Hell all,
Way back in 1959 I excitedly purchased my first plastic kit for my model trains.
It was an Airfix kit of an English wooden office building used in a coal yard, which came in a plastic bag and a graphical cardboard header/hanger.
It needed glue and paint to finish, because the moulded parts were done in a single grey colour.
They were exciting times.

I have built a few more kits since but the basics of glueable extruded parts, some coloured, seem to be have been otherwise unchanged.
The Kibri 38387 Haus am Schillerplatz kit came my way recently, and I was completely gob-smacked by the advances made by the kit manufacturers.
Kibri is now a brand-name of the Viessmann group, and I applaud them for the manner in which they present these kits.
No longer do you have to glue clear plastic onto windowframes ...
no longer have to glue window frames into walls ...
and no longer do you have to dribble that smelly gue down the inside of wall corners.
The kit took me 3 hours to complete, and if it had to be done the old 1950s way it would have taken 10-12 hours.
Here it is partway through construction about 45 minutes and you can see how the 1st floor rear window set just snaps onto the back of the wall with two central plastic wall pins.
You can see the same pins at the sides of the doorway on the ground floor.



The snap-together wall sections, plug-in window sections and plug-in decorative parts are a result of (I guess) the precision of which extrusion technology is now capable.
In addition it appears that Kibri can now extrude two different materials in a single process, or perhaps a 2 step process like 2 colour printing.
So window frames are extruded in one colour, and at the same time (or as a second step) the window glass is done in the same process so that each adheres to the other.
Amazing!!!




This building is a corner site not in the normal 90 degrees, but at 120 degress which is useful in my proposed townscape.
The kit includes a few parts not required, which will find uses elsewhere.
It also contains Viessmann instructions for using modern LED lighting.

I would give this kit 5 stars out of 5.
Very good value.




Kimball

That is probably one part of it, but I suspect that selling suitable glue that doesn't interest the glue sniffing groups is also getting harder to do, so more time is being invested in precision molding techniques.

Thanks for the review. Interesting building.

haha! Thanks for the mention. Now I regret not having lined up the houses better, and fixed the broken pole on the roof of the building...

Kibri has always been my favorite brand for model kits. I was particulary sad when they stopped. I agree it is better to have them continuing under Viessmann, than not at all.

I am not happy with the latest 2-in-1 moulding done by Kibri (and others) lately; It makes it much harder to paint the parts in differrent colors. Especially the parts with window-glasing. But the presicion with wich they are designed and fabricated -and the clip-on points- is just fantastic!

As Kimball points out, the particular design of these buildings forms a "system" of very similar structures (too similar IMHO). I already have 4 of them, as I jumped on the first series of the 120º/60º buildings they did. (Absolutly fantastic for town-design!)