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Concrete Mixer Set (35593) 1:35 MiniArt via Creative Models Every home should have one! No, hang on. Every building site should have a cement mixer for mixing of cement, no less. They're a common site on building sites even today, but are more usually electrically operated where there's a ready source of power, but back in the day they were often run by small diesel or petrol engine housed on the side and hand-cranked into life. This set contains a WWII era mixer, and arrives in a figure-sized box with seven sprues of various sizes inside, plus an instruction booklet, and a painting guide on the back of the box. If you're a fan or collector of these useful sets, you may well recognise some of the parts such as the sand bags, the tools and maybe even the wheel barrow, as they have been in other sets before now. The centre piece however is the mixer itself, which is on a four-wheeled frame and has a small engine in a housing on the side for motive power. It's the power box that is built up first, with no engine detail inside (which seems fair), but a starter handle and moulded-in access hatches on the outer. The frame is made up from tubular and flat parts, with the wheels and their axles attached at the bottom, and the smaller front wheels mounted on a towing arm for moving around. The mixing drum is built up from two halves, and even has the mixing vanes inside, as well as a pivoting mount, with planetary gears around the edge to turn the drum. The engine compartment sits on a trestle to the side, and a large winding handle fixes at the other end for pouring out the mixed concrete. Then it's on to the wheelbarrow, which has a simple A-frame and single wheel, with the load area attached to the top. Two sized buckets are included, as are eight sand bags that fit into a small arrangement, with a selection of hand tools on the final sprue such as shovel, spade, pick, sledgehammer and lump hammer, with a long pry-bar to complete the set. Conclusion The paint job on the concrete mixer will be key, as these things see hard work on any building site, and soon end up rusted and dented, caked in dried concrete until someone knocks it off with a lump hammer, or puts a few bricks in to knock the residue off. Another great collection of equipment, ancillaries and detritus for your dioramas from MiniArt. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of