1/350 styrene Tribals

I guess it's a crapshoot for the model companies no matter what they do.  Like the 1/350 Konig/Grosser Kurfurst kits that were released in the last couple years.  As far as I can tell, they did very well in the market, but like Jeff said, who knows a thing about the ships themselves?  I would have picked Seydlitz or Iron Duke, which are better known, and I suspect they would have done just as well, but it's a tricky market to be sure.

My dream model...a 1/72nd scale Passaic class monitor. Sigh.  Actually went so far as to draft up plans, and start on a hull, but lost impetus. Client backed out, and went with the smaller scale Monitor (still a nice kit, don't get me wrong).

  Some larger scale destroyers from the ww2 Kriegsmarine would be nice too...all we have to work with is the Flower and Blue Devil, without spending a fortune. ( if I blew 500 bucks on a ship hull my wife would kill me)

If a model company were to approach me and ask what kits I wanted produced, chances are my choices wouldn't be too far out...

IJN Takao
IJN Myoko
HMS Arethusa
HMS Sheffield
USS Atlanta
USS Cleveland
USS Baltimore
RM Vittorio Venetto
IJN Nagato
DKM Scharnhorst
HMS Repulse/Renown


Some of these stand a chance of appearing in plastic, certainly the USN cruisers, maybe the Scharnhorst or Takao. But the truth is, outside of us, who knows anything about these ships...in fact, without getting into the reference books, how much does the 'hardcore' ship model know about these ships other than their types and maybe a brief snippit (she was sunk off Savo, or used as a target during Able and Baker tests, etc.)

Jeff

or scratch build or modify extremely

Yeah ... I suspect we all know that deep inside ... but we're a picky bunch of curmudgeons.  That's why I usually kitbash.

Haida, been there, done that...and yes, I have a Zulu in my kit stash.

The market isn't driven by us...it's driven by a population of people with very little knowledge of in-depth naval history. I don't mean that to be degrading, it's just that the majority of the modelers have a limited knowledge of ships, usually relegated to the "big name" vessels in history, Titanic, Arizona, Missouri, Bismarck, etc.

The large plastic companies are interested in a profit, so they're going to invest dollars into subjects that they know will cater to the mainstream audience.

That's the bottom line...

J

Perhaps if they used some better marketing techniques, like putting up a styrene kit with a famous name that transcends nationalities and gets into great literature and cinema as well.  How about HMS Kelley, or Compass Rose from The Cruel Sea.  Any fans of Nicholas Monsarrat will recall Three Corvettes, too.

Okay ... I know ... people don't read much anymore, either.

Well ... there's always the Museum Ship angle.  Jeffie ... you need to take a trip up to Hamilton Ca. and see HMCS Haida ... that's a real Tribal they have open to the public.  Then you build the Zulu kit as Haida and stick it in FSM.

Okay ... I know.  You already have an editor bossing you around.

I'm done.

There's a Tribal available from Iron Shipwrights in resin, HMS Zulu. They also do a Hunt Class escort destroyer HMS Middleton, and an H Class destroyer in HMS Hesperus.

http://www.commanderseries.com/ships_350.html

White Ensign does HMS Sheffield, HMS Laforey (L Class), HMS Musketeer (M Class), HMS Janus (J class), HMS Kelly (K Class, notice a trend here?) a 1916 HMS Mary Rose (3-stack M-class, not the same as Musketeer though), HMS Starling (Modified Black Swan), and HMS Abdiel.

www.whiteensignmodels.com

The reasoning is simple - aside from HMS Hood, most styrene model manufacturers look at Royal Navy subjects and realize that they won't sell tens of thousands of units - period. It's not because they weren't pretty ships, or famous ships, or unpopular ships. Yes, Airfix and Frog and Revell did box scale RN subjects, but that was a long time ago, and they were (mostly) European companies.

We have to remember that as ship modelers, we make up only a small percentage of the sales of a kit. They don't cater to us, they cater to the mainstream modelers. And as long as mainstream modelers want Arizonas, Bismarcks, Titanics, and Yamatos, those companies will continue to produce them because they know they can make a profit - period. To the average, non-British ship modeler, Sheffield, Warspite, Arethusa, Leander, etc., are practically invisible. To us, certainly not, but we (the hardcore ship modelers) don't have the numbers to drive the production of kits like those. Look at how long it took us to get an HMS Hood.

Now, that being said, Iron Shipwrights and White Ensign Models all have 1/350 Royal Navy subjects in their product lines...ISW even does some big-time heavies like Rodney/Nelson and Queen Elizabeth. Sure, you're going to pay for them, but that's another discussion.

Jeff