Mack AC Buldog Tanker - RPM 1/72nd scale + Arctic Decals

 

 

Here it the RPM’s Mack Bulldog in fuel truck guise, thanks to the beautiful set released by Arctic Decals

A very interesting build as it resembles in a small way an actual vehicle assembly of sorts, with detail minute parts everywhere, for the chassis, the cabin, the engine, the body, etc. Some of this detail will be obscured after final assembly, but for those of us that like a little challenge in the guise of kits with a large number of parts, this is a joy.

The assembly log is here:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2026/10/mac-ac-bulldog-airport-tanker-rpm-172nd.html

Needless to say, careful separation of the parts, cleaning, and study the instructions are a must. I pointed out in the building article to a couple of glitches you have to sort out. Study your kit, so you use the parts depicted in the Arctic Decals art, as there are alternate ones that are not used for this version.

Besides the minute size of the parts and their individual cleaning, the other challenge resides on the painting of those parts, as you have to really plan ahead and not be carried away only to discover that you can’t comfortably paint some parts because you have already glued them.

I made a couple of mistakes, discovered only of course at the end of the build, but I can live with them. One was not to make the flat side panel recommended by the Arctic Decals instructions (which I read after applying the decals, of course 😒) and I mishandled a couple of very small parts that I ended up not using, as cleaning their injection gate was beyond my eyesight. Fit in these very little kits becomes a little challenging. As mentioned on the building post, some modelers may feel this kit is over-engineered, and I would have appreciated a one-part basic chassis, to which detail is added, and not a multipart one that makes alignment tricky. I personally think that the parts’ separation for the driver’s cabin is not optimal, and a whole roof that is not inserted between the sides, but over them, would have been better.

Given all the detail that is obscured once the model is completely assembled, it seems that this kit would be a very good candidate for a repair or abandoned vehicle diorama (see the mention of the brakes system inside the drum on the building article, as an example).

Overall, this is a nice little kit from RPM (a Polish firm), fairly molded and well detailed. I only wish RPM would produce civil vehicles, so modelers do not need to adapt their kits.

ACE Models (another scale vehicle manufacturer from Ukraine with kits of similar characteristics) is  ahead in the game, having released a beautiful civil Ford truck -mentioned in the step-by-step building article.