US M41 Walker Bulldog

While the finished product looks impressive, I was slightly disappointed in the Tamiya US M41 Walker Bulldog kit. First off, almost the entire bottom of the tank hull is one molded piece, with very little for the builder to do. Wheels are glued on, but that is about it - I prefer to build the suspension and lower hull, but this kit doesn't allow for that. Also, the suspension that is part of the mold has no detail on the back side, which was a little dissapointing. Also, the one piece treads are lacking detail on the inside, looking rather artificial. On the plus side, the kit does come with two crewmen, and if you prefer quick builds, the overall time to build was much less than other tank kits that I have done. I personally, prefer more pieces than this kit offered.

This tank was a very easy model to put together. While I have not yet built my Bulldog, my sister has built hers. She put this tank together in record time (it was that easy!), and the model gave her no problems whatever! I watched her build the thing, so I saw all the parts fit together wonderfully. The paint job was super simple, and their were decals for three schemes included. Rubber tracks were given in this kit - which I believe gives greater detail to the model as a whole. This bulldog has a rotating turret, elevating gun, movable machine gun, three extra figures (one tank commander, two in-action infantry figures), and I believe this thing could be converted to rc, since there were holes of the right size on the base of this. It's a beginner's model for sure, so one should not expect awesome detail. However, I felt the detail was descent enough, and the ease-of-build definitely made this tank worth the money. I'd recommend this kit to anyone but babies.

I have been making models for a few months now (I'm 18). I started out with an FA/18, then an Apache, and then this M41 Walker Bulldog. I got to say, this model was very straight forward and a lot of fun to build. The instructions were very understandable and clear. Each step included a detailed explanation of how one should go about painting or assembling. For example, it didn't just show you how to assemble the wheels, the kit explained how to paint, glue and mount the wheels. I was very pleased with the kit as a whole. The construction of the plastic is superb. Each piece shows great attention to detail. There are even little hammers and shovels that you can paint and mount on the tank! I would recommend this kit to experts or beginners. You can't go wrong with it. 5/5 stars!