What are the worst kits you've ever built?

[Modelmartin]

Nichimo had a "World Wide Worthy Car Collection" back in the 70s!

[Draggon]

I would like to challenge anyone to beat the craptasticness of the Revell 34 Ford roadster "saints" version. Saints is the first indicator that you are about to enter the gates of hell. Add the awful wire wheels, plus the 2 piece tires that defy any and all means of glueing them together till the end of eternity. If you think youve got it,, wait, they will pop apart even 10 years later! Then you have to add in the super extreme fiddly chassis that bends and breaks at its own will, and which will warp despite any and all means to counter act that. If you get that far and have a rolling chassis and engine, lo and behold, wait for it....... a body that is so freaking screwed up it will make you stomp on that 100 hour plus engine and chassis project just to spite its horrid self! I have two of these, just to let you guys know how much I like to be tormented!

[Rob Hall]

Ahhh...two piece tires...one of my earliest kits was an AMT mid '70s Mustang II, it had awful 2 piece tires...later restored the kit and replaced the tires w/ normal ones. Some of the worst kit tires I remember were on a number of Revell kits from around 1980, squishy soft rubber tires.

[Draggon]

Remember the Nagano "Drug Racing" dragster kit?

Yea, I'd like to get one just for the weird factor!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DRUG-RACING-Drag-racing-1-24-MODEL-KIT-NAGANO-JAPAN-/360399907045#ht_3008wt_1270

Edited November 9, 2011 by Draggon

[Draggon]

Revell's '34 Ford kits (there was a coupe in addition to the roadster) were both craptastic ... among the worst kits to ever wear the Revell name, in fact. The reason they were proportional nightmares was the bodies were downsized to fit Revell's existing John Buttera "T" chassis. To add insult to injury, Revell used the far-superior Monogram kit as the box art model for the original issue of the coupe kit.

Yep, those two can easily hold their own in any "worst kit ever" discussion!

Yea, they sucked me in for a Coupe with that deceitful box art. I spent a lot of hours online before I realized they fudged the box art so much!

Edited November 9, 2011 by Draggon

[Chuck Most]

That Saints kit was garbage, but I still had a little fun with that undersized body!

[Chuck Most]

My all-time favorite is still: "WARNING! When you use glue or paint, be sure to extinguish all fires in room and make sure a window is open!"

Ummm ... if you have fires in the room, I'm thinking perhaps you should doing something besides building models ... like, say, evacuating?

I can picture an annoyed modeler with a fire extinguisher, grumbling "All I want to do is build this model, but first I need to do something about this stupid burning house".

I once bought a kit with a tube of glue with the stern warning "Keep away out of children".

One of the Fujimi parts packs (the one with the vending machine, roller blades, and teddy bear among other pieces) proclaimed "For your car life, you will find these accessories."

But my favorite still is on one of my favorite kits, the Gunze Sangyo '56 Beetle- "We specially present this model kit to the Beetle's fan with our whole mind." That one still gets me every time.

I probably shouldn't laugh too much, I'm pretty sure my Japanese-to-English translations would be just as bad or worse, but still!

[Rob Hall]

Yea, they sucked me in for a Coupe with that deceitful box art. I spent a lot of hours online before I realized they fudged the box art so much!

I don't think I'm familiar w/ the coupe version..is that a different kit than the ZZ Top kit?

[Chuck Most]

The coupe he's talking about (If I'm reading what he's saying right) is the Saints roadster with a top. Totally different animal from the ZZ coupe.

[Chuck Most]

Chuck, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at that! :lol:

Another favorite, this one from Tamiya: "WARNING! Children must not be allowed to suck any of the metal parts in this kit!"

Soooo ... it's OK for them to suck the plastic ones, then?

And the vinyl parts, too, I'd assume.

[Jantrix]

I just acquired the 1/25 Revell coupe in a trade for a number of kits. I think it's going to end up as some sort of rat like Chuck did.

[RickRollerLT1]

One of the releases of the Arii '73 Challenger (maybe in the American Violence series) had some funny mangling of English..something like the 'the rumbling V8 makes the driver's bowels vibrate'...

WOW!!!! LOL :lol: :lol:

How could they do som crazy thing like that?! Guess someone in that department wasn't too bright there, huh.

Reminds me of:

How could you guys not remember this!

[Draggon]

This box art sucked me in to the 34 Coupe. It looks OK, but I didnt read the fine print on the bottom of the box " Photos of painted and assembled PROTOTYPE model"

What came in the box looked like this: Talk about snub-nosed!

[Nitrozilla]

I'm coming in late on this one, but I'm trying to turn an AMT/Ertl Challenger F/C into a silk purse from the proverbial sow's ear. Problem on this one is that they used the whole pig.

[Jordan White]

I'd have to go with the Revell 70's Chevy van kit. The way they did the interior "tub" is a real pain, especially when the floorpan is warped. Would have been much better if they could have done the floor and "frame" as one piece (since I believe the real vans were "unibody" style) to help prevent warping, and just have the engine cover be a separate piece so you could easily install the engine. The worst part is with the warped floor, when you attach it to a straight frame it just causes the frame to bend, causing the front wheel to lift off the ground.

The body is great, the chassis is great, it's just the dang interior that makes it such a sucky kit. Oh yeah, I forgot that the other issue is there are no positioning tabs, so it's a major pain to get the thing to sit in its correct spot.

