Dragon Brand

Beginning in the late 1990's Dragon Models, a Hong Kong company, added 12 inch figures to their long-standing line of military scale models. Their production was prolific for many years. Much of it was devoted to World War II era figure and vehicle sets, although they also brought a number of Modern forces sets to the marketplace. Since 2010 their new 1:6 scale offerings have diminished in frequency, although a good variety of affordably priced sets continue to be available.

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DML (Dragon Models Limited) is based in Hong Kong and Shanghai Dragon is
based in Shanghai, China. Not sure of the exact link between them, but many
Shanghai Dragon kits are reissues or modification of DML kits. Usually DML
releases a kit first and then the molds are transfered or sold to Shanghai
Dragon for the reissue. If Shanghai Dragon does a straight reboxing of a
DML kit, it will have the same kit number and box art as the original DML
kit with the only visual difference being that it says "Shanghai Dragon" on
the box. Usually the Shanghai Dragon reissues are cheaper than the original
DML boxings. For example, the DML and Shanghai Dragon ZSU-23-4V1 both use
the same kit number (3521) and are the same kit.

Sometimes Shanghai Dragon modifies a kit slightly and in this case, the kit
number and box art will be different. For example, the Shanghai Dragon
Brummbar has a different number than the DML Brummbar. It is basically the
same kit, but the Shanghai release uses a different Panzer IV lower hull
part than in the DML original. Another example is that Shanghai Dragon did
a USMC M1A1 which is the DML M1A1 with a couple of new parts.

Finally, sometimes the Hong Kong kits are labeled "Dragon" instead of "DML".
The listing of "DML/Dragon" usually referes to the HK based kits, which is
separate from "Shanghai Dragon". The kits are all essentially the same in
quality, just the Shanghai kits are cheaper, probably because of cheaper
production costs on mainland China.

Dave