I was at Gordon Harris in Newmarket this weekend picking up some cheap French curves and happened to drop into Modelair as well. As usual they had a sale table out the front and in a moment of madness I picked up a $20nz box of Dragon 1:35th Fallschirmjager.
On returning home my wife’s first comment was “you don’t need those”, which I thought displayed an alarming knowledge of the sort of toy soldiers I usually buy. My regular gaming mates are probably rolling their eyes about now too because I certainly don’t need these for gaming.
However since I started reading Model Military International last year I’ve been tempted to try painting something for display purposes in this slightly larger scale. For a crisp $20 note this boxed set of four figures seems like an excellent chance to experiment with this new scale. Particularly since, according to this review, the uniforms are accurately represented by the box art. I’m confident I can paint a reasonable light green cloth and there are a lot of handy 1:35th painting tutorials on the web.
Opening the box and I was met with no less than six sprues, a small etched brass sheet and some decals. From a parts count alone that represents pretty good value for money, particularly if you break the cost down by the figure count, meaning each 1:35th figure cost me $5nz.
From a modeling point of view it’s kind of an eye opener though, particularly when I examined some of the sprues in detail. I’m left wondering how on earth you get a tiny 1:35th grab handle off it’s sprue intact for example! Not to mention the incredible number of parts that must go into making up each of the four figures.
I was staggering around the garage in a daze wondering if I should just discretely pop the box up into the roof space (along with all my other incomplete projects) or put it up on TradeMe when I noticed the content details on the lid.
Ack! Over three hundred parts? For four figures? That’s 75 parts for each figure! It begins to dawn on me how dedicated 1:35th modelers must be. The age recommendation made me smile too – I’d hate to meet the 10 year old that is capable of doing models of this kind justice…
But heck, if some beardless youth is capable of assembling and painting these figures then surely I am too. Right?
Guys?