Star Wars Armoured Assault Tank (AAT)

[Mike]

Star Wars Armoured Assault Tank (AAT)

Revell EasyKit (no scale noted)

The AAT made its initial appearance in the Phantom Menace, but featured in the Clone Wars animated TV show in a more brightly painted guise, and it is this version that is kitted here in Revell's EasyKit range. If you're not familiar with these kits, they are pre-painted, pre-weathered, and snap together using ingenious friction fit turrets that slide into tubes on the opposing part to give quite a sturdy join.

The kit consists of 4 sprues, plus two separate parts that make up the front "glacis" of the tank, and a small separately bagged access hatch on the moveable turret, inside which you can place the three piece driver - one of those annoying robots that continually repeat "Roger roger".

The underlying sprues are pale grey, onto which a medium powder blue color is sprayed using masks to give the bright contrasting panels. Over this, silver paint has been randomly "dry brushed", to give the general appearance of some battle-wear. The large gun is sprayed a metallic brown, and the two part stand a gloss black, while the underside has been brushed with some greasy brownish black paint to simulate the dirt picked up from the ground. The pilot has been camouflaged by hand at the factory with blobs of bright and olive green, and the cockpit is qhite with some blobs of grey, green and red paint depicting the instruments.

The box states a recommended minimum age of 8, although with supervision, a younger child could follow the instructions if an adult were to prepare the parts. Skill level is given as 2, but again I'd judge that yourself, as you know your child best.

From a grown-up's point of view, the painting leaves a little to be desired, so if you're planning on building one for yourself (and a lot of us adults like Sci-fi), you might want to consider a repaint, which will allow you to clean up all the parts and paint it up with a little more realism.

From a child's point of view, I'd imagine it would provide them with a diverting half an hour to build, and then lots of fun playing with the resulting model, with rotating turret, elevating main gun, detailed cockpit and pilot, and more than a little imagination. They're a great way into the hobby, and should provide a little encouragement for them to tackle something a bit more complicated later, if they enjoy the building process.

There are no decals supplied, as all of the markings are already painted on the hull, and no clear parts - however, the hatch was originally clear, but has been sprayed blue for some reason. Perhaps so that it wouldn't have to be painted inside and out, or the original idea was to show the pilot inside. Who knows.

Build Notes

After taking the initial photos, I decided to put the kit together to see how it builds. The colourful instructions include additional red numbers that tell you which order you should add the parts. Guess who missed that one the first time round?

Some of the sprue attachment points are quite large, and it might be advisable for a grown-up to help with the cutting and tidying up, as a couple of the stubs could impede parts fitting together. Some of the friction sleeves need a serious amount of finger strength to get the parts properly mated, so an adult with strong fingers nearby would be a good idea. The aerial part is a bit brittle, so won't last long, and the pilot figure, although made of a flexible plastic will probably need his small parts glued on if they're to stay together.

My penultimate tip is not to cut the funny little grabhandles/gills on either side of the "fuselage" too tight against the parts. The little tapered attachment parts are actually used to provide a friction fit to the holes in the tank's sides, so if you cut them off, you'll need to glue them on instead of push them in. Again - bitter experience.

Finally, if you're planning on building the kit to an adult standard, cut open the friction fit tubes, or you won't be able to get the parts apart again in a hurry without broken fingernails. As you'd expect, the fit is quite tight once pushed home, so plan your build accordingly.

Conclusion

This range of Star Wars EasyKits is a great idea, as a lot of kids love Star Wars a lot more than the traditional fare of modelling, such as tanks and aircraft. They're simple, effective, attractively finished, and should appeal to parents & kids alike from both sides of the instruction sheet.

Review sample courtesy of

[Obi-Jiff Kenobi]

Nice one, Mike.

Incidentally, a quick google shows a few websites claiming this kit to be 1/50 scale. Don't know how accurate that is, but if anyone has this and the old AMT kit (which was 1/32) it'd be easy enough to check.

Obi-Jiff