Warshipguy - welcome to the Forum! You've raised an important subject that certainly deserves our attention.
Several threads here in the Forum have been devoted to "wish lists" of new kit releases. In the five years or so that I've been taking part, a handful (not many) of the ideas for new twentieth-century warship kits have actually materialized as new plastic kits. I wish I could be optimistic about the possibilities for new plastic sailing ship kits; that's my personal favorite field of modeling.
Unfortunately, though, the truth of the matter is that it's also one of the least popular ones - among the manufacturers, if not among hobbyists. I have no idea how the number of plastic sailing ship enthusiasts compares to our friends who build aircraft, armor, car, and railroad models, but the manufacturers seem to think our numbers are negligible.
Neither Revell, Airfix, or Heller (who used to be the three leaders in the field) has issued a genuinely new sailing ship kit in almost thirty years. The last new Revell sailing ship kit (according to Dr. Thomas Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits) was the excellent little Viking ship, initially released in 1977 - and, fortunately, reintroduced into the Revell Europe catalog a few months ago.
The Revell USA picture could hardly get any worse for ship modelers. (Please note: I'm referring here strictly to the American Revell operation - the only one that's covered in Dr. Graham's book. Revell Germany has introduced a handful of new sailing ship kits, and reissued several from other manufacturers, since Revell USA dropped out of the market.) The company's website currently shows a total of eight ship kits. One, the big Gato-class submarine, is a relatively new release; the youngest of the others is the 1/570 Titanic, originally released in 1976. There are two sailing ships: the old 1/192 Constitution from 1956 and a "Caribbean Pirate Ship" that in fact represents an amusement park prop that used to sit at Disneyland. It's based on the "ship" that appeared in the 1953 Disney cartoon "Peter Pan." I'm a huge admirer of Disney animation, but....
I think the last new Airfix sailing ship was H.M.S. Bounty (one of the company's weaker efforts, in my personal opinion), which, if I remember correctly, appeared in about 1979. (I may be a little off about that one, but I'm pretty sure there have been no new Airfix sailing ships since 1980 at the latest.) I can't identify or date the very last of the new Heller sailing ships, but I'm fairly certain it appeared around 1980. As I understand it, Heller was for a time planning on a number of major sailing ship projects as follow-ups to its 1/100 Victory. But the corporate management, under pressure from severe money problems, made the conscious decision to abandon that phase of the hobby.
Those dates are especially depressing when one considers that the era of the plastic scale ship model kit only began in (depending on how one counts) about 1952. (That's when a little company called Gowland started selling its tiny plastic "ships in bottles," several of which later were issued by Revell. A model railroad manufacturer, Varney, was, if I remember right, selling an extremely basic American submarine kit molded in some early form of plastic a couple of years before that; the Varney sub - which, in modified form, is still being sold under the Lindberg label - may have claim on the title "first plastic ship model kit." Maybe somebody can think of an earlier one.) Revell, Airfix, and Heller have, in other words, been out of the sailing ship business longer than they were ever in it.
There are other reasons to be depressed about the subject. Imai, which many modelers (including me) regard as one of the best producers of plastic sailing ship kits - if not the best - had a brief heyday in the 1970s and early '80s before going out of business. (Some of its sailing ship kits are available nowadays under the Academy and Aoshima labels.) I was optimistic about the relatively new Russian firm Zvezda for a while, but after producing a nice medieval cog (in two different boxes) and a couple of somewhat dubious-looking ancient galleys, its sailing ship efforts seem to have ground to a halt.
On the other hand, Airfix's new owners, Hornby, have a good reputation for genuinely understanding and appreciating the essence of serious scale modeling. (I'm not clear about Heller's current situation. The two companies were operating under the same management for a while, but as I understand it they parted under bitter circumstances. Does Hornby actually have possession of Heller's molds?) And Revell seems to be undergoing some corporate changes that may - may - portend positive developments for serious, adult scale modelers. By all means, let's continue to let the manufacturers know we're out here and anxious to spend money on high-quality products. Maybe they'll listen. And maybe one or more of the current East Asian giants in the field - say Tamiya, Dragon, Hasegawa, or Trumpeter - can be pursuaded to stick a corporate toe in the water. (Dragon - how about a series of British ships of the line, to go along with those beautiful Essex-class carriers?)
One of the many pleasant things I've learned from this forum is that there are more plastic sailing ship enthusiasts - and, for that matter, more plastic ship modeling enthusiasts in general - out there than I thought. I certainly would like to believe that the concept of the plastic sailing ship kit may be reborn. But at the moment it sure looks like, if it's not dead, it's on artificial life support.