The kit itself doesn't look to have changed, with the possible omission of one part that I can't find or find reference to in the instructions... No, no, it's there after all, but I won't be using it (more on this later). The plastic is the usual light blue-grey stuff that always reminds me of what a lot of FROG kits used to be moulded in; the original kit came in the then-standard gloss white plastic. Moulding looks good, with no obvious flash and nice clean parts. Surface detail is very fine, albeit with raised lines, but that was the way things were done back then. Frankly, having seen production Concordes up close, I doubt any detail that is lost during assembly will be noticeable.
Assembly looks familiar, as might be expected from a kit I've seen before, and IIRC, the fit was very good, so I'm not expecting trouble there.
The instructions are modern Airfix style, and so are an improvement on the originals -- though not much because the originals were pretty good! The sole paint scheme, for G-BOAC in the Golden Speedbird livery, is well illustrated but differs from the original one in that the wings, nacelles and underside of the rear fuselage are gloss white (like the real Concordes in some of their schemes) rather than silver as they were in the original kit. I was kinda disappointed that they didn't give us the option of G-BSST's red-white-and-blue scheme, particularly since it would be historically accurate. Maybe some aftermarket decal supplier will fill the gap. I hope so; I'd probably buy a second kit if they did, to go with my Nitto 1/132 Tu-144 prototype.
The decals are the big difference; not so much in terms of what they depict, but as something that will be so much easier to use. I don't know who printed them -- they could well be from Cartograph -- but they look to be of high quality. What makes them different is that they include windows! Now, for those who have never made an Airfix airliner kit of 60s vintage, they were notorious for how the company handled the windows and the livery in general, and the cheatlines in particular. You were supposed to paint the fuselage and apply the cheatline decals before assembling it, without putting in the windows, and then you used the infamous window punch (the part mentioned above) to punch out the window holes (praying all the time that you didn't tear the decal) before attaching the windows from inside and gluing the fuselage halves together. How you were supposed to deal with the fuselage seams, not to mention BOAC's large cheatline around the nose, they never said. Luckily, this is not a problem for this re-issue. The clear windows are a bit superfluous since they will be covered by the cheatline and the window decals, but they were there in the original and, like the punch, are there in the kit. Authenticity, I suppose you'd call it...
Anyway, it looks like a good kit, as it was way back when, and I rather look forward to making it -- and another one if some enterprising decal manufacturer comes up with a good set of markings for 001 and 002. I hope they will.
Photos of the kit will hopefully be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.
