What would you like to see on models box?

I think that the paint list is a must to have on a box.  It makes one trip to the hobby shop easier so I know which paints I have at home and which ones I have to get.

Alternate color schemes are nice too.  I'm looking at Dragon's Premium Edition Elephant right now, and I'm having a hard time deciding which camo scheme I like most.....

MortarMagnet wrote:

In truth, they don't really mislead anyone.  We assume that a new release automatically means the that kit itself is new.  The packaging, instructions, and decals can be updated, but at no point is it indicated that the kit is on it's first release.  New, has various meaning beyond the assumed meaning of:  Having been made or come into being only a short time ago.  You'll also note that the manufacturers usually refer to them as new releases, not new kits.

Of course it's misleading.  It's not so bad for us older cynics who've maybe been in the hobby for years and know all the tricks, but a newcomer has no idea that the kit he's just purchased is possibly older than himself, if not his parents.  What impression is that going to give to a young aspiring hobbyist?  His first kit could turn out to be a weird scale, actually modelled on a completely different ship than that advertised and only vaguely like the ship it was supposed to represent in the first place?

If you bought a 'new release' VW Golf and it came in a box, and when you opened that box you found a newly built 1956 Beetle with Golf badges would you simply accept it?  It is 'new' and it has Golf badges, therefore you weren't mislead?  Far-fetched? Yes, but it's the same thing in principle.

MJH asked the rhetorical question, "If you bought a 'new' car and it turned out to be a re-badged 1956 version there'd be hell to pay!  Why do we put up with this misrepresentation?"  MortarMagnet provided an excellent answer:  we put up with it because we don't have any choice.  The manufacturers have learned to use obfuscatory language that manages to mislead the customer while skirting any legal definition of fraud.

I have to agree with MJH:  Such tactics obviously aren't illegal, but they certainly are deceptive and, by my personal definition at least, unethical.

An interesting example hit the hobby shops a couple of weeks ago.  Revell released a kit labeled "Caribbean Pirate Ship."  No prizes for figuring out why:  the company obviously was trying to capitalize on the success of the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean."  Consumers - many of them having little or no background in model building - presumably are buying that kit on the assumption that it represents one of the ships in the movie.  If they look carefully at the box, they'll discover that the phrase "Pirates of the Caribbean" appears nowhere on it, nor do any stills or other images related to the movie.  Revell obviously didn't pay a licensing fee to Disney.  (Neither Disney nor anybody else could copyright the word "ship," "pirate," or "Caribbean," so Revell was safe there.  And the promotional literature, of which there's been quite a bit in both the U.S. and Europe, meticulously avoids mentioning the movie title.)  The kit is, in fact, a reissue of one originally released in 1960.  It doesn't represent any of the ships in the current movie - or any real ship that ever floated - though it does have a Disney connection.  It's a more-or-less accurate scale model of an amusement park prop from the original, California Disneyland.  That...object..., in turn, was based on the images of Captain Hook's ship in the Disney animated movie "Peter Pan," from 1953.  Illegal?  Obviously not; the Revell lawyers undoubtedly made sure of that.  Deceptive?  You'd better believe it.

Once in a great while, a manufacturer goes over the line.  I remember a case back in the late seventies (or maybe it was the early eighties) when a major American manufacturer (I'd better be careful here) was decorating its aircraft kit boxes with photographs of models that quite obviously had been built from Japanese kits.  (The first clue:  the models in the photos had countersunk detail, whereas those inside the boxes had grossly out-of-scale raised panel lines.)  One of the British hobby magazines called the company's bluff.  Initially, the company's representative, in a reply to a letter to the editor published by the magazine, tried to claim that the photos showed "prototype models, which sometimes differ in some details from the production versions."  That was an outright lie; the models in the pictures obviously had been built from Tamiya and Hasegawa kits.  I'm not sure exactly how the matter was resolved; it was rumored that at least one of the Japanese companies had filed a lawsuit.  At any rate, the pictures quietly disappeared from the American boxes.

It's occurred to me to wonder how much of this behavior is due to deliberate deception and how much is due to ignorance.  The human beings who run model companies are notoriously reluctant to talk to modelers.  It would be interesting to find out what sort of people actually make these decisions.  Do the members of the current generation of executives at Revell know what an awful kit that old Missouri is?  Has any of those people actually built a ship model?  Or looked at a Tamiya or Skywave kit, to see what the current state of the art is?  Did the people who put those photos of Japanese kits on the American boxes understand how much better the Japanese kits were - or did they really think the difference wasn't important?  I don't know.  What is obvious is that too many companies think fair, honest treatment of the consumer does not deserve a high priority.

