And now to something completely different / Meng KV-2

[DocRob]

Straswudje tovaritch (should be something like hello comrade),

If you are tired of rivet counting, if you have forgotten which RLM-colors are needed for the tunesian scheme of your Würger, if your eyes are burning, because you are researching in books and the internet until the winter is over, if you are tired of multi piece single track links for your armour, if PE-bending gives you the spooks, if you get an alergic reaction because of cement fumes you might encounter your personal

MODELLING BURNOUT

And mostly there is one reason why this is happening. About all these huge, big, medium and small sized subjects we are forgetting to have

FUN

After letting the Future on my actual TA-152 build dry for decaling (nearly all the above mentioned subjects except the track thing), I dicovered a little box in my stash which I purchased a while ago out of pure curiosity. Could that be where the fun is in, dunno, let's open the lid. Arghs no lid, it's opening on the sides Revell style, bad thing, bad start.

On the other hand, the box looks great, even stylish. 

It's the Meng offering WWT-004, a KV-2 Soviet Heavy Tank in the scale, hey wait a moment, no scale mentioned, bad thing again, where should I put that here in LSM?
And this was where my fun part started to ignite. I tried to imagine what I could do with that little fellow and be warned, if everything works out, I will put the KV in a 1/35 Dio (shocking) and this will make it LS for the M. I will not tell you now where this little heavyweigt will show up, except you can convince me to tell.

I tried to make a thorough review, but while I was counting parts (no idea how many, maybe 60) and looking for flash and other polyethylene lowlifes, I had the green minimonster already built. So forget about the sprue shots.
The manual is beautifully layouted and is parted in eight steps and leaves nothing unsaid. There is even a colour chart and a sprue layout enclosed.
Decals (no kidding) are in perfect register and tonal balance and you even go multimedia with this one, because there are looped rubber tracks (no glueing required) and polycaps.

Leave your cement closed for the other parts as well because you will not need it here, everything snaps in place and I loved that, because it is so easy to paint an weather with all the details removeable.

After about an hour I had this little Russian cube with gun and tracks finished and had a big smile in my face and actually had FUN. Everything fitted perfectly and I never thought about checking references, but it might be only a short span of time, when the usual suspect like ABER, EDUARD or VOYAGER will spoil everything with a heavy dose of PE and Resin.

 

Verdict:

The good:
- snap fit
- good fit
- nice engineering (you can de-assemble everything and have all the fun again without sprue cutting, not to mention easy weathering)
- coolness factor
- takes only one hour of your pecious time

The bad:
- there are no Friuls out there to substitute the rubber tracks
- two part barrel and no Aluminum substitute
- takes only one hour of your pecious time

The ugly:
- I haven't got another one of the series
- I'm still thinking about 4BO green and a faded whitewash

So is this little thing something for you? For me it's an
Absolut recommendation for fun sake

P.S. No Vodka was harmed through that review, i swear, honestly

Cheers Rob

 

[JeroenPeters]

Hehehehe,

Thnx for this! I just love these cartoon versions.

 

[Martinnfb]

Ha haaa, so nice !  Such a refreshing little thing . Keep it up Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Great review Rob. I need to get a couple of these. 

Carl