ESCI – 8323 – Merkava

Description:

Merkava

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of an Israeli Merkava main battle tank, I variant, entered service in 1979.

ESCI tooled in this kit in 1988, to be exact, is was not already ESCI but ESCI-Ertl, this means that the kit was originally tooled with link-and-length tracks and no release of this kit exists with only single piece vinyl tracks.

The same year the ESCI – 8338 – Merkava II was released, just by adding extra armour parts on turret.

The Merkava I kit is well detailed in general for 1/72 scale but suffers of some of the common ESCI/ESCI-Ertl problems, as for example double width road wheels instead of two parts, this mean also tracks has no central teeth and inner detail is basic. There is also a problem with the tracks stated by some builders too width causing problems to fit the side skirts.

Over 30 years after release of the kit, no other brands show interest in the Merkava I variant, excellent kits exists for Merkava III and IV, but no other option for Merkava I, and for the II variant, only the CC Lee kit (Lee – 9007 – Israeli Merkava hard to find) and Galaxy tooled a II variant which can be considered in summary below the ESCI kit quality.

Italeri reissued this kit as Italeri – 7005 – Merkava I, also in a gift set code number 7705.