Trumpeter, Dicker Max Kit No. 07108

	This kit, the first plastic rendering of "Dicker Max" in 1/72, is one I have been waiting for for a long time to appear. After Trumpeter did their "Sturer Emil" years ago, I thought (time wise) they would be closer together. Well, let me stop rambling and get on with this preview. The box art comes with a nice rendering of a built model. The instructions are eight pages of info that is both easy to read and to follow along.

The box contains three sprues with parts, three loose pieces (hull, deck and fighting compartment), two sets of tracks (more on them as we go), and a small set of decals. Now when I first opened the box, I thought some parts were missing...... I saw the sprues, but didn't see any tracks, until I noticed two small bundles of protective "bubble wrap", which, as it appeared, contained the tracks. These are moulded in ONE piece, with all the outer wheels, return rollers, sprocket and idler already attached to them. I find this puzzling, but I'm not on the A or B team.

		My biggest trouble with this "all in one" solution is the fact that the injection points are in the centre of two of the return rollers, the drive sprocket, and three of the road wheels, all of these on the "outside" where they can be seen. Additionally, I feel that the drive sprocket, idler wheel, return rollers and wheels could use more and sharper detail. (Ed : From the instructions I understand you have to fit the INNER road wheels to the suspension units, then glue them to the track and OUTER road wheels and finally glue the complete unit to the hull.) It'd have been a better idea to mould the tracks like Airfix did with their 1/76 Cromwell.
Of course moulding like this leaves the outside of the track a "little" soft in detail. Perhaps you could replace these with tracks and suspension parts from Mirage or Hobby Boss, as these have the correct details. (Ed : Both "Dicker Max" were built on Panzer IV Ausf D chassis and thus used the 36cm tracks, which indeed can be found on the Hobbyboss Munitionsschlepper Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. D/E or the Mirage Panzer IV D. Additionally the sprockets, idlers and road wheels from these donor kits can also serve to improve the detail on the running gear. Later Panzer IV models, from Ausf F onward (= the Hasegawa, Dragon and Revell Panzer IV kits), used the 40cm tracks and different suspension components.)

Now on to the Fighting Compartment and the hull. These parts generally are quite nice and apart from the "Moulded on tools and Cables", I am quite pleased with them. They even have these little "tabs" to "snap" the parts together as you go. (Ed : There is one major shortcoming in this kit : pictures of the real vehicle clearly show TWO raised compartments in front of the fighting compartment, one on each side of the gun. The one on the left was used by the driver, the right one appeared to be a stowage box provided with a dummy vision visor. Trumpeter have included both in the "painting and marking guide" drawings, but the kit itself has only parts for the left one!)

On the downside, I am a little disappointed in the gun being two halves, maybe there's a metal equivalent out there? (Ed : No! There are 105mm barrels available for the Wespe and the StuH42, but these differ from the longer 105mm used in "Dicker Max" I think the rest of the parts are nicely rendered. Here are a few of them :

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Article Last Updated: 20 May 2013