In the box

Black Dog kits comes in a nice sturdy cardboard box with a zip lock bag keeping things in place. This kit, number T48025, comes in nice firm gray resin. The box art is nicely done and will act as your kit supplied painting guide.

What you get

This kit is huge for an accessory kit. The variety is wide and the quantity is great. You will get
- Two close lid boxes (panzerfaust crates)
- Two open lid boxes (panzerfaust crates)
- Four lids (two for the open boxes)
- Two blocks of panzerfaust (10 total panzerfaust)
- Two small back backs with bed rolls
- Two tarps wrapped over a mess kit with bedroll
- Two short coats
- Two blocks of cooking kits/soup containers with closed lid (total of four)
- Four blocks of cooking kits/soup containers with open lids (total of four)
- Two blocks of large duffel bags (total of four)
- Two blocks of large back packs/large pockets (total of four)
- Two blocks of large back packs/small pockets (total of four)
- Two blocks of personal gear in a pile with the shovel on the left
- Two blocks of personal gear in a pile with the shovel in the middle

The parts

These pieces are really well molded. Black Dog has done a really nice job with resin block placement. The blocks are in places that will not yield problems or will at least be at the bottom which can be hidden. The resin is a nice hard resin equal in quality to Verlinden or Custom Dioramics. There are no bubbles or holes or empty corners in any of the pieces.

detail

The detail is fantastic and representative of the actual gear. There are straps where straps need to be, there are hinges and handles in the right places. In looking at this gear the detail is not just 'dropped' on to give your eye something to look at. The shovel has a scabbard that is accurate. The personal mess kit has a strap around it with a buckle where it should. The panzerfaust even have a two part sight, some 1/35th scale faust's don't even have that. Take a close look at the open boxes. The form fit panzerfaust holders are cut correctly; one semi-circle handle sized, one warhead sized. The detail is so accurate it becomes a slight problem. Making a shovel handle in 1/48th scale results in a very small wire thin piece of resin. From the one shovel that surived the shipping the molds are great. On the downside, the scale results in a very breakable handle. That's the case with three of the four shovel handles.

Scale

Diorama accessories and after market kits that span manufacturers can sometimes suffer from scale differences. Not only can the master sculptors create slight differences, the researchers can measure a bit differently, and the production facilities can yield differences too. With the newer 1/48th scale kits this is a bigger unknown.
I measured a few things to see how this kit fairs. The soft materials such as duffel's and packs can be stretched so I won't use a ruler to measure these. I did compare the backpacks to figures from three different vendors. The photos show the results. The painted figure is a 1/48th scale Monogram figure from an older Aircraft kit. Holding the backpack up against the figure shows that the size if acceptable. Comparing the pack to a new Tamiya figure (gray sprue) shows that, while the figures is a bit smaller than Monogram's, it is acceptable again. Lastly, comparing the pack to a Bandi kit (green sprue) there is a slight difference in size, but totally acceptable.
A more measured means of testing scale is to use a rule. I found out that the panzerfaust was 1.045m long and one warhead was 140mm in diameter (Just to let you know there were other size warheads with different diameters.) The Black Dog panzerfaust was 21mm long and converting 1:1 to 1:48 you get 21.77mm so the length is fine. The resin warhead was 3mm across and 140mm in 1:48 scale is 2.92mm; again very acceptable.
Another piece of gear that I found a measurement for was the personal mess kit. A 1:1 version is reported at 7inches tall. That scales down in metric to 3.7mm. Black Dog has theirs at 3mm tall. Its a bit off, but in a cluster of gear no one will miss .7mm in a 1:48 scale diorama.

Conclusion

Another nice accessory kit from Black Dog. The variety is great and quantity is well worth the money. The detail is fantastic and your diorama will really shine when you add these. The one downside is the shovel handles. They came broken and are highly likely to break.