In the box

Here is another diorama accessory kit from an up and coming company: Black Dog. This one addresses the needs of a common scene, with a unique set of pieces - the meal scene.
Black Dog kits come in nice sturdy cardboard boxes with zip lock bags keeping things in place. This kit, number T48010, comes in nice firm light gray resin. The box art is nicely done and will act as your kit supplied painting guide. You probably won't really need it, there aren't any pieces to assemble and food is pretty well known by all.

What you get

This kit is pretty basic and pretty bountiful. You get

Four open bushel size bags of apples or potatoes

Four buckets of apples/potatoes

Four closed sacks of food laying on their side

Four closed sacks of food standing up

Four open empty food crates

Four open crates of leafy vegetables - lettuce/cabbages

Four open crates of a vegetable variety

Four open creates of carrots

The parts

These pieces are really well molded. Black Dog keeps up the good high quality casting job. The resin blocks are in their normal Black Dog down position - on the bottom. Here they 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. You might think that with the level of small detail necessary to sculpt leafy vegetables and carrots that there would be room for bubbles and resin gaps. None to be seen here. The pieces are all nicely poured. There are a couple of nicks/notches in the edge of the buckets, nothing that can't be explained away as a dent in the metal. With each block containing four parts it may be a challenge to cut away only one piece. A dremel tool with a large rotary cutter might get the job done. It may be just as easy to cut the resin block away all at once and be done with it instead of leaving two or three pieces on the block.

detail and scale

The detail is fantastic and representative of the actual food stuff. The handles on the crates are nicely done as cut outs in the sides. The wood grain detail is excellent for 1/48th scale. The leafy representation on the vegetables is great. There is no mystery as to what each is. Sometimes with food kits the pieces look like 'blobs' of unrecognizable resin; not these. The only thing missing is color. Add a splash of color and the detail instantly tells you what each piece is. Obviously with the round pieces you are at liberty to make them fruit or potatoes or even beats or big onions. The sacks of food have really nicely done folds and ripples. The tops have nicely detailed stitching to show where the sacks were sewn up. Really nice detail you don't see in some styrene kits.

I'll look at the bucket of fruit first for scale review. The top of the bucket is 7mm wide in 1/48th scale. That calculates to about 13" across in 1:1. That's not too bad, it's a touch big for a bucket used for liquids, but for a solid fruit that has gaps that's acceptable. A full bucket won't be too heavy.

The crates of food are all about 12mm by 9mm in 1/48th scale. This expands to roughly 23" (2 feet) long by 17" (1.5 feet) wide.

The carrot itself is right on par with the USDA's (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) average carrot size of 7.5".

While the bucket looks a bit big for a Tamiya figure (the light grey figure in the photo) the rest are all within acceptable size limits.

Conclusion

The pieces are nice and are going to be a good addition to a diorama. This is one of my favorite Black Dog kits, the sculpting is right up there on detail and quality. The amount of pieces you get is good. And lastly the subject matter is nicely addressed and can fit into any diorama builders’ stash of necessary kits.