the Tiniest of parts...

Wait till you get into the world of 1/700 scale ships. The newer aircraft sets (eg. Trumpeter) for 1/700 carriers have separate undercarriage, including tailwheels which are about the size of a grain of salt. Just remember to hold your breath when you attempt to cut them off the sprue.

It just seems completly un-necessary to make them seperate parts.  It must not be that easy for even sculpt them seperatly...

This is one of my pet peaves, too.  Some of the photoetched parts are totally ridiculous and impossible to glue in position without making a cement mess.  I just discard the unreasonable ones and don't even attempt to fiddle with them.

I don't have any idea what you are talking about. I've never had a kit like what you describe.

 With the logo plates, it may be just because it would be easyer to paint off the car. Can you provide a photo?

If you want a challenge Smeagol, try scratch-building from the ground up. I'm cranking out a 1/87 scale model of an EMD NW/2 switcher right now without aftermarket pieces, and I tell you, the handles and hinges on the hood doors are about the size of3 grains of salt laid end-to-end.

I have scratch built before, as well as sculpted.

I dunno, any non sports car in 1/24th, or as was stated, 1/700th scale ships.

Smeagol, I'm on the same page as you. I hate fiddly bits. The smallest model I've worked on was a 1/700 Coast Guard Cutter Dallas. All resin and PE. Making the PE railings stand on end was ridiculous, it was a super-gluey mess and I've since sworn off of models that small!

smeagol the vile

I have scratch built before, as well as sculpted.

I dunno, any non sports car in 1/24th, or as was stated, 1/700th scale ships.

You must be buying some expensive 1/24 scale kits. I have never seen anything like what you describe with the name-plate ( with the exception of the Monogram Re-release of the Ford F-250 Super Duty, which had seprate name plates)

By far, the most difficult kit I have is an AMT America Lafrance Ladder Chief fire truck, with lots of fiddly bits. It ain't so much the pieces themselves, but rather the seccond-hand nature of the kit, with a lot of pieces having been broken off the sprues (that'll be a lot of fun, sorting though many, many detail parts that look exactly the same when floating around the bottom of a kit box)

Well, I can't complain. It will give me something to do over the last week or two of my Summer Vacation.

All those "fiddly" bits(yes, many are not needed and are better molded) came about with companies getter newer tech and cries for better details where no pesky masking, etc was needed.

Same for PE, higher parts-count, etc.

Trend is reversing itself again with Dragon, Eduard, etc offering more basic simplified kits again.

Kotobukiya did the same with their Armored Core kits, tons of parts that need to be layered to build up surface detail that could be molded.

Bandai is really pushing the limits of slide-molds, micro-injection, etc too. just have a look at the new 1/144 RX78-2 kit with internal frame, transformable core-fighter, etc.

Personally agree we can do without a lot of those recent changes like PE grills, etc. Don't get me wrong some kits do NEED them like the Fujimi Gallardo, etc.

 Really depends if the fiddly bits will make the model look better/accurate or just disappear.

HTH.

Myself have a few High-Grade kits like the Gunze Sangyo kits on my shelf.

Those are advanced skill kits, where you need to work with metal and lace your own rims for the motorbike kits.

Said that I have done my own lacing on Tamiya wire spoke wheels, so again nice that the kit provides it.

Mad-Modeler

All those "fiddly" bits(yes, many are not needed and are better molded) came about with companies getter newer tech and cries for better details where no pesky masking, etc was needed.

So, in all reality, we are to blame for the over-engineering of kits, as the manufacturers listened to us, and are bringing us what we want, but now we are all turning right around and demanding what we had before.

To a certain degree yes.

Kits that have a high parts-count tend to attract a lot of more experienced modelers but the focus for some time was mostly on that market which left newcomers to the hobby .....

Same for a quick weekend build, etc.

Not sure about other modelers here but I am at an age now where teenie parts are getting harder to handle, see, etc.

I dont mind high part counts at all.  Dont get me wrong.  If the car came with the body in one part and you had to add the doors and the hood and the trunk and all of that, it would be fine.  I bought a addon kit to a Kubelwagon that had an opening trunk and a mechanic and a detailed engine.  I dont mind that, I mind when the parts are so small they barly fit in your tweezers.

Know where you are coming from.

Said that teenie parts increase parts count and many newcomers to the hobby get scared/bored quickly.

Currently working on some Tamiya DTM race car models, nice kits(curbside mostly). Low part-count but detail level is good.

Now we all have an idea where we stand on part sizes.. It's interesting how they rank skill levels for kits.

There's the traditional Skill levels 1-3 (beginner to advanced) and then some companies have invented a mystical "Skill Level 4" (like the AMT Ladder Chief American LaFrance truck)

I have built the traditional kits of Skill Levels 1-3, and it seems like they are all the same for parts count (heck, the parts count on my Skill Level 3 NASCAR stock cars are less than my Skill Level 1 snap-tite fire engine I'm building for a weekend build) 

For the mysterious 4th skill level, the manufacturers that have those seem to base it on parts count. Like with my AMT Ladder truck, it's a lot of parts, but the 3 instruction sheets break it down into basic sub-units of the final truck (the frame/engine, the cab, the body, and the ladders) and those units are broken down into sub-assemblies themselves.

Ignore.

I tend to ignore skill-levels as there is no industry wide standard for them.

Companies assign their own often based on parts-count or steps needed to finish the kit.

Most companies actually don't even bother to assign a skill-level(Tamiya, bandai, hase, etc).

Mad-Modeler

I tend to ignore skill-levels as there is no industry wide standard for them.

Companies assign their own often based on parts-count or steps needed to finish the kit.

That be true enough. I find it funny that the Revell NASCAR kits (which seem to hover around 98 parts with the ones I have) are at skill level 3, while their classic car cousins, like the 60 Chevy Impala, hover close to 130 parts or so.

I think the only place where skill level can really be true is with the snap together kits. Even though they need paint and finishing (to be done by dad or a responcible gardian), the adverage 7 year-old shouldn't have much problem snapping tab A into slot B, to get a new "toy" car to play with.

I acually buy snap-tite kits on a somewhat regular basis, and turn them into wonders, looking just as good as the adverage kit.