i would hope he does as i would like to suggest that he starts scaling down some of the latest releses ie matilda ,jagdtiger and pzkpfw ii and may be some more half tracks and follows the way dragon put out kits and covers most of the variants because if dragon do enter the 48th market i suspect that they will do to tamiya what there doing to them in 35th scale market any thoughts out there wayne
A Churchill would be nice, Tim...but given they already have the Crusader/Cromwell on the ground, I would think a Comet would be a piece of cake. (Though with not the market appeal, I grant). If I were a betting man (perish the thought) I would back the Valentine, what with MR and Parabellum having kits, tracks and PE on offer.
...one could also worry what effect Dragon might have WITHOUT entering the 1:48 arena. Their new range of Orange Box kits are priced at or below most 1:48s. Not my taste because they're just too big (and link and length tracks look better). But to someone just entering the field (and plenty of veterans) they represent real value for money.
Tamiya's 1/48 kits are not cheap, and some of them are not that good, so you don't get a great value for the money. This is why many names that I used to see on this site are now appearing on the 1/35 fora. I myself walked away from 1/48 armor for almost two years for that very same reason. I have my reasons for coming back, but many won't if Tamiya doesn't get some serious contenders, and I don't think they will.
DML sells a great bulk of their models in the US, and 1/48 is simply not popular here, so creating 1/48 molds would not be a wise investment for them. Perhaps if DML packed its molding technology, great details, and in-box PE and other specialty parts into a 1/48 kit, they might make them more attractive to American modelers, but probably not. The AFV club and Skybow kits feature excellent detail, and they don't sell too well from what I've been hearing.
Lets face it, 1/48 AFVs will always remain a fringe of the hobby.
Not in my LHS, I was in today, a Tamiya Crusader Mk.I/II, £19.99, a Dragon (Cyberhobby) Orange box Sherman Hybrid Ic Firefly £39.99 and it isn't really a particularly good effort, mainly a jumble of sprues from various prior Sherman releases with a few extras and new decals...
I guess value depends on the price you pay where you live, in the UK Tamiyas 1/48th armour, despite a recent price rise, is still an attractively priced range of kits, the Tilly is overpriced for whats in the box, but so far I've bought 4 of them anyway!
...and to 1/48th armour, I'm certainly not new to the hobby.
Something that seems to elude a lot of people in the discussions I've read here is that Tamiya really doesn't give a rats-ass for what other manufacturers do or what scales they work in, they have a market they aim at, the japanese home market, if the kits sell there then that suits them fine, and just about everything they produce sells in Japan very well indeed, the 1/48th armour line is very popular with japanese model makers.
The rest of the world is frankly insignificant to Tamiya in comparison, it makes for a a very small percentage of thier overall sales and it has always been this way for them no matter the scale or the subject. Very few Tamiya products have ever been produced specifically for overseas consumption, of the 1/48th aircraft line I can think of only one subject, the Swordfish series, and that kit came to the market because Tamiya-San himself wanted it to be so!
To take this one step further, a lot of people rag on Trumpeters aircraft kits for poor attention to outline or detail, the recent 1/32nd Mustangs were a big disappointment, equally the large scale EE Lightning has more than its fair share of outline and detail errors and the new Eurofighter Typhoon is frankly laughable, but it really doesn't matter to them, the numbers of Trumpeter kits sold in Europe and the US are a tiny figure in comparison to what they sell in China, they can sell everything they make at home and really neither need, nor can be bothered, to pander to western tastes and desires.
Tamiya will continue to make what sells in Japan, just because the scale isn't as popular in Europe or North America is irrelavent to them. Whether other manufacturers pick up the scale or not is equally irrelavent to them, and whether anything said on this forum will matter one jot to Tamiya R&D remains to be seen, personally I doubt it very much.
For the record, Tamiya kits have been produced over the years because Mr Tamiya was a modeler, it was his company, and he personally oversaw every release. If he didn't find the subject interesting, the kit didn't see the light of day.
In the 1970's, Mr T was a fan of motocross bike racing. Hence the inexplicable (to every modeler I ever knew) release of a series of kits on this subject. They came and they went with Mr T's interest in the sport. And he was an F1 fan at one stage, and a WRC fan. Kits came, and they stopped coming, when Mr T lost interest.
The 1/48th range was Mr T's pride and joy for the past few years. And the "brilliant" idea to have cast metal chassis? You guessed it, Mr T's idea. And no matter how bad an idea many modelers thought of these chassis, in a family firm, you don't tell the boss his idea isn't popular with the masses.
