[Bill Murray]

Good Morning Jon:

Excellent obsevations!!!

I see this from time to time on more modelling oriented forums, critiquing of the box art.

Many years ago, I was quite friendly with a fellow by the name of Yasuo Ohtsuka who did a lot of box art for Tamiya vehicles in the seventies and eighties. He explained to me that there was a constant fight between the technical folks who did the research and the molds, decals etc. and the sales/marketing folks who had to flog the models.

Much of the painstaking research of the former was often undone by the latter who wanted box art to "pop" or look much more dramatic than a rendering of a very ordinary looking truck or tank.
And, of course, looking at all the pics we post, most were very ordinary looking.

Yasuo maintained that Tamiya were for the most part insulated from this because Mr. Tamiya himself was such a purist. I suspect that this was pretty much true at least for Yasuo's art.
He was very critical of a lot of the other manufacturers's box art by the way.

He also said that errors did occur both in the box art and the actual models from time to time if they had to rely on using "restored" examples for their research. As we all are aware, and point out at every opportunity it seems, not all restorations are 100% authentic for a variety of reasons.

I am not an expert on a lot of the details of CMPs, so cannot say whether your observations are correct, I suspect probably so, but I can also mention that Yasuo mentioned Italeri specifically as a company that took a great deal of artistic license with their box art.
Hope that helps.
Bill