M48 AVLB

Ingo F
Thanks for the info mate. 👍

Dan M Autor
No problem. The idea is that for the price Dragon asks you kind of expect a top product with good details. And you get a good M48 with a poor bridge.

Actually I've been studying the sprues and I think I know why there is such a difference in quality. The bridge sprues (same as the AMX turret in their Egyptian Sherman kit) are a "short run" production as opposed to the steel moulds they normally employ. What this means is that it's waaaay cheaper to produce these sprues as long as you're considering a limited run and not large mass production. Unfortunately the quality is not very consistent between batches with a short run and the details are not very sharp either. You can see this with other short-run manufacturers like Modelsvit, Roden or some older Special Hobby kits.

So why the short run then? Well, Dragon relies very heavily in their business model on reusing the same sprues all over again.
With the AMX turret in their Egyptian Sherman and the AVLB bridge parts here, someone at Dragon thought that they will likely not re-use them in other kits and probably also figured out the kits are not going to be high-sellers. So a short-run will cover them and keep their manufacturing costs low.

All very good and dandy but then they asked a high price for their kits, more inline with a normal manufacturing process. And that proves once again that the new business practices of Dragon leave much to be desired.
Too bad Dragon is no longer maintaining the standards which have made them famous but fortunately there are other players in the market right now so Dragon can kiss goodbye to my wallet.