What is very interesting (at least to me), is that Mr T Senior, the modeler, and CEO for the past many decades, has retired. And been replaced by a much younger man, his son in law, an accountant. Following his taking of the reigns of the firm, you will note the following:
1/ the metal chassis got smaller and smaller, and then with the last two releases, disappeared all together.
2/ 1/48th military vehicle releases have all but stopped, and the 1/35th releases have increased. I am very interested to see what happens at the October Japan hobby fair. Will 35th releases once again outnumber 48th by a wide margin? In 35th this year we have had the Jadgtiger, the Citroen staff car, the Matilda, a 3.7cm flak gun, a new edition of the Panzer II, plus a series of Italeri reboxings, and upgrades to existing kits, such as the Sdkfz. 232 armored car and Italian medium tank. In 48th? Tilly and Sdkfz. 251, with many of their recent kits being reboxings of other's product: Italeri AB41 and Opel Blitz, and ICM Sdkfz. 222.
I couldn't agree more with the comment that 1/48th is and will always remain, a fringe market. Tamiya's kits apparently sold well in Japan, but then Tamiya dominates the model kit market there, and so anything the firm releases will sell at least moderately well. But if they were selling so well, why haven't we seen as many this year, and why is 35th apparently back with a vengence at the firm? But just look at what happened to Iron Division, or ask Tim Perry or Steve Faxon how many of their products sell more than 100 units worldwide. Bison Decals gave up producing 48th decals after only 4 poorly selling sheets, although I do see they have come up with a fifth, "due soon". The owner said he couldn't sell even half his 250 unit production run after a full year on the market. Formations said their Sherman M4A2 hull was a bust, sales wise, yet it was a brilliant item. They refuse to produce any more, as sales simply aren't there. Besides MR Modelbau in Germany, who else is giving 48th much attention in the resin realm? Gasoline of course, but they have always been there, and I really wonder how much they need to sell given their high prices (for the full kits)? Not a criticism, should you think that, but Accurate Armour in the UK has for years produced relatively expensive kits for the modeler in relatively small numbers.
Take PE. Hauler is going gang busters, but the rest have basically packed it in: Part, Eduard, Voyager, Lion Roar, Aber, all have for the most part stopped producing in 48th. Sales aren't there to justify continued production of new sets.
Anyway, as 48th modelers we should just sit back, and be thankful that anyone bothered with us at all. For years we existed building down our Bandai stock piles, or if we knew about them, picking up some Faxon conversions etc. Along came Mr T, and Skybow/AFV Club, and now Italeri, and gave us something to get excited about. And if you have the money, there are a relatively decent number of conversion sets from MR, Gasoline, ID etc. Me, I have FAR more kits than I can build realistically in the next 10 years in 48th already, given about six completions a year. I have 35 Shermans alone, thanks to ID, Fighting48, Faxon, Formations etc.
Who can fail to see the drastic slowdown in releases of the past two years?
The fact that Tamiya has slowed down so dramatically is plain evidence that they care about overseas markets, and that the lack of success of 1/48th armor outside Japan has had a huge impact on the release schedule.
There's also no doubt that so far the subject choices were so peculiar, they can only reflect the former whims of a single man; No 76mm Shermans, no 85mm T-34s, no Stalin or Jagdtiger, no Jagdpanzer IVs despite the available chassis...
I'm still convinced a slower release pace, with the above subjects, zimmeritt and improved quality, would have built a much larger following. The 2006 deluge of releases was NEVER a topic at my local club... So much for marketing "synergy"...
The perception of quality especially is all, and like the too little/too late Marder III demonstrated, a challenge to 1/35th quality was the only way to avoid the current petering out. The excitement the Marder III generated says it all; the ML group build even made the MIS cover!
I'm infuriated by the shoddy treatment some of the German big cats got, but for the rest, we have to be glad we have a lot to build now that can match the quality of the best of 40 years of quater scale aircraft kits. With after-market help, I certainly have my fill of tanks for awhile... (The AFV Sturmtiger is such a thrilling release, a real improvement over the skybow Tiger1 I think, that I went to the rare luxury of 2...)
On the other hand, we are still drastically short on good softskins, and for aircraft diorama builders like me, it is a rotten shame that the opportunity of this revival was wasted on a lot of second-rate armor, in both sense of the word (second-rate in real-life or second-rate as kits, the two curiously scarcely overlapping...).
