I am looking for lower price alternative to the Tamiya Leclerc kit, which is frankly out of my budget for a while. I have read both of the reviews on this site concerning 2 other Mini Hobby kits. Are all of the kits from this maker similar, or have they improved at all over the last couple of years? I'm not afraid of doing some scratchbuilding, filling, etc. to a point, but I don't want to make a career out of rebuilding a toylike waste of time either.

Should I save my money for the Tamiya kit?

Yes! the Mini Hobby kit is a reboxing of the poor Trumpeter kit, which in turn is a copy of the poor Heller kit. Even if you can find the Heller kit I'd hold out for the Tamiya one, it is light years ahead of anything else.

Mike

Get away from this kit except if you want to build it as a huge challenge to your skills :-)

If your problem is the price, then go with the Heller kit. It is not a good kit and even a shame as considering Heller are our national manufacturer they could have done a far better kit.
The tracks are awful, you'd better go with Big Foot tracksand redo the rubber pads on the visible shoes.

Another path is to buy straight from Japan. You could save a lot even when buying a Tamiya model.

Last thing, if you're a nitpicker go to my site and download my tweaks list in the review section.

olivier

Thank you both for the advice. I will wait until I can get the Tamiya kit.

Olivier, I have downloaded your tweaks list, it will be very helpful.

Thanks again for your help.

I finally found the Tamiya kit for a nice price, ordered it today. Glad I enquired about the Mini Hobby kit, guess you get what you pay for. Thanks again for the help.

Glad for you that you got a GOOD kit to build a Leclerc. Keep us posted with in progress pics.

olivier