I have Revell’s classic 1:48th scale Grumman Cougar on the shelf. It’s the only time that this subject has been done in this scale. The copyright of the edition is 1985 but the kit engineering is a good twenty years earlier. It has raised surface detail, including the so-popular rivets of the time, not much going on inside the intakes, and a single piece cockpit insert combining pilot, seat, floor, panel and detail behind the seat (which, to be fair, is more than many got in those days). It ohh-soo needs a resin cockpit, and resin wheel well inserts, and some of those Seamless Suckers to back the intakes, not to mention weighted tires and maybe a crystal clear vacform hood that can be posed open, a set of vinyl masks, and of course a wide selection of marking options released by the decal guys.
Where are they?
There’s an echoing void. I can sand back the detail and rescribe the bird, sure, and I could use Panther accessories (assuming they’ve been produced for the newer Trumpeter Panther), and piece together my markings from generic sheets, masks and careful paintwork. Yes, that’s a valid approach, and nothing a modeller wouldn’t have to do if the AM industry was less active than it is. My point is just that: the AM industry is volatile in its ability to churn out product, but the choice of product and how it is marketed seem to play—cynically—only to certain parts of the hobby.
The pics above are the collection of AMs I put together for a single project. I know what you’re thinking – for a bloke who complains about AMs, I seem to have a lot of them. And I’m not really complaining, just having a bit of a whinge… I mean, where would we be without companies like Eduard, Legends, Verlinden, Mig Productions, Coree and the like? It could be said Francios Verlinden started the AM industry thirty years ago, giving modellers things they really wanted (to make up for the shortfalls in commercial kits between affordable practicality and actual accuracy). That was a great thing, and transformed the hobby, allowing more modellers to build truly spectacular models without needing to evolve the skills of a master machinist with infinite time and resources to do so.
The market proved to be an accommodating one, and the quality race was on: the kit companies raised their own game, in one generation injection molded plastic has gone from often clunky to often breathtaking, and the resin and photoetch guys have kept pace, not simply providing alternatives but striving to correct and outdo their plastic counterparts.
Yet there comes a point when this process becomes cynical.
Tasca burst on the injection mold scene in 2003 with a Panzer II in 1:35th scale, and reviewers ran out of superlatives... Not just accuracy of outline and a high parts count, with individual molding of detail parts for maximum accuracy and realism, but a fineness of detail resolution never seen before (and probably nowhere else even now), such as butterfly bolts (wingnuts) rendered in actual, crisp detail though the parts were less than 1mm in size. The model featured working plastic torsion bar suspension, something done elsewhere since (AFV Club’s Tiger I, IIRC, featured the same), but which at the time was a jaw-dropper. Surely no finer or more ambitious plastic engineering had ever been attempted, and what more could a modeller ask for? Especially at the comparably high price the kit commanded (and still does).
Tasca burst on the injection mold scene in 2003 with a Panzer II in 1:35th scale, and reviewers ran out of superlatives... Not just accuracy of outline and a high parts count, with individual molding of detail parts for maximum accuracy and realism, but a fineness of detail resolution never seen before (and probably nowhere else even now), such as butterfly bolts (wingnuts) rendered in actual, crisp detail though the parts were less than 1mm in size. The model featured working plastic torsion bar suspension, something done elsewhere since (AFV Club’s Tiger I, IIRC, featured the same), but which at the time was a jaw-dropper. Surely no finer or more ambitious plastic engineering had ever been attempted, and what more could a modeller ask for? Especially at the comparably high price the kit commanded (and still does).
Well, after-markets. You have to have a photoetched detail set to make it better... Or so say the guys who make them, and have the gall to offer an expensive fret of etched metal because the reviewers who raved about the kit were obviously wrong to praise it so highly. Hey, scrape away that incredible styrene molding, stick on some of our metal, then it’ll really be accurate!
You see the same thing with aircraft. The finest kits are the ones for which ‘updates’ are offered, or corrections, kits which already feature some of the best components on the market and build into pretty darn good models just as they are, while older, or more affordable, kits that could really do with a helping hand, are pretty much ignored. True Details produced a host of fine parts for a wide variety of subjects many years ago, but their productivity has been much lower in recent times, and that could be symptomatic of the same thing: the marketplace that must have its AMs doesn’t buy cheapy kits and oldies to start with, and we can expect the AM companies to have done painstaking market research to properly target their products.
It is as it is. If you want to make an expensive kit even more expensive then they’re ready and willing to take your money -- that’s the nature of a commercial enterprise. And it’s true that there are modern kits which do indeed fall down on the job: Trumpeter’s new 1:32nd scale Grumman Bearcat faired pretty well in it’s review in the pages of FineScale Modeler, but others were not so kind to it, one English magazine’s build-up feature laid bare the bones of that particular skeleton and after that I lost my enthusiasm for scraping together the asking price. Maybe with a comprehensive AM set to fix the problems it might be worth the effort, if such a set could correct the engineering deficiencies of, for instance, the wingfolds (perfect if depicting them folded, but the fit is hopeless for the extended configuration, which is, after all, the most likely form in which most buyers would choose to depict the aircraft).
I guess the point I’m making is simply this: while I acknowledge that the top end of the market is a legitimate place to play to, it would be nice if the AM guys aimed a bit lower at times too. Not necessarily that old Cougar, she’s a rarity these days, of course she is (to tell the truth it’s an awful kit by modern standards, and in the cold light of day I don’t think it’s actually worth saving!), and any product must have a big enough potential market to justify its existence. But bits and pieces to trick out kits that actually need it would be nice. (And yes, Eduard and others have gone round and diligently produced PE sets for, e.g., thirty-year old Tamiya armour, which blunts my argument somewhat, even if the sets are often more expensive than prices at which you can pick up the kits!)
But I like the Quickboost approach best: replacement parts for an ever-growing range of items, with superior detail at an affordable price, and so light-weight they mail for free from many companies... Yeah, now there’s my idea of an AM outfit!
Rant over, normal services will be resumed as of the next post!
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