I got a good look at the Revell one at the IPMS Nationals. It looked to me like an outstanding kit.

The much glorified Tamiya Mk.IX costs at least three times as much. It has an engine, two pilots, super-thin removable cowling panels held in place by magnets, and several other unusual goodies. And, of course, the Tamiya name. Which some people apparently think is worth something.

It looks to me like two European companies, Airfix and Revell Germany [later edit: Eduard probably belongs in the same category], are positioning themselves to take a big piece of the market away from the Japanese and Chinese. Or force Trumpeter, Hasegawa, and Tamiya to reconsider their pricing structure in the USA and UK. May it be so.

That's great to see.

Because most of the companies from the Far East seem to think that their brand label rates higher pricing. As seen with this kit and many others, Revell Germany, Revell USA, Airfix, and Eduard can offer kits of equal quality for a significantly lower price. Even taking into account importer fees and all that good stuff, you get more bang for your buck from those companies.

In general, Revell kits are crap.  I wouldn't buy any  of their stuff.  IMHO.  You get what your pay for.

Your loss chuck... Obviously you have not bought or built any of their new release stuff in the past 20 years.

Cadet Chuck, I'm afraid your generalization just doesn't hold up. It's certainly true that many kits sold under the Revell label are old, and fall far short of current standards - especially those from Revell USA. (That Revell is selling that 1/545 USS Missouri, which is now sixty years old, as a "new" kit is pretty disgraceful.) But if you write off all of Revell Germany's recent products you're missing out on some of the best the industry has to offer. Check out the 1/350 Bismarck (which leaves the Tamiya one in the dust), or the 1/32 HE-111. Or the 1/72 U-boats. Or that new 1/32 Spitfire.

In the plastic kit business, the old "you get what you pay for" just isn't applicable these days.There's little relationship between price and quality. Plenty of high-priced kits (especially those from smaller manufacturers) are, by any reasonable definition, inferior to plenty of cheaper ones.

Cadet Chuck

In general, Revell kits are crap.  I wouldn't buy any  of their stuff.  IMHO.  You get what your pay for.

Chuck, Chuck...why so bitter bro'?  You must've been very traumatized by something, eh?

I'm super-impressed with their 1/32 G-10.  Can't wait to start building that puppy, and their 1/48 Stearman ain't exactly chopped liver either.

Mike , I just built the G10, with very few minor exceptions... what a great kit! Offers you a few options, and in my opinion many details only found in much higher priced kits. At a cost of about $24 bucks, Ill opt for the RMX kits every time. 2 things I do wish it included would be an engine, and on a lesser note, a pilot. Still, buying an aftermarket engine is no biggie and still keeps the kit below most others in price but it would be nice to see in the kit as sold.

D

Take care all...

Doug

I've just had a look online at the instructions for the kit and there are a few things which stand out to me as a time and cost saver.

First there is no engine, that can be almost half the build on some kits and lots of plastic so that is one cost saver.

Second the interior is limited to the cockpit area and looks a little simplified and again thats a cost saving.

On both those points I'd say "So what". Many people will make the engine the cover it anyway, if they bother at all. So you dont get full wing spars and every single guage or control level the interior looks fine from what I've seen.

With those simple changes you have a much simpler mould which will cost less to manufacture and can be used longer or modified to give more marks of the Spitfire which is again a massive cost saving.

If you want all the interior detail that can be made you buy the Tamiya (if Zoukie Mura ever do a Sptifre the Tamiya one will look like a dog too) but it will cost you. If you want something that looks like a Spitfire sat on a shelf or hanging from a hook then the Revell German kit is exactly what you need for a whole lot less money.

Would I add one to my stash -- I'm tempted but I have a few Spitfires (not on 1/32) and my stash is 285 kits at the moment but having said all this if I see one at a show going for less then £15 ($20) then yes I think I'd pick one up.

Phil

Cadet Chuck

In general, Revell kits are crap.  I wouldn't buy any  of their stuff.  IMHO.  You get what your pay for.

Chuck, just like any other model maker/manufacturer will end up with a few lemons now and then. Sorry dude but you are generalizing and trashing the whole company's effort at producing great models at very affordable prices.

