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As a cash strapped schoolboy, this was the first Tamiya kit I could afford, and I built it sometime around 1978. I have fond memories of it and have recommended it to a couple of people on here as an ideal starter for 1/35 armour. Time to put my money where my mouth is and build another one myself, just to see if it is as nice as I remember. I got this kit brand new earlier this week from Models For Sale for the princely sum of £8.99 (yes, really, a 1/35 tank plus figures and change from a tenner), so it doesn't have to be that good to be value for money The current box is unchanged from 1971. There was another release the following year that dropped the figures but I've never seen it. There is a sprue that has the turret and bits & bobs for the hull. Detail is nice enough (apart from that track for the hull fron ) and the mould would be pretty clean if it was new, never mind 50 years old. There are also a set of poly caps that help capture the wheels on the axles. Next sprue has the running gear and commander figure. All the wheels are single row which makes construction and painting so much quicker and easier. That commander can go in the spares box - there's nothing much wrong with him except his DAK uniform which ties him to specific time and place. There is a little bit of flash and some mould lines that I don't remember from last time, but it's really not bad and will take minimal cleaning up. Hull comes as a tub and a deck that has most of the superstructure and storage boxes moulded on. There will be a gap at the side where the storage bin overlaps the track guard - if it bothers you it would be a two minute job to box in with card. Or you could just not look at it upside down. There are battery guides inside the tub and slots in the bottom that betray the kit's motorised toy beginnings. Again, you can fix them or ignore them as you see fit. I'm going to ignore them. Tracks are typical 70's rubber bands with long prongs that you're supposed to push through holes then fix with a hot screwdriver. Small staples will do the same job. There are four infantry figures too, busy being all dynamic. Again, they're time and place specific (early in the DAK's involvement in North Africa, later I believe they would have short boots and caps instead of the long boots and pith helmet options - see Airfix's very nice HO/OO figure sets for examples) and again they're going straight in the spares box. Instructions are the standard Tamiya concertina. They have a lot of notes on unit organisation and an explanation of the differences in DAK uniforms over time but it's all in Japanese. Painting guide is basic in the extreme and gives no colour call outs (I don't know when Tamiya introduced their own range, I'm guessing some time after this kit appeared). There are decals supplied for 5 options though, and they cover just about every scheme the Pz. II carried which is great. I've done a bit of digging and fortunately German divisional markings often changed over time so I can pin the units, location and probable colours down: 1. 18th Panzer Division, Operation Barbarossa, Summer 1941 - overall Dunkelgrau (RAL7021) 2. 3rd Panzer Division, summer 1943 - Olivegrün (RAL 6003) or Rotbraun (RAL8017) splodges over dark yellow (RAL7028) 3. 15th Panzer Division, North Africa 1941 - overall Gelbbraun (RAL 8000) 4. 21st Panzer Division (after its reorganisation and redesignation from 5th Light Division) 1942/3 - Braun (RAL8020) with spots of Grau Grün (RAL 7008) 5. 6th Panzer Division, spring/early summer 1943 - overall dark yellow (RAL7028) I have my own preferred matches for all of those, but that's a can of worms for another day Time to just build it now. Andy

Hi everyone, This is my Panzer II. Just about getting the hang of the new weathering technique that I've copied off of something I saw in a magazine, this basically involves me spraying a very thin coat of a brown or dark colour over the running gear just to simulate the grime that built up down there and to tone the model down. Tamiya's kit is nice, being tooled in 2008 it is naturally one of the better Tamiya kits and it was a bit of a break from the 70's and 80's kits that I have been building and updating. The only problems with the kit that I faced were the lifting hooks on the turret went missing so I placed a bit of foil painted in Tamiya dark green over the top of the big locating holes to mimic a draped piece of folded tarpaulin. Also the link and length track (in which it was my first experience in using it) was a bit of a tricky job on the first side and I was left with a small gap that had to be fitted with a slightly modified track link to make it look normal, the second side however was slightly easier. The tank itself was painted in Tamiya acrylics whilst the detail painting was done in Humbrol enamel and Vallejo acrylics which gave the wood colour. Decaling was a bit tricky as a lot of the decals were on the turret and were over vision panels or fairings so Mr Softener was used to give them a bit of help whilst settling (that and lots of Klear!) Weathering mainly consisted of the said running gear treatment and various washes and filters. A dot filter was applied to the turret and some of the more slanted parts of the hull but not all of the tank could be filtered as there's so much equipment on the thing. Thanks for looking! Again, thanks for looking. It may not be one of my best builds but, hopefully the Mk. IV 'Tadpole' from Takom will be better!