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1/48 - McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom II by Tamiya - released - Blackdog detailing sets


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2 minutes ago, 71chally said:

...weird that it's available in Canada before Japan.  Bet you can't wait to pick it up!

 

 

For some reason new Tamiya aircraft models are always released in Canada first.

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  • Homebee changed the title to 1/48 - McDD F-4B Phantom II by Tamiya - test model+sprues+box art+schemes+decals - release July 2021
12 hours ago, 71chally said:

...weird that it's available in Canada before Japan.  Bet you can't wait to pick it up!

 


 I have two, I’m in Western Canada. We do get Tamiya kits first, even before Japan. The distributor gets them from the Philippines and uses an alternate delivery method to get them first. He pays more for shipping but he makes up for this loss leader by selling in much higher volumes.

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  • Homebee changed the title to 1/48 - McDD F-4B Phantom II by Tamiya - released
3 hours ago, 71chally said:

HLJ has it for £43.23 pre-order, seems a really good price for a modern tool 1:48th kit of that kinda chunk.

A good price alright, but I suspect that the shipping charges to Europe would make the deal a bit less attractive - particularly if you got nabbed for VAT and customs clearance fees too!

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Japan release is July 10th, with kits hitting shops from about the 15th.

It's bizarre that the kit is available everywhere else so much in advance to the home market. Looks like I'll have to order from outside of Japan (Luckymodel) in order to not be out-run by competitors in terms of aftermarket.

J

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4 hours ago, hopkp said:

A good price alright, but I suspect that the shipping charges to Europe would make the deal a bit less attractive - particularly if you got nabbed for VAT and customs clearance fees too!

I would imagine now that HLJ will be registered and will charge you the VAT so there will not be the post office fee,

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Just ordered mine from Lucky model and with the 18% discount they're offering at the moment it cost me just over £64.(incl. postage) As I've ticked all the usual boxes I'm hoping thats it..But as thats still £35 cheaper than Hannants I've got that to play with.

 

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Tamiya started holding back new kits from Japanese retailers 3 or 4 years ago to give sellers around the world a fair chance of selling their kits. At the time Japanese sellers such as HLJ, selling at much lower prices, were killing off demand elsewhere. Distributors were obviously not happy with that situation. I believe the plan is that kits such as the new F-4B will be on sale everywhere at about the same time.

I remember buying Tamiya kits from Rainbow 10 located about a mile from Tamiya in Japan and paying about two-thirds the price even taking into account postage, etc and having the kit a month before they were available in UK shops.

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17 hours ago, hopkp said:

A good price alright, but I suspect that the shipping charges to Europe would make the deal a bit less attractive - particularly if you got nabbed for VAT and customs clearance fees too!

Well, VATs unfortunate. :rolleyes:

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3 hours ago, Masinissa said:

Well, VATs unfortunate. :rolleyes:

It really is!

 

I actually gave up buying from sources outside the EU several years ago (the 'far east' in particular). It used to be that the prices were very good and the shipping competitive; combined with the VAT/customs thing being a bit of a lottery (as in some were nabbed, some got through unscathed) on balance it was worth taking the chance. However, more recently the shipping prices just got crazy (often costing more or less the same as the kit) and in parallel with this the powers that be seemed to get a lot more efficient and pretty much every parcel was getting caught in the 'VAT/customs net'.  It's just not worth it any longer from a financial perspective (or indeed from any other).

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17 hours ago, Paperback writer said:

Tamiya started holding back new kits from Japanese retailers 3 or 4 years ago to give sellers around the world a fair chance of selling their kits. At the time Japanese sellers such as HLJ, selling at much lower prices, were killing off demand elsewhere. Distributors were obviously not happy with that situation. I believe the plan is that kits such as the new F-4B will be on sale everywhere at about the same time.

I remember buying Tamiya kits from Rainbow 10 located about a mile from Tamiya in Japan and paying about two-thirds the price even taking into account postage, etc and having the kit a month before they were available in UK shops.


Rainbow 10, haven’t heard that in some time, they got a lot of my money.

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Just ordered my first two.............Looking forward to this one though potentially a pricey project.....I have at least 6-8 individual F-4B projects to complete !   

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Matt from someone's Models just did a dry-fit review of the kit.

It seems the kit is so good Matt has been quite a bit less Gordon Ramsay-ish than usual.

 

 

Cheers,

 

S.

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He says at the end it's better than the P-38F and the F-14. 

 

It definitely looks really good in that video and seems to fit extremely well considering its basically just taped together. 

 

Will definitely look to get one later in the year once I get my 2 ZM F-4EJ out the way. 

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Received the first of my kits this week. I really did think that the Zoukei-Mura F-4 kits were going to be hard to top (notwithstanding the shape issue with the rear fuselage on the short-nosed versions), but Tamiya have now taken us to the next level with their F-4B. There is even more evidence of Tamiya's ingenious engineering in this kit, when compared with the aforementioned F-14 Tomcat and P-38F/G Lightning. As always, Tamiya will look to maximize the potential with these moulds (F-4N for example) but I was particularly intrigued (as, I suspect like many others) by the breakdown of the parts for the starboard fuselage with that curious break between the forward section. This, combined with the separate upper fuselage spine part leads me to believe that they have at least planned for the release of non-IFR probe equipped F-4s in the future too (i.e. USAF etc F-4C/Ds). The wing fold and 'seamless intakes' are superbly rendered too. While the armament and stores fit is not stellar with only AIM-7E Sparrows and AIM-9G/H Sidewinders supplied along with the three drop tanks, we do finally get separate and accurate outer wing pylons for some of those Vietnam-era configured jets. 

I think the Tamiya kit has now also taken over the other No.1 spot from Zoukei-Mura; that which relates to price. If you pay the standard RRP it does work out to be the most expensive of all 1:48 Scale F-4 kits but as the saying goes "You get what you pay for" and while I also have no doubt there will be a plethora of aftermarket detail/enhancement sets released in the future these are really not necessary IMHO. This is going to be an expensive time for me, with at least five USN/USMC F-4B projects planned covering VF-84,VF-111,VF-161,VMFA-251 and VMFA-531 but I already have another two of these superb kits on the way !                   

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