It's an Eternal Truth in the hobby business that only a small percentage of kits that get bought ever get finished. But it looks to me like Hasegawa and the other big-name Japanese companies are pushing the plastic warship kit into a new realm.
That new 1/350 Akagi, with all Hasegawa's accessory sets (to say nothing of the additional ones the aftermarket companies presumably will be offering shortly), will cost over $600.00. That puts it completely out of my own personal ballpark. (I might be able to justify an expenditure like that for a project that would occupy me for several years, but not for one that I'd finish in, I imagine, a couple of months.) This just isn't the sort of thing I can think about buying, ogling over for several hours, and then sticking in the stash of kits I tell myself I'm going to build someday.
It's not for me to pass judgment on whether a kit is overpriced or not. But I do wonder whether - especially in the current tough economic climate - Hasegawa may just have gone over the line here. I suspect quite a few modelers feel the same way I do about such matters: it's one thing to spend $10.00 on a casual purchase of a kit that one might or might not get around to eventually, but quite another to spend $600.00 on anything. If the only people who buy this kit are the ones who genuinely intend to take it home and start building it, the manufacturer is likely to suffer.
This one will be interesting to watch. Will Hasegawa (or its competitors) give us a big range of $600.00 carriers? Will Hasegawa go belly up? Will Revell Europe release a 1/350 Akagi for half the price?
This is, as I've noted more than once, an interesting time to be a ship modeler.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.