Hi Andreas,
Looking at your shots it seems the moulding is not that good.
Soft moulding with what looks to be stress marks in some parts and rough surface finish.
Also parts with flash and heavy seam lines.
The tooling doesn't look as though it's been polished.
The decal blue seems to be too dark.
That said I have ordered a kit 
,
What's you personal opinion on the kit?
Mike
Hello Mike,
I must say that I cannot judge a Roden kit neutrally. Please allow some two sentences to say why: When I got back to modelling after the typical break around 16-18 years of age, I suddenly found types unimagined when I was a child. Once I only knew Airfix and Revell, now, it was short before the millennium, even airplanes like a Nieuport 11 or an Aviatik Berg were available as 1:72 scale kits. I ordered all of them (via telephone, from a printed catalogue) by the dozens and was blown away by the sheer availability of all those types. Yes, eduard was there, too. But in 1:72 there were only Albatrosses and Fokker Dr. Is these days, the vast majority of ww1 model kits were Roden (Toko/Eastern Express). Roden was a synonym for WW1 modelling for me and I had so many wonderful evenings building them. Not all of these kits were easy, oh no. But they always were fun to build.
When Wingnut Wings entered the market, they set the standards, of course. They even brought me to switch to 1:32 scale, a scale that I never liked before („Waaay to huge! I will always stick to 1:72!“). But however I saw myself getting very angry when suddenly people spoke of the Roden kits as rubbish. Suddenly the Roden Dr. I wasn’t good any more, the Roden D. H. 2 wasn’t good any more. I won’t go on discussing that, without any doubt Wingnut Wings kits were breathtaking products, fantastically researched. But they are gone, sadly. But Roden is back here with this Strutter. I received it on the very same day WNW seem to have done their very last breath and the Wingnut Wings homepage got offline.
And I always had a soft spot for the Sopwith Strutter.
So what is my opinion on this kit? I do like it, of course, I love it. I even got a little emotional, which is strange as it still is just plastic. But here are not those million dollars in the back that a Peter Jackson owns. This kit is produced in a country that faces actual war, death and destruction.
Of course this is no neutral position that I have. Trying to get as close to that as I can get: There is definitely flash here and there. But I haven’t found any sink marks yet. And these ejection marks are on places that are invisible once assembled or on the inside of the fuselage. The detail is soft in places like the wing ribs. But I personally never was a huge fan of too prominent stitching detail there. I thing I‘ll use HGWs stitching decals here as I once tried PE wing rib stitching and didn’t like it. The parts actually have this typical strange blurred plastic appearance that got typical for Roden in my eyes, but I never had problems with it, like Rick has said, under a coat of paints. The only thing I am afraid of, are, as always, the decals. I can’t say if they are better than the old ones, but they still do look like those, even if the printing seems to be a little better. The blue is a little on the dark side for 1916/1917 British roundels, but I never intended to use the decals anyway.
I am sure, Mike, that you‘ll not regret having ordered one (as they are not too expensive anyway) and you‘ll build a little jewel out if it.
Andreas