With the price increases that seem to be coming our way (have you seen what is going on with Hasegawa/Trumpeteer?), mostly due to shipping costs apparently, this hobby is about to shrink even more, and possibly for a long time. Consider what could have happened if Tamiya had started the 1/48th scale bandwagon last Fall instead of three years ago...
At least we have decent stashes to hunker down with and talk about... Pfffeww!
producing the ID kits. I came to realize that there would never be enough of a demand to run a full-time company, so I decided to drop the idea of a "full presence" operation, i.e., a website with PayPal or CC capability, illustrated packaging, that sort of thing. If I can't sell the line, I'll offer the goods as Steve Faxon does his: on this site only, with announcements of any new stuff also going on the M-L 1/48 DG. No ads in mags, perhaps the occasional sample kit to a supportive mag like MMI or MiS, where 1/48 does appear, but generally advertising would be articles about building new (or existing) kits. My desore would be to fill some more gaps as Ken Swenson does. I'm going to see what the releases are for the next year. If some that are really needed don't show up, then I'll consider doing resin kits. I may not sell many, or a plastic company MIGHT decide to release the kit in plastic, but if I release a resin piece and sell the entire run to the faithful, a later release in styrene won't affect me at all.
For those with a bit more money,and no fear of resin kits, most of the apparent gaps don't exist. In resin, I have the Dodge WC-51 weapons carrier, M3 Honeys, M5A1 light tanks, M3 Lees, M3 Grants, M8 Scott HMCs, LVTs, and others - these are from Mig and Kengi. Olivier at GasoLine and Marc at PK offer hundreds of kits, accessories, and details, and there are other manufacturers out there like Wespe. Then there are the Hauler PE and resin sets/kits, and CMK too. The fact is, while not all the stuff is in styrene, there is as much choice in 1/48 (actually more choice, by far) than there is in 1/35. We can build virtually any Sherman with any turret and any track; the 1/35 modelers still can't do that. We COULD use figures, but then we knew that.
I also think Tamiya may go in a vehicle, non armor type, direction....like
additional vehicles from Russia,France,Germany , Japan ,England and the US.
The tow vehicle with their corsair only appeared in that kit. (BTW, if I have mentioned this in another thread, I apologise,, my puter has been coughing lately.)
I actually would not mind an amphibious jeep, and an injection molded
Amtrack. With options.
I also believe a German (the 251?) upcoming release has a German Bazooka
in the package....they should release the remaining US and German tanks of the cold war...I believe the Japanese were supplied with some US models,no?
A second vacuum outfit was sold out from under me on eBay, but he had another one listed. So, I bought it, even though I had to take the money from my bank account. Now hopefully I am set up to produce better resin, and I also have the pressure system should that ever be needed. I am still planning to offer the old ID masters and molds to an interested party later this summer. I have to take a detailed inventory with photos of the masters, and possibly the molds as well. The ID line would be a great addition to an existing resin business, and the masters are in excellent shape with only a few casting mark letters and numbers missing.
I think the strength of the small scale operations like Kengi and Steve Faxon and what Bruce proposes is that you keep costs very low and build value through customer interaction and low-run, high-detail kits. If you can keep your finger on the pulse of the modelling community, you can bypass the larger companies who don't always seem to bring out the most obvious choices.
The M3 Scout Car is a good example. Whoever brings out a reasonably priced version of this first can probably expect pretty good sales. I don't know what sort of volumes can be expected, but it'd sell ok, I believe. Spend time and money doing a Swedish Strv-41 and you'll sell one; to me.
To me, Tamiya releases are secondary. What matters are the kits brought out by Kengi, AFV Club, Iron Bruce (), GasoLine, etc. That's where the fun comes in.
...I'll buy TOTS over the big stuff regardless. And the previous posts regarding Steve Faxon and Ken Swenson are quite justified. Steve's hulls (solid as a rock, but lovely when painted) allow you to build just about any Sherman. Ken's A13 and Grant are positive jewels, especially when (according to threads on M-L) the big brother $60 A13 hit the market with too-short tracks.
What we "little people" can bring here is the ability to meet immediate market demand very quickly. This is especially true with smaller "less than a kit" releases, like accessories and added kit details. One example would be the canvas covers for stowed .30 and .50 BMGs. Several people have asked for these, and they do show up in lots of photos. Another example would be accessories for popular new kits (AFV Club '251 C).
I have a new kit I'd like to do. It is available in resin already from Europe, but I have the interior details for it, and if I do it here, the price will be a lot less than the European model. And, there are a couple of gaps that should be filled. If we can produce kits efficiently, we can release a resin kit and sell out the run before a plastic kit appears. Ken Swenson was caught by Tamiya's M8 armored car, but I bought two anyway because of the level of detail in Ken's resin kit.
