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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Italeri WWII U.S. Infantry





Italeri have stepped up to the plate in the last two years for those of us who like World War Two. Their latest offering is World War Two US Army troops. This after their German Elite infantry, Russian infantry, German Pak 40 with crew and Russian 76.2 cm ATGs.





Later this year Italeri are doing American Army in winter, an Italian heavy ATG, and a multinational AT set.



This set is ever so slightly larger than the other existing WWII American Army troops. In my opinion, they are just within the acceptable size for WWII American Army troops.





The bazooka guy is moving and not as interesting as a bazooka guy shooting, but I hope the AT set will have a firing bazooka team. The radio guy is a good one, more interesting than one just walking around. The radio and particularly the battery was heavy.





If you click on the picture you can see how incredibly detailed these figures are, look at the sling. This is a one piece figure. Awesome. The set has more kneeling figures than I like and they are a bit larger than I like, maybe one millimeter too tall, and just a bit chunky. I like the plastic color, it should be the plastic color for all US Army WWII troops. I seldom paint troops and so plastic color is important to me. I hope the AT set and the American winter set will be good and fill some of the gaps in this set. They need more shooting figures and more standing. I am going to buy a lot of these.




4 comments:

S said...

Not bad, bad not brilliant either. The radio man appears to have a broken left leg! This is a lame pose in every sense and a kneeling one would have been better. As this is a company HQ level radio, he would be standing/moving or seated on something in a bunker. The SCR300 radio set itself is poorly modeled, with no join or latches between the set and battery box and no antenna - or anywhere to put one!

The officer fgure gets a pass on the 5 cell magazine pouch that was fairly uncommon until after WWII, but is lacking both helmet aand liner straps. He also has binoculars around his neck; you don't wear 'em like that in the infantry, because if you have to move in a hurry, you lose teeth! They were issued in a case for very good reason.

Just like the 'officer in a cap waving a pistol' this an "ism", a hangover from the toy soldier era of gloss-painted figures fighting in parade ground uniforms.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

The radio man reminded me of the wounded guy in the Esci Afrika Korps set, same pose. Your observations are correct and if anything had to be a separate part, having a separate radio would have been great.

I think they do the binoculars so that we can tell he is an officer, hard to see those little bars on the helmet front.

S said...

Yes, a separate radio and 'peg arm' holding the handset would have been better. A soldier carrying the set while the officer does the talking would make a good little vignette.

Wish they wouln't insult our intelligence though; the officer is obviously the guy with the sidearm and mapcase doing the waving. They can show the bars on the box art. If they want to hang something on hime, a flashlight would be more relistic LOL

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

I think they do that so that even children will know which figure is the officer, after all there is a large market for these with young people. I would rather he had the binoculars in one hand, even if he was not actually looking through them.

Flashlight is a good idea, there are about zero of those.