Tamiya bodies are beautiful! It seems that everything their mold maker touches turns into miniature art. Their bodies are far superior to anything within the industry when it comes to detail. But, sometimes this attention to detail can come at a price and that price is the time one must spend to attain such fine detail.
I just finished building, testing, and reviewing the Tamiya Volkswagen Type2 Wheelie for our first issue. I made a fast motion build video chronicling the assembly which took me 38 minutes to build. The body took me roughly one hour to paint. Now here’s the kicker – the stickers took me over four hours to cut out and install! Let me break this down for you; there were exactly 23 windows on this VW bus. Tamiya includes window masks with this kit but it is just a sheet of masking tape with the window outlines screen printed on ready for you to cut out. 23 windows!!! Ok, no big deal, I’ll muscle through cutting out the masks. But, once you finish painting the body you quickly realize that there are window decals. No big deal, just another 23 decals to cut out. Nope! Tamiya decided to print the window trim decals in multiple pieces. So, I ended up cutting out an additional 60 window decals and applied. It took 300% more time to decal the body then it did to build the entire kit and paint the body. I love building and painting RC cars, but after this experience I need a break. Hey Tamiya, you’re a HUGE company, it’s time to invest in a die cutter.
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