Your reaction to the running time is normal, after a few more HL's you will have expectations beaten out of you and like one poster said "wow, you got a week out of yours"
In the post HL world we had scratch build and Tamiya and very limited selection at that. So HL has given us, what I consider, starting points for more variety in 1/16 tanks.
If you want a Zen moment "Heng Longs are a journey that starts with the first broken part"
