HellerHel81201 Model Kit, Various

Firstly I would like to commend the vendor who got this kit to me next day. Fantastic! I also tip my hat to Heller for producing such a great subject! What a fun idea! That said - I have been building models for 40 years - so I have some experience in this area. To be frank the build was genuinely difficult. Heller's instruction sheet is very poor. (They are notorious for this - I also recently built their 1/24th scale Ferguson TE-20 Tractor & that was just as bad.) So it is very hard to see exactly how the bits go together. There are no pins or slots to align the parts. It is very easy to fit parts the wrong way around. You have to guess. The parts are quite large but quite thin so they suffer a lot from warping. Maybe Heller recognise this in the fact that they pack a spare set of sprues in the box!? To get everything to fit you need five arms and hands to hold everything together. Seriously I recommend superglue and accelerator. Lots! You will be very lucky if you get this thing to fit together well. With all my years of experience I had no idea if I had it assembled correctly. Buyers should also be aware that this is a rough facsimile of a contemporary Eiffel Tower minus all the telecoms equipment at the top. The fine lattice-work in the steel beams simply cannot be replicated at this scale. That is the limitation of injection-moulding at this scale. But, for this price, it is a shame that Heller couldn't be bothered to add even a little photoetch to the kit or even the tower telecoms equipment. You can take it for granted that most of the internal superstructure is simply missing. The lift towers being an obvious omission. This is very simplified. Keep in mind that the mid-tier was substantially modified at some point in history. So if you want to show it as it was in the late 19th/early 20th Century you will need to figure out how to do that yourself. The scale too is slightly problematic. If they had chosen 1/700th then modelers could have used some aftermarket items used by ship model makers. So, in conclusion, great service from the vendor, a great concept from Heller... but dreadful execution.