Santa Tank complete

Job done - I'm ready for the festive season.

It's difficult to fault the Meng kit. Despite the comedy subject, it's an enjoyable build that is pleasantly involving. Taking care to clean up (not much required) and seat all the parts correctly is worth the effort. Some of the components are very small but generally locate well without glue.

If I've been a bit less glue-happy, perhaps the tracks would revolve on both sides, but then I'm not losing sleep over this.

I suspect that there will be some weathering experts out there who will go to town dirtying this model down with both grime and rust. The idea crossed my mind but I was enjoying the build so much, I just wanted to get on with things. Seeing their results will be a pleasure though.

Overall - an excellent and enjoyable build. You could happily point a young modeller at this as a less than serious project and I think they would have as much fun as I did. Model making doesn't always need to be serious and cartoon subjects done well, a challenging job for a designer, add a bit of variety for side projects. I could see many people making them the theme of a collection too.

At 7cm long and 9cm tall with Santa in the turret, the model isn't a big shelf-space hogger and at £17.99, not the most expensive kit in the world either.

A couple more kits from the range are now awaiting building, which tells you all you need to know.