So far the Hokum has received pretty extensive coverage – especially in 1:72nd scale. ESCI (Ref. No. 9073, was the first to release a kit of the Ka-50 in 1988, but this was wildly inaccurate; they even got the designation wrong as the ‘Ka-34’! ESCI’s kit was reissued in 1992 (they changed only the box, removing the designation but leaving the artist’s impression); AMT/ERTL ran a rebox of ESCI issued in 1989 (Ref. No. 8852). The Chinese company Dragon Models (DML) also released a Ka-50 kit (Ref. No. 2509), which was copied by HobbyBoss (Ref. No. 87217); this kit was no good either. Italeri (Ref. No. 031) was the first to come up with a decent kit of the Ka-50 in 1994. This has also been marketed under other brands – Tamiya (Ref. No. 60718), Revell (Ref. No. 04406, both released in 1994), Bilek (Ref. No. 26), C. C. Lee (Ref. No. 00107), and Zvezda (Ref. No. 7216) and Modelist (Ref. No. 3519).
While the Italeri Ka-50 kit was generally acceptable, Zvezda decided to make a new and more accurate kit, using new moulds for the forward fuselage section, the wings and the rotor blades (the latter were too narrow in the old kit). Confusingly, it is listed under the same reference number 7216. The box art was also unchanged at first, so you had to look for the absence of the inscription ‘Licensed by Italeri’) on the side of the box. The latter contains four black plastic sprues with 133 parts and one clear one with six parts. The landing gear can be modelled extended or retracted. The main instrument panel is a bit primitive, but the instrument panel shroud, HUD frame and side consoles are OK. The weapons include Ataka ATGMs and B-8V20 FFAR pods; the latter unfortunately have the wrong number of tubes.