ROG is producing some fantastic affordable kits. Their 1/32 Arado and UHU are just gorgeous and rich in details. I recently picked up ROG's 1/32 Bf 109 G-6 and He162, both fantastic kits with recessed panel lines and detailed cockpits.

Just look at any of ROG's U Boats, 1/72 or 1/144, simply breathtaking!

I also picked up their 1/48 F/A 18E for under $20. The kit is just packed with crisp molded details and just looks very impressive.

No I don't work for Revell (but wish I did ), just calling it as I see it.

I've never been a Spitfire fan.  I mean, I think they're okay but it doesn't go much more beyond that.  However, when I saw the Revell offering in the latest issue of FSM, I am now seriously considering getting it!  It would fit nicely next to my 1/32 P-51.  I also have the Revell 1/32 F4U-1A Corsair on my "to do" list.  I would be nice to see all three planes lined up side-by-side on my shelf.

To address the original post, I have no clue how Revell can make such great kits for a fraction of the cost of all the others but I'm so thankful that they do.

Eric

My apologies to all.  I was overly generalizing Revell kits, plus I must have been in a bad mood when I wrote that post.  You  guys are all correct.  In fact, I did build a Revell-Germany kit last year and was quite pleased with it.  Please forgive the "neighborhood grouch".

Chuck... your entitled. We all have good and bad experiance with certain things... I (way back in the early 70s) worked for MPC models who at the times also owned and distributed  Airfix of England. Man... what a lousy kit that "could" be. Not all of them, but we had many thousands of returns and complaints at that time period.  Left a real bad impression on me. Now however I have built a few Airfix kits at the recommendation of a friend and have now found them (for the price range) to be some pretty darn good kits both in design, scale and detail.

Take care...

Doug

The explanation I have heard from a hobby retailer is that the Asian companies make small runs with their molds.  They then have to charge a lot to pay for the molds.  Revell, Airfix and a few others make much larger runs through their molds, and the non-recurring costs are spread over a much larger number of kits. Of course, for each, if the kit is a hit, and they repop, then both groups of companies make out very well.

As to Chuck's knocking of Revell, I have pretty vocal in posts in various FSM forums about Revell's new releases, like their PT-17 and their Midget Race Car.  Beautiful molding and detail at a very reasonable price.  Even their repop of  their Gemini kit, while a repop of an old kit, is priced extremely reasonable.

It reminds me of a few used car dealers that did business in my old neighborhood.  One guy, when he got an unusual old car, would put a very high price on it, hoping he would sell it for big bucks. Of course, his business was pretty slow.  Others around him put low prices on their cars and did much more business.  Make a lot of profit on a few sales, or a little profit of each sale on a lot of sales :-)

No offense taken Chuck and understand what you mean as some are junk and others jewels as mentioned above with the release of the 1/48 PT-17. I also see a release of a 1/32 Beaufighter

www.freetimehobbies.com/1-32-revell-bristol-beaufighter-mk-if

This is the response that I thought to get regarding this question. I am excited to hear that there is also a 1/32 Corsair available for a reasonable price. I am not poor but neither am I rich and I don't really see myself going far North of $100 for some of the new 1/32 offerings from Tamiya, Trumpeter, etc. I don't mind the exclusion of an engine in the spit for money saving purposes either. I typically like to have my models look like they are ready to fly and don't usually have engines and various bays open on my stuff.

Chris

The still fairly new Revell of Germany 1/72nd B-17 is gorgeous. Beautiful kit with a complete interior for about thirty bucks US.

Looking forward to this one.  

Rigidrider

Mike , I just built the G10, with very few minor exceptions... what a great kit! Offers you a few options, and in my opinion many details only found in much higher priced kits. At a cost of about $24 bucks, Ill opt for the RMX kits every time. 2 things I do wish it included would be an engine, and on a lesser note, a pilot. Still, buying an aftermarket engine is no biggie and still keeps the kit below most others in price but it would be nice to see in the kit as sold.

Saw the job you did on that one Doug.  Man, that was some really nice work!  Made me even more antsy to get started on mine - January 1 is still a ways off though.

I'm a little nervous about those 1/32 Corsair and Beaufighter kits. I hope they aren't just reissues of the ones Revell did in the seventies. Those were tough times in the industry, and those two kits were pretty mediocre.