[RickRollerLT1]

AMT's 63 IMPY does come to mind. Why, cause the 2003 issue I built (and thankfully only paid .50 on clearence for) looked like an imp!!!

Revell's kit from 2000 (and recently issued as the Cali-wheels 2-in-1) Is MILES ahead of that 'ol POS, though the only thing wrong is the molded head/intake manuifold that gets ploped ontop of the engine. But using the '64's parts solves that issue.

[wgflatliner]

my worst thus far:

1) Trumpeter 60 pontiac bonneville. over engineered and a pain in the butt to build. chrome where there shouldn't be chrome (exhaust for example).

2) Revell 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429. It was going together well, but if you follow the directions (i know, who does that, right??), you won't be able to properly get the rear panel with the tail lights in without breaking something.

3) Aoshima Veilside RX-7. it doesn't fit well, and there's wheel gap issues. In fact, Aoshima typically lacks on quality and they're extremely over priced for what you get, or in some cases - don't get.

4) Most anything from AMT is garbage.

My favorites:

1) Tamiya, by far. i've never had a fitment issue or anything with Tamiya kits.

2) Fujimi kits, mostly the enthusiast series because they can get 250+ parts and MAKE THEM FIT into the kit. if you haven't tried to build an enthusiast Fujimi kit, by all means give it a shot.

3) I would say i like Revell/Monogram for the vast amount of American vehicles, and i believe all of them come with decent detail out of the box.

4) WE CANNOT FORGET MOEBIUS!! they came out with an awesome kit and i cannot wait to see more from them.

i'm on the fence with Lindberg. Some of their stuff is good, some of it is bad. i like the impalas and since Revell doesn't have a 61, that leaves me with lindberg.

[Junkman]

Were those ex-Renwal, then reissued by Revell several times, 1:12 kits mentioned yet?

They were

- some Ferrari

- a 300SL Gullwing

- a '65 Mustang fastback

What an epic waste of plastic those are.

[sjordan2]

Were those ex-Renwal, then reissued by Revell several times, 1:12 kits mentioned yet?

They were

- some Ferrari

- a 300SL Gullwing

- a '65 Mustang fastback

What an epic waste of plastic those are.

Yup. The first two were my biggest gripes. I can't believe they released the 275 GTB with the Revell label, and did the same with the Gullwing, mostly found here as a Monogram kit. The hilarious part is that the original Renwal 275 had a hideous box illustration - out of proportion, etc. - which actually was very accurate to what's in the box.

Edited December 11, 2011 by sjordan2

[Greg Pugh]

Revell's '57 Chevy hardtop and AMT's '69 Chevelle.

So far........

[Jantrix]

Ya know guys after all this listing and discussion it might be fun to do a "Terrible Kit CBP".

[robertw]

Building one right now, the old Revell Lincoln Futura concept car. Multi-part body (trying to get it to the point where its only two parts top & bottom), started by sanding the whole body just to discover the low points then started to fill and re-sand. I'll have to strip chrome from the bumpers sand and reshape slightly then rechrome, Other parts don't fit well, etc...etc. Don't know why I'm building it except I'm a sucker for red cars and I recently watched the '59 movie in which it had a major role as a red custom car.

[RickRollerLT1]

AMT/MPC/ERTL '68 Plymouth Cuda

Why, the frame and engine are week and ill-fitting. Use the '68/9 Dart kit or the AMT '71 Duster to make a buildable 'fish.

[fumi]

3) Aoshima Veilside RX-7. it doesn't fit well, and there's wheel gap issues. In fact, Aoshima typically lacks on quality and they're extremely over priced for what you get, or in some cases - don't get.

I'd have to disagree with that, quality of Aoshima kits refined dramatically during the late 80's, and most of the stuff they developed after 1991 had been great. They are probably the first manufacturer to make platform style interior with realistic 3D side panels in 1990-91; AMT started in around 1993 IIRC, Revell-Monogram has had separate door panel for a long time but the rest of the interior was still molded as a tub, Tamiya didn't get out of the tub style interior until the mid 90's and Fujimi still hasn't made up their mind how they'd do their interior. While their chassis has not been the most accurate, the bodies are well proportioned and nicely molded.

Their body kits do need some work to fit properly, but they are no worse than Fujimi. And they probably went to far with the chassis sharing lately as witnessed by the FC3S RX-7 and S13 Silvia. But quality-wise I find them on par with Tamiya most of the time.

[slantasaurus]

I'd have to disagree with that, quality of Aoshima kits refined dramatically during the late 80's, and most of the stuff they developed after 1991 had been great. They are probably the first manufacturer to make platform style interior with realistic 3D side panels in 1990-91; AMT started in around 1993 IIRC, Revell-Monogram has had separate door panel for a long time but the rest of the interior was still molded as a tub, Tamiya didn't get out of the tub style interior until the mid 90's and Fujimi still hasn't made up their mind how they'd do their interior. While their chassis has not been the most accurate, the bodies are well proportioned and nicely molded. Their body kits do need some work to fit properly, but they are no worse than Fujimi. And they probably went to far with the chassis sharing lately as witnessed by the FC3S RX-7 and S13 Silvia. But quality-wise I find them on par with Tamiya most of the time.

I have to dissagree with you, the first "modern" AMT/Ertl kit to feature a platform style interior was the 66 Nova SS which came out in 1988. Also, I just finished building a mid 70's Ford Carpi II a few weeks ago, also an AMT kit that featured a platorm interior although I will atmit it was not the norm at the time.