official tamiya alternate body art for super hornet?

[beefmuffin 1156]

i was kicking around the tamiyausa.com site looking for super hornet parts and was surprised by the attached picture, sitting there right on tamiya's website. the stickers and body art is something i've never seen used on the super hornet. does anyone know anything about this? thanks!

[JWeston 493]

that's interesting. maybe an early press shot while it was still a beta?

[Grastens 2795]

I must have seen that picture dozens of times while on the site, but never bothered to look closely enough to find out it was not the box-art scheme as we know it... I would also guess that it was a beta model; admittedly the box-art patterns look better on the body than the stripes, even though they do carry over from the original Hornet. Makes me wonder about the Grasshopper II, though!

[GregM 1109]

I've seen this sometimes before too. At first, I thought this could have been a pre-production model. Now I'm assuming this could be someone's attempt of an alternate paint scheme after the release, using regular Hornet decals and Hot Shot II / Super Sabre red C.V.A. oil dampers. The silver coloured roof tubes are a cool detail just like on the predecessor, giving this Super Hornet a nice and much more realistic look than boxart.

See also:

http://www.tamiyaclu...showtopic=68413