Recently on eBay I happened upon a very interesting looking Item, a Challenger 1Mk3. As I was looking for a unique item for Twilight 2000 and it was cheap (USD15-00), I bought it. The kit has arrived and this item 'seems' to be the same as a large number of Nike footwear confiscated and destroyed by Customs and the Police each year.

What I am getting at is a very nice kit in tan ‘plastic’. The giveaway is the Copied instructions with Tamiya’s telltale Tool and paint list at the beginning and Comic character with hints throughout the instructions.

Are my assumptions correct? And if they are how can this be happening? I could find very little to nothing on a search about C.C. Lee on the Web!

Lee, appeared a few years ago in Spain. They were even distributed by a 'respectable' distributor. They have also surfaced in other countries as well. Most spectacular are probably their 1/350th scale ships (ex-tamiya). Pretty disgusting really, they have been seen all over europe and many model-shops don't seem to have had a problem stocking them....Jim (the original, not a copy) #:-)

I guess the question here is quality. Is it the same. Could someone ?maybe Tamiya.. be selling generic kits I've gotten some M-60 series tanks made by a company called Mini-Hobby Models. As I am using the kits to kitbash I was looking for real cheap stuff.

Lee has been around since about 1998 with poor copies of Tamiya kits using Tamiya box art and borrowed instructions. They hit the market around the same time Trumpeter did. Trumpeter began by copying Tamiya and Academt kits as well. Very bad copies though.

Incidentily, Academy also got their armor start by copying Tamiya's kits and even directly copied their decals sheets.

$15 for a C.C.Lee kit is over paying. They have also copied Italeri stuff using box art from their "Commando Hum-V".

Thanks Sabot

The kit is not bad actually, very little flash etc... I have Trumpeter's Challenger II and it actually seems to be better, same type of plastic as Trumpeter , and motorised . I don't have Tamiya's Challenger kit so can't say how the two match up. The $15.00 included shipping from HK.

Well I'll put it on the pile, I have Verlinden's Armor and fuel set / Desert Storm that I was going to use for my Twilight 2000 USMC M1 CEV, I'll use the CC Lee Challenger's set instead.