But if they're newly tooled, they should be beautiful.

Actually, Chuck, I'm glad you posted that. Sorry you were having a bad day but your comment generated some interesting responses that I learned a lot from.

Makes me excited to try a newer Revell release one of these days.

So thanks, Chuck!

Revell really needs to RETOOL the 1/32 Corsair.  I built a recent production run and it was horrible due to the parts coming off of worn tooling and poor quality material.  

Yes, the F4U-1A Corsair is a re-release of their old classic.  I know it has its issues but, for me, it's a build for sentimental reasons.  It was the first model my dad built for me back when I was around 8 years old in 1978.  You needed a crowbar to separate me from my Corsair!  I flew that thing all around the house and played with it so much that I ended up fixing my "crashes" with Scotch tape.

From what I've read lately, it's showing some age but it's like no other model that can be made to look nice with basic modeling skills.  The cockpit is incorrect but the plane is going to be sitting on a shelf in the  living room or quite possibly the basement once it's done.  I'm just happy that I could pick one up for around 26 bucks.

I admire the engineering that goes into a $150 Tamiya kit but Chris put it perfectly.  I'm not rich (I can't even see it from where I am) but, for what I CAN afford, Revell/Monogram gives me the best value for my dollar.

Eric

There is also the possibility that they have streamlined their manufacturing process considerably in the past few years.  The number of CAD users and 3D designers has grown a lot  in the past decade and you can now find fully rendered (down to the #s on the knobs on the radio) 3D models of almost any vehicle available.  If it was rendered in an application that can export to a CNC machine you can get a pretty good jump an a new set of dies.

I don't think model manufacturers used CAD at all when that Corsair was released.  Computers in general have had a huge impact on the plastic kit industry. I don't know much about the industry's economics, but I rather suspect the process of kit design is far less labor-intensive than it used to be. The impact of CAD should, theoretically, be to lower the prices. On the other hand, I also have a very strong suspicion that the companies don't sell as many copies of the kits as they used to. When I was working in a hobby shop, in the late seventies, one of the distributor reps told me that Monogram priced its kits so it could recover its investment by selling 100,000 of them. The demographics of the hobby have changed a great deal since then; I suspect companies count on turning a profit before selling anywhere near that number. But I don't pretend to know for sure.

If FSM is looking for ideas for articles, here's one: have somebody with genuine inside connections study the changes that have taken place in the demographics of plastic modeling since its appearance at the beginning of the 1950s. I fear, though, that a big stumbling block would be that the manufacturers don't want to tell us much.

One odd feature I remember from that old Revell 1/32 Corsair. On the inside surface of each top outer wing part was a row of...things that looked remarkably like strips of wood. One of our customers, a former Monogram employee, said that the Revell designers must have discovered at the last minute that they'd designed the wing parts too thin, and as a quick fix had glued some strips of balsa or basswood to the masters in order to beef up the parts.  I'd be interested to know if those "boards" are present in the reissue. (My guess is - yes.)

Apologies, I wasn't referring to the 1/32 Corsair but to the OP's initial question but I agree, I doubt CAD played any part in it's construction.  An abacus, an Uncle Henry and some Kentucky windage maybe. ; )

I never noticed the wing reinforcements.  I have that model in pieces in the attic along with the P-51 and P-40 that came out about the same time.  They're busted all to pieces but I couldn't bring myself to throw them away.  Next time I'm up there I'll pop a wing open and look at it.  Might take some doing.  This was built during my days of "one tube of glue per model".

CN Spots, I can't figure out what you're apologizing for. I don't see anything incorrect or criticizable in that post.

Anything I say about things that happened in the seventies should be taken with a huge shaker of salt. It's entirely possible that I've mixed up that F4U with some other kit. But I'll be interested to see if yours has those wood strips -and equally interested in whether the "new" one does.

I kinda posted it amongst a side bar conversation about the F4U w/o indicating it was in regards to the first post.  No worries.

If I get home in time I'll bring them down.  I could use a dose of nostalgia.

Took some digging but I found it.  What you saw does look like wood.  It's locations mirrors the detail on the outside of the wing.

I can't imagine them re-releasing this kit as/is. The IP barely had enough detail to be picked up with dry brushing.