Polar Lights Herbie Beetle Model Kit 1:25 Scale – SNAP Together, No Glue or Paint Required

Hooray! Only waited my whole life for this! I'm 45 and loved the Herbie movies as a kid, and still do. Thrilled with it!

Complete and utter garbage. Bought this for my 6 year old son for his birthday as he is a massive herbie fan and we just had to chuck it in the bin. Cheap plastics and poor quality overall, I can’t believe Disney allowed their name and logo to be associated with this product. Completely misleading and not worth anywhere near what we paid for it .

This kit is definitely not suited for beginners. In fact, even for experienced modelers, it can be an absolute nightmare. It's like this little car kit has a mind of its own. There are plenty of parts, which is a good thing, but there are also flash and sprue issues to contend with. No fun. Some, if not all, of the tooling used for this kit is very old and clearly not originally intended for a licensed Herbie kit. There are even extra parts, no doubt meant for some custom VW option now lost to time. This is not a repop of the original Revell-produced Herbie kit from back in the day. Turns out, it is also not so much a 'snap' kit as it is a 'press hard and hope it holds' kit. I actually chose to ignore most of the snap aspects of this kit, instead deciding to sand, trim, and burrow out holes where needed, then use contact cement to carefully fit everything together. Since I didn't want to irreversibly melt any parts to each other, regular model glue was not an option. The kit also claims that no paint is required. At a minimum, I recommend painting the body, which has been molded in a pale, greenish-gray color. The kit features water release decals as well as stickers, but I suspect the stickers were included as another way to market this kit to beginners. Round 2, I know you can do better. Seeing what is actually required to successfully build this kit does make me wonder. With more transparent selling tactics and only minor rewrites to the assembly instructions, this model kit could easily be marketed as a bona fide mid-level glue kit. It's a shame, since, despite its flaws, this kit can yield some nice results. So, if you are an experienced model builder who thrives on unexpected challenges, then you've come to the right place. However, if you're simply looking for a fun little model kit for your kid to build, this one isn't it.

Very detailed kit

Not snap together. Not for beginners. Requires a jeweler’s screwdriver.