Diorama and Field Accessories - 1:76 Fujimi

[Paul A H]

Diorama and Field Accessories

1:76 Fujimi

Fujimi have a rich history of producing kits across a range of subjects and scales. Worthy of particular note is their range of small scale armour kits which, like Airfix, sticks to the traditional 1:76 scale rather than 1:72. Many of these kits date back to the early 1970s, including the two diorama sets reviewed below.

Diorama Accessories

1:76 Fujimi

The set is made up of almost forty parts moulded in grey plastic. The quality of the mouldings is very good for the vintage, with crisp, uniform details and no visible flash or sink marks. Supplied in the box is a single, wooden watchtower complete with ladder, two blockhouse bunkers and a handful of tank traps. These parts will be more useful for battlefield dioramas than the urban dioramas that seem to be more popular these days, but it's always handy to have some sets like this available for when you feel like placing your models in a different setting.

The only downside is that the guns shown protruding from the blockhouse on the box artwork are not included. You'll need to raid the spares box or grab a couple of turned metal barrels to recreate this feature. All of the individual components are pretty simple, so construction should take all of ten minutes.

Field Accessories

1:76 Fujimi

This set is comprised of a very basic PAK 36 3.7cm, six equally basic crew (three of which are suffering from what look like fatal chest wounds but are actually sink marks) and a whole host of smaller accessories. Amongst the latter are some sections of brick which can be used to construct a wall, some sandbags, wooden pallets, oil drums, tank traps, telegraph poles and barbed wire frames.

While the artillery piece is pretty poor (and easily surpassed by Dragon's version), the rest of the set should be very handy. Oil drums and sand bags are always handy, but the telegraph poles and tank traps are a bit harder to come by and will be really useful for injecting a bit of life into a diorama. Given the bases that are supplied for the soldiers and the telegraph poles, it is pretty obvious that this set was originally conceived as a play set rather than a toolkit for the serious modeller. Nevertheless, there are some handy bits and pieces included.

Conclusion

Although these sets do not represent the cutting edge of what is available to small scale modellers, they contain enough useful parts to be worthy of consideration. Even if the PAK 36 is only useful for sticking in one of the block houses from the first set, the price is pretty reasonable for what you get.

Review sample courtesy of UK distributors for

[TonyG]

I recognise the field accessories from way back when I was a lad. They used to be supplied in some kits that were marketed under (I think) 'Riko'. There were a number of them - tiger tank, half track, 105mm gun were the ones I had. They all came with a diorama base too, which could be linked together to make a bigger diorama/play area.