Hopefully, this can be done cheaply enough for people in the US and Canada that any future plastic release (ha, we've been waiting....) won't be much cheaper. That was the advantage of Iron Division: it was made in the US, it was inexpensive, and the postage for New World customers wouldn't kill you. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.....
As said in the other thread. If Tamiya wants to generate bigger sales with interesting subjects they
should again come up with something Russian, say a 1/48th scale version
of their very nice JS-2 Stalin kit - or even better - their T-55 (as this
would also attract more "new" modelers to TOTS). With some early German
and French tanks behind plus a Type 97 for the domestic market they can't
make much mistakes...
Tamiya DOES NOT CARE what you want. The company went from being run by a man who produced what he was interested in, to being run by an accountant, who more likely than not is interested only in the bottom line. What does this mean for 1/48? Given that it has some popularity in Japan, although even there it is on the fringe compared to 1/35; we can expect some releases to continue yearly, but not at the rate we saw in 2005/2006. Also, since a large portion of the market share is 1/48 aircraft builders, expect to see more airfield auxiliary releases. Flak guns, utility vehicles, staff cars and such. This has been the trend lately, and I expect it to continue at least until the world-economy gets out of its funk, and model makers can invest more cash into fringe projects and expect a return.
For now, Tamiya is playing it safe and serving a large customer that already exists (aircraft diorama modelers and the few 1/48 AFV modelers it still has), rather than reaching out for potentially new customers by investing in new molds.
That said, we're better off supporting companies like AFV Club, and the cottage industry resin producers anyhow. Their kits are significantly better than anything Tamiya can ever hope to release
I'm thinking I might wait to see the AFV 251D release too. AFV has some pretty cool kits and have been releasing a lot 1/35 halftracks. Quality and value - what more could you ask for (except better tracks)? Track48 has the WWII production tracks available now too which I'm planning to try.
"That said, we're better off supporting companies like AFV Club...
...Their kits are significantly better than anything Tamiya can ever hope to release"
Of course they are, and they have such a huge range of subjects to choose from don't they, let see, Tigers, a Sturmtiger and a german half-track... What a fabulous choice...
Say what you like about Tamiyas quality but for a mainstream injection moulded kit manufacturer at least they aren't hung up on the whole Nazi war-machine thing and put out a few choices, it may not be a lot of choice but I for one really like the Cromwell, Crusaders and now the Tilly...
I thought we were talking about the 1/48th range of kits?
July 20 2009, 12:17 PM
If they scale the Churchill down I'll have to take out a bank loan to get all the ones I'll want, in the meantime it seems the Germans were the only mechanised army during WWII if you use AFV Clubs line for a reference.
an accountant, perhaps he'd be willing to release more kits of somewhat mainstream subjects that might sell better than some of the more limited subjects in the past. I know this will mean some more German stuff, because that always sells. But perhaps it will get us a US halftrack of some sort. I do like the fact that Tamiya has been balancing releases so all the major belligerents have some subjects (except for the home team, what's up with that?), but to leave open some of the gaps is to invite competition, as certainly happened with the AFV Club '251 ausf C. As Ralph pointed out, we are very small fish in the 1/48 armor pond as Tamiya sees it, so we'll have to make do with our fish flakes from time to time. Just with what has been released to date in styrene, most of us have more kits available than we'll build in a lifetime anyway.....
It's easy to be ironic about other maker's small output when compared to Tamiya, but if you are interested in the highest possible quality in mainstream injection plastic, with the least amount of corrective work, they have produced: A great Sturmtiger, perhaps a great Tiger 1, a great Sdkfz 251 halftrack, a great KV-1 and KV-2 series in multiple boxings, an amazing T-34 series, and Hasegawa has the better Jeep by far, plus an excellent BMW sports car and Isuzu truck.
At a similar level of quality Tamiya has: A Crusader series, A Marder III, a Steyr 1500 with two body types, a better Kurogane and a great pair of Panzer III variants... And for me that about sums it up!
Their Pershing is good but has no cast appearance or numbers or mantlet shroud; maybe one or two of the other Tamiya kits rises to the same level, but nothing is easy to fix without after-market help.
If I had to choose which of the mainstream 1:48th vehicle kits we would be stuck with forever, having a choice between Tamiya and the rest of them, I would choose the rest of them hands down...
), GasoLine, etc. That's where the fun comes in.