I was quite surprised to note that we had actually announced this kit way, way back in August of 2009. Now more than a year and a half later the kit is finally making its way to hobby retailers in the next couple of months. As you can see by looking at the box cover the kit consists of three civilians, one Hitler youth, and one military policeman. No date is provided for reference, but the youth figure in the illustration looks closer in age to eighteen and that hints at early war rather than later when kids were being sent in to fight. That said the other civilian figures would fit in any time during the 30's or 40's.

The kit appears to be in it's final production mold form. The plastic is the typical hard grey used by MiniArt. There is some very light flash around areas like the hands which should be easy to clean up. There are the almost typical seam lines we find in this level of figure kit, but nothing that can't be sanded and corrected (mostly on the arms).

The one real flaw I see in the facial sculpting is that the elderly woman with the crutch does not look like a woman. Perhaps it's the 'wild' hair, but until I saw the box art I honestly thought it looked like Einstein (the physicist). Looking under a magnifying glass however lends me to believe that sanding down the overly large nose may fix this problem. The younger woman's face is very nice however and is not lacking in feminine qualities.

There are several options offered on this kit for the policeman in terms of heads (also helmet or hat), and arms. Similarly the elderly woman can be either holding a handbag or not.

MiniArt has some photos of the completed figures on their website.

Conclusions

This kit has certainly been a long time in the making and we know there are always modelers out there looking for good civilian figure sets. Based on other kits that are out there, this one will certainly meet a need for dioramas needing casual German street people. It's still early yet, but we will call this one a winner from this early look.

Our thanks to MiniArt for providing this advance sample!