerings.