It's editor and publisher Lynne and Tom Young are providing us with a catalogue of every known 1/72 kit ever produced. Very much a Herculean task that few of us would even contemplate undertaking. Especially today when new releases are flooding the shelves of our local hobby store.

Well enough platitudes, what's in the book? I'll use volume 3 number three as an example. BTW, you can pretty well ignore the season and date on the issue as, typical of small run publications, the actual publication date isn't the same!

First thing you notice is that the issue is photocopied, again typical of a home run magazine. There are also numerous illustrations on every page of the issue, a nice touch. An equally nice touch is that the pages are punched for inclusion in a three ring binder so that you can put the updates together with their respective sections. On opening the cover there is a contents page as well as an editorial from Lynne. On the next page is some update info from Tom. Next is a page on other modeling magazines. This particular issue has a short history of Aircraft Modeler International and Mushroom Model Magazine. A really nice inclusion as I, for one, was rather amazed at how many magazines there are and were that are for the plastic modeler.

The real meat of the issue starts on the next page. What the Young's have done is to list each of the aircraft alphabetically by actual manufacturer. This issue is D, E, and F. So you get such aircraft as the Dassault Mirage and Focke-Wulf 190. For instance, if you are looking for a kit of the DeHavilland Hornet, you will find four kits listed: An F.1 and F.3 from Skybirds '86, an F.3 from Arba, and finally the F.3 from Frog. Only the original boxings are listed and not the myriad of reboxings that some kits go through. For instance, the Frog Hornet has been reboxed by Novo, yet that is not listed. Also not listed is the kit number. I'm not sure if that is a drawback or not. The anal side of me says that this information should be included with a note saying it is a rebox, or have the several different kit numbers denoting the different releases of the kit. The practical side of me looks at the vast amount of information and realizes that there has to be a line drawn somewhere or the series just gets too unwieldy. What I think is kind of neat is that there is a check box beside each kit. It is as if we were expected to get each kit and check off when we have it in our collection!!

The next section is for updates to ESM 72 volume 1 and 2. Apparently these issues were by kit manufacturer and so these updates give the pages on which to locate the updated information. Following that are updates to the aircraft manufacturer section that started with volume 3.

The next large section is for vehicles. This is arranged by country and is a real boon to those that build small scale armor kits. Included in this section are those that are close to 1/72 including the 1/76 kits from a large number of manufacturers. Apparently 1/76 is more widely built than 1/72 here, but I haven't a clue as to why. This section is also highly illustrated. Following that are updates to volume 1 and 2 which also listed vehicles by kit manufacturer as well as updates to the first two sections of volume 3.

Toward the end there are listings, by manufacturer, of terrain and diorama kits as well as updates to rockets, missiles and spacecraft; vehicle conversions; figures; and structures.

Well, after all of that, what can I say. I am truly impressed with the depth of the information covered within. Just typing the 50 or so pages of each issue would be enough to have me talking to myself, let alone the work required to gather all of this stuff together.

Any really serious builder in 1/72 should not be without this very valuable reference. I'd like to see the same in 1/48 when the opportunity presents itself and I'm sure that one in 1/35 and 1/24 would be greeted with glad cries from a lot of armor and auto builders as well.

Highly recommended and well worth the price.