Civilians Middle Easterners - 1:35 Meng Models

[Mike]

Middle Easterners

1:35 Meng Models

Following on from their highly successful and high quality Pick-up Trucks, Meng have released this set of rather handy and topics figures dressed in typical middle-eastern clothing. The set contains four very well sculpted figures, all of which are in multiple parts to improve detail and facilitate moulding, including:

• Man standing and leaning against "something". Wearing a jacket and knitted hat and sporting a beard
  
• Female youth/child carrying a bag of produce on her head with a long smock dress and open-heeled shoes
  
• Woman in long robes and sandals with her lower face and hair covered
  
• Boy in open jacket and sandals

Moulding is first-rate, especially for a company's first figure set, and a slide-mould has been used to give the woman figure a realistic overhanging hem to her long robes. The facial sculpting is excellent, and the female faces look distinctly female, while the males have a middle-eastern look without being caricatures of the region's people. Both male figures have separate legs to enable moulding of the creases in their trousers to go fully around the leg, and the women have separate feet that glue to the recessed bottom of their dresses.

A painting guide is included on the construction diagram on the back of the box, with call-outs in Gunze Sangyo colour codes. A list of paint colours without reference codes is given on the side of the box, but in reality the world is your oyster. Check your references for the colours typically worn, and don't forget that sometimes dust and dirt makes its way onto people's clothes no matter how they try to stay clean.

Conclusion

Given the military activity in the Middle East during the last decade, these figures are both topical and useful in any diorama or vignette. They are well sculped, and with careful construction and painting should look very well, especially in conjunction with one of the Pick-Up Trucks I mentioned earlier. A little filling of joints will be necessary, but that's standard fare with figure construction.

Highly recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

[thx6667]

That is pretty neat. I bought a set of the MB "Iraqi Insurgents" as I had an idea to do a Libya diorama with the pickup all beat up and a couple of rebel fighters.

Meng are awesome!