I'll grant you that I look at these things in terms of black and white, being somewhat idealistic by nature, and perhaps there's some truth in that the executives who run these companies have no idea (that, I'm certainly willing to believe!). 

Because of this, if I feel a manufacturer has pulled what I regard as a "shifty' stunt I will no longer buy that company's products, ever.  Cutting off your nose to spite your face?  Perhaps, but if enough people did it they might change their ways.

I like old kits (well, most of 'em) and I still get pleasure out of building them, sometimes they present more challenges than a modern kit and the satisfaction of completing them is all the greater, but I want to know what I'm getting before I get home and open the box.

My early comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.  However, if an automaker did put out a 1956 whatever as a new car, it's still a new car.  Auto parts manufacturers turn out New Products all the time, new products made from the design and drawings from half a century ago.  Parts that have not been made in years are being made again.  Are they wrong for saying that those products are new?  I think there is a lot of hair splitting here.  My Revell F-105D certainly did not get released for the first time in 1999.  I bought it because I wanted it, not because it was new.  Most new modelers do not look for new releases, they look for what they want.  We look for new releases, the more experienced want new kits.  That's why there is discussion here, because some of us are upset about it, not some 12 year old kid who bought a P-51.

Guys,

A lot of the models I buy have parts separated from the sprues, because of the weight of other kits stacked on top of them. Going by my experiences at my LHS, my prayer would be for stronger cardboard!

But hey, there's a better solution! What about blister packs??? I mean, if Revell can package a sprue cutter in a blister pack, why not an entire kit. That way, you get to see whats inside, and more importantly, in what condition it's in!

Also, good blister packs are far stronger than thin cardboard tops.

You can always have the box art or the pic of the finished model as the background in front, or at the back.

What say you guys?

Nandu

nanduN wrote:

Guys, A lot of the models I buy have parts separated from the sprues, because of the weight of other kits stacked on top of them. Going by my experiences at my LHS, my prayer would be for stronger cardboard! But hey, there's a better solution! What about blister packs??? I mean, if Revell can package a sprue cutter in a blister pack, why not an entire kit. That way, you get to see whats inside, and more importantly, in what condition it's in! Also, good blister packs are far stronger than thin cardboard tops. You can always have the box art or the pic of the finished model as the background in front, or at the back. What say you guys? Nandu

Interesting idea!  Have you ever opened the 1/32 Academy F/A-18 Hornet kit?  That would be a hell of a blister pack!!!!!!!  Or perhaps, a dozen of it.

That Revell "Caribbean Pirate Ship" is being marketed as a "new" kit - and it's being marketed to newcomers.  (Any serious scale ship modeler would recognize that it isn't a scale model of a real ship.)  Over on the "Ships" section of this Forum is a post from a gentleman who bought that kit for his kids.  It took him some time to figure out what it was - that he'd bought a model of a 1950s Disneyland prop, not a model of what he and his kids had just seen at the movie theater.  That gentleman put a nice, congenial spin on the experience; I'm not so sure I would have done the same.

Unwary newcomers to the hobby are, in many cases, the most unfortunate victims of the manufacturers' scams.  I'm sure all of us have encountered "newly released" airplane, car, and ship kits that, in fact, are re-releases of kits that originated thirty or forty years ago.  Some of them are nice kits,even by modern standards.  Others are so plagued with flash, warped parts, etc. that they're almost unbuildable.  A beginning modeler picking a kit off the shelf has no way of knowing, based on the information the manufacturer provides, whether the contents of the box is an impracticable disaster like that or represents the state of the art - i.e., that the parts will practically fall together.

I'm sorry, but I don't think these distinctions constitute nit-picking or hair-splitting.  The manufacturers' defense of their tactics seems to be that they aren't claiming a kit to be something it isn't.  (On the box of that "pirate ship," Revell meticulously avoids any mention of Johnny Depp or the title of the movie.)  My contention is that a firm genuinely concerned with professional ethics would tell us what the product is.   

jtilley wrote:

...... My contention is that a firm genuinely concerned with professional ethics would tell us what the product is.

Forget it!  That wouldn't be good marketing.  Just pay attention to what's going on on TV and magazines, it's all crap and lies.  I mean how "sport" a washer and dryer can be?  Or are we really dumb enough to believe that a Dodge Caravan with leather covered steering wheel and a spoiler is a sport vehicle?  Or what about buying individual pocket of some powdered juice that is expressively sized to be mixed in a bottle of spring water when you can buy an already mixed bottle of juice for less than a bottle of water????  Marketing is completely crazy but what's driving me nuts is people believe that kind of crap because they don't think before buying.  If they can trap some customers by playing with words, they'll do it.  The only people you can blame are the customers for not paying attention.

jtilley wrote:

That Revell "Caribbean Pirate Ship" is being marketed as a "new" kit - and it's being marketed to newcomers.  (Any serious scale ship modeler would recognize that it isn't a scale model of a real ship.)  Over on the "Ships" section of this Forum is a post from a gentleman who bought that kit for his kids.  It took him some time to figure out what it was - that he'd bought a model of a 1950s Disneyland prop, not a model of what he and his kids had just seen at the movie theater.  That gentleman put a nice, congenial spin on the experience; I'm not so sure I would have done the same. Unwary newcomers to the hobby are, in many cases, the most unfortunate victims of the manufacturers' scams.  I'm sure all of us have encountered "newly released" airplane, car, and ship kits that, in fact, are re-releases of kits that originated thirty or forty years ago.  Some of them are nice kits,even by modern standards.  Others are so plagued with flash, warped parts, etc. that they're almost unbuildable.  A beginning modeler picking a kit off the shelf has no way of knowing, based on the information the manufacturer provides, whether the contents of the box is an impracticable disaster like that or represents the state of the art - i.e., that the parts will practically fall together. I'm sorry, but I don't think these distinctions constitute nit-picking or hair-splitting.  The manufacturers' defense of their tactics seems to be that they aren't claiming a kit to be something it isn't.  (On the box of that "pirate ship," Revell meticulously avoids any mention of Johnny Depp or the title of the movie.)  My contention is that a firm genuinely concerned with professional ethics would tell us what the product is.

Absolutely!

At a time when the hobby is under pressure from so many 'easier' forms of entertainment, it's hard enough to induce the younger generation into the pleasures of modelling without the manufacturers of the kits themselves ripping them off.

From a recent club newsletter;

Funny how much models and movies go together isn’t it?  To think that the future of our hobby is somewhat tied to the output of Hollywood is mildly distressing to me.

The current fad among some young people (those who can tear themselves away from their PS3’s and iPod’s) is the piratical peregrinations brought on by the first dubious Pirates of the Carribean movie and it’s even more unlikely follow-up.  Walk into any toy-shop these days and you’ll see more plastic cutlasses than ever graced a privateer’s armoury; primitive prosthetics like eye-patches, hooks and peg-legs and a whole range of other swashbuckling merchandise designed to cash in on the phenomenon.  Of course, tell these kids that we were all doing that 50 years ago after watching Douglas Fairbanks or Tyrone Power and they won’t believe you.

Not to be left out, makers like Lindberg have repackaged various sailing ship models as ‘pirate’ vessels, obviously also hoping to cash in.  Drop a paper Jolly Roger flag into a frigate kit and “Hey presto” you’ve got a pirate ship! 

It might sell a few more plastic kits for them, but it’ll do nothing for the hobby I reckon.  In the sixties the Star Trek ‘brand’ brought a huge range of kits of the various ships, figures and even weapons and equipment.  They were built in thousands because they caught the imagination of a generation and they were relatively simple (unless you started ‘weathering’ them or - the gods forbid - tried to establish their ‘real’ colour).  Basically however they catered to the age of their market and prospered accordingly.  Star Wars followed suit and they introduced a vast number of youngsters to the hobby of model-making, even if most remained in the weird SF genre and never touched a ‘real’ subject.

Now, of all the various types of plastic kit on the market, which are the most difficult?  Certainly not armour (ducking for cover!), and if you’ve built one car you’ve built ‘em all.  Aircraft?  Most of us cut our modelling teeth on Airfix aircraft and we’re still here.  No, it’s a full-rigged 18th century sailing ship - fiddly masts and yards, strangely-named fittings of little apparent purpose and painting details that’d drive an armour builder into a padded cell and a back-to-front jacket.  Then you get to the rigging...........

How many of these kits will ever be finished?  Damn few, I’d suggest.  And how many of the young prospective modellers will be encouraged to continue in the hobby after that experience?  Damn fewer.  Maybe they’d be better to produce ‘pirate’ versions of the Star Trek Enterprise or Klingon Cruiser -
“Aaarrr, it be life Jim-lad, but not as we know it, matey!”

"At a time when the hobby is under pressure from so many 'easier' forms of entertainment, it's hard enough to induce the younger generation into the pleasures of modelling without the manufacturers of the kits themselves ripping them off."


MJH,

Good point! At my LHS, there have been enough occassions when I have attempted to convert a kid in there to buy the 'Flanker' sim into building one instead. No way!

It's only us oldies and our children, I guess!

Coming