Eric Aitala Posted July 23, 2013 Report Posted July 23, 2013 Here's what drive me nuts... We just had two manufacturers, Fujimi and Aoshima, both announce that they are going to produce a 1/20th scale model of the McLaren MP 4/2 F1 race car from 1984. The last time this happened Tamiya and Hasegawa both released a Lotus 79 at the same time which really messed up the market... Why do companies do this?
Mark Aldrich Posted July 23, 2013 Report Posted July 23, 2013 Eric, Same with Armor.....AFV Club annouces a forthcoming M-48/M60 and immedialtly Dragon releases their M48A3. Also, Kinetic and AFV Club both release an M109 and Tamiya jumps in by re-releasing the Old Italeri kit with some Tamiya add ons.......things that make you go.....hmmmm""""""""
Eric Aitala Posted July 24, 2013 Author Report Posted July 24, 2013 Well, the big difference is the size of the 'market' - F1 is a very niche subject (in an already niche hobby :D ) . Currently, there are only a few companies that produce plastic F1 kits: Tamiya Fujimi Hasegawa (who appear to have stopped doing new kits) Revell-Germany (in the non-standard for F1 models 1/24th scale) Airfix (one kit in 1/32nd scale) Ebbro (a very recent addition) Aoshima has never done an F1 kit - the McLaren will be their first. Across those five (not including Airfix), there are maybe 5-8 kits per year announced, not including driver and sponsor variations. So duplicating any kit would represent a larger proportion of the set of new kits if you were to compare that against the much larger number of new Armor (for example) kits per year and any duplicates from different manufacturers. I would guess that there are perhaps a dozen or more serious manufacturers of Armor kits producing maybe 30-40 new kits per year? From HLJ's Military section - http://www.hlj.com/top/Mil - cutting out names I don't know, I see: Aber Academy AFV Club Cyber Hobby Dragon Eduard Fine Molds Fujimi Hasegawa Hobby Boss Hobby Master Ltd. Meng Models Tamiya Tasca Trumpeter And from the Future Releases / Military Vehicle Kits page, I see 68 new releases in the next few months... Doing something similar for F1 kits, I see 5 releases in the next few months, four of which are variations on previously released kits... I can't tell how many of the Armor releases are new, but I think its probably more than 1 out of 5... Anyway, just me being annoyed, I guess... E
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