On the Missing-Lynx site is a thread that shows the Mk 1 from Master Box. It is: http://www.network54.com/Forum/47210/message/1385829417/New+Mk+I+in+1-72
Talking of Michigan Toy Soldiers: It's quite an old story but I've only just come across it; the extraordinary goings on between that company and MkIV-owning, model-soldier-collecting film director Peter Jackson.
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Grrrrrr they produce a plastic First World War Tank and the first thing someone moans about is the price!
They do look nice though, first time I've seen them.
You must remember that these modellers are mainly doing German WW2 - funny though that its alright to pay almost £20 for a Dragon WW2 MkIV tank or truck but not for a WW1 product!
The windger obviously has not attempted to build an Emhar MKIV male accurately with Matador and other manufacturers correction sets to buy as he would not have much change from £30! As for the French 155mm from RPM the cheapest I've see it is £17. If it means paying a few pounds more to get a more accurate model so be it.
I look forward to the models appearring in British shops and can finally produce a good model of the the MkI tank - shortly to be followed by the MkIIs!
For too long if you wanted a WW1 model the flawed 40 year old Airfix and inaccurate Emhar rhombodes have been the only products available - lets hope over the next few years the range will expand (hopefully not just another AV7) with the French tanks and an accurate MkIV range including the supply version.
-- Edited by RCD on Wednesday 4th of December 2013 09:04:14 PM
As much as we are keen landshippers I would really like to see the full Great War genre expand to be on a level with the current WWII database of kits in all popular scales. And all at prices we can afford without feeling like we are being ripped off.
Paul
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The finest stories of the Great War are those that will never be told.
Are people being ripped off? WW1 kits will always be more expensive than WW2 as long as they are less popular - it stands to reason, it's economy of scale in production. And garage kits will always be more expensive than injection moulded kits because they are made, often by hobbyists in their spare time, in such small numbers and in such a labour-intensive way. In fact, having done a lot of mould-making and casting in my time, I'm continually amazed at how reasonable the prices of resin kits are considering the huge amount of hand-crafting that goes into them - casting such a kit doesn't involve filling a hopper full of raw materials, pressing a few buttons and sitting around waiting for the end result to pop out.
Are people being ripped off? WW1 kits will always be more expensive than WW2 as long as they are less popular - it stands to reason, it's economy of scale in production. And garage kits will always be more expensive than injection moulded kits because they are made, often by hobbyists in their spare time, in such small numbers and in such a labour-intensive way. In fact, having done a lot of mould-making and casting in my time, I'm continually amazed at how reasonable the prices of resin kits are considering the huge amount of hand-crafting that goes into them - casting such a kit doesn't involve filling a hopper full of raw materials, pressing a few buttons and sitting around waiting for the end result to pop out.
I agree with the comment about resin kits, I've made some mouldings myself and I understand a lot better now the prices charged. The moulds don't last and are easily ruined. That was just for me, making a living off of them can't be easy.
The bit about plastic manufactures is a bit unfair. There is still a lot of modelling before the kit is manufactured. The costs for the metal moulds are scary price as I found out recently. In terms of plastic it is cheap and easy, but the cost of any kit is the plastic 'plus' the metal mould and all the work that made it happen.
WW1 kits will be more popular for a few years to come, so now is when the manufactures should get mould making.
MK1 Nut wrote:There is still a lot of modelling before the kit is manufactured. The costs for the metal moulds are scary price as I found out recently. In terms of plastic it is cheap and easy, but the cost of any kit is the plastic 'plus' the metal mould and all the work that made it happen.
Indeed. My comments regarding injection moulding were flippant and, I hope, intended to be taken as such. But my point remains that the labour involved in casting per unit, once the moulds are ready, isn't anything like that for resin kits because the process is substantially automated. Producing resin kits is very much a craft activity, whereas producing injection moulded kits is a manufacturing process. The fantastically high costs of setting up injection kits, which I'm well aware of, are in the moulds and the hefty associated injection machinery etc. and are precisely why injection kits are of popular subjects, because the manufacturers have to amortise their costs over vast production runs of kits, not just a few dozen. Hence why you get hundreds of kits by dozens of manufacturers over several decades of Tiger tanks, and one, until recently, of a Mk I.
-- Edited by Roger Todd on Thursday 5th of December 2013 05:38:45 PM
PDA wrote:How can the popularity of something that has never been made be judged?
There are many things that have never been made and we could ask the same question about them, but it doesn't really get us anywhere because it's not a very precise question. Rather, we need to ask, "Why do manufacturers think WW1 is not popular enough to merit making the huge investments in resources needed to produce kits of that era?"
As an example, why did Airfix only ever make one WW1 kit, the Mk I? Why did it take them decades to dip their toes in the water again with the Female version? Because, we must assume, they - and every other kit manufacturer - will have seen how many more Tigers and Panthers and Shermans sold in comparison. For a long time all WW1 subjects were a minority interest in comparison with WW2. Another example - for decades the only injection moulded kit you could get of a dreadnought battleship was the Airfix Iron Duke (Warspite doesn't count because she was specifically modelled in her WW2 modernised form).
It's probably partly historical. Plastic kits started being sold in the 1950s, so for the kids buying the first ones WW2 was quite recent and many will have had fathers who fought in that war. Once the precedent was set it was hard for manufacturers to break free and dare the investment in something different. Maybe if injection moulded kits were being sold in the 1920s we'd see WW! subjects being more popular.
Also, WW2 has a 'glamour' that WW1 lacks. As a child growing up in the 1970s my friends and I were still running around playing at soldiers as Brits and Germans in WW2! Not for us playing at sitting in a trench for months at a stretch, the popular image of WW1. Another part of that 'glamour' was that the Nazis were properly evil villains in a way the Germans of WW1 never seemed to be thanks to the myth of the 'accidental' war that everyone just 'stumbled' into. All those war comics of the 1970s dealt with WW2, not WW1, so you need to ask a wider question about the place of WW1 in the popular imagination in comparison with WW2.
I think that's a pretty well stated opinion, Roger, but I don't agree with it. Not entirely. I do think war films have played a large part in what got made as kits, and we have to admit that Hollywood dominates the film industry. They made a ton of films in the 50s and 60s, naturally featuring all that army surplus that was lying around at the time. So I can see that that might be a good explanation for so many Tiger tanks (although, if they were accurately copying the movies, the Nazi-Germans would be driving Pershing tanks, wouldn't they?!).
Whatever the reasons, what I really want to say is: I just don't care any more, to tell the truth. Master Box have just released two accurate (from what I can see in the photos on Armorama) kits of the Mark I and I am jumping for joy. All we have to do is buy enough kits so that Master Box think it's a good idea to make a Mark V.
You're absolutely right, war films played a massive role too, and I should have mentioned that, all part of bolstering the popular cultural image of The Just War (and why not? The Nazis were appalling after all, and half the guys making the films had fought in the war too). But whilst WW2 was being promoted as The Just War (almost the only Just War), conversely WW1 was being promoted as The Futile/Accidental War - lions led by donkeys, Oh What A Lovely War! etc. - as part of the 1960s counter-cultural cynicism of all authority. This grew in the 1980s into the Blackadder School of History. But I digress...
Yes, we should all be pleased that at long last there's a good, mass-market injection kit of the Mk I! And with the centenary of the start of the war around the corner, who knows what else? Model-wise at any rate, I have a feeling that the public commemorations will be neutral to the point of anodyne at best.
