Recently I have bought a kit of Trumpeter's JGSDF Type 90 (ref. MM008).
Is a good kit?
Are the moulds from Tamiya?
What things must be improved?
Where I can obtain information (close ups) on this tank?
The Type 90 from Trumpeter is a bad, bad copy of hte Tamiya kit. It was badly pantographed, is underscale, more like 1/42 and was not molded well. Sorry to say it is more a toy than a model.
...I have measured the superestructure of the kit. The real vehicle measures 3.4 meters wide, and the scale model measures 97mm.
This is almost exactly 1/35.
It seems that the total length (barrel included) is slightly inferior to the scale model of Tamiya (278mm Tamiya vs. 270 Trumpeter).
I'm very confused.
Why you say that the scale is 1/42?
I am going by what the Trumpeter kit looked like next to the Tamiya kit...I do not have dimensions for the Type-90, and did not look them up in the internet. I only noticed that while the trumpeter kit looked like a tamiya copy, it also looked smaller. If your measurements are correct, then it appears it was a optical illusion to me.
The two kits that came out in this release from trumpeter, the Type 90 and the LeClerc, have gotten a lot of bad press, and look to have deserved it when I eyeballed the kits thinking of buying them.
Also, the BMP-1 copy that Trumpeter did IS as awful as has been described, especially in the running gear. And the T-72 with mineroller is a buldable copy of the Tamiya kit, but the turret is just horrible, as is the figure.
Trumpeter used to be pretty much a motorized model company, and would copy other companies kits and add motorization to them. THey also made their own kits to be motorized, the T-55 series in particular. But starting with, I believe the M1A1 series of kits, Trumpeter is becoming more of a serious model company.
Ok Jacques, sincerely the Type 90 does not seem to be so bad kit. The main measures are almost the same ones that kit of Tamiya, although the details seem to be less accurate and "soft".
The running train is quite bad (the kit is motorized).
Perhaps when I build it I can write a small rewiew.
Thanks for your aid, always it is good to listen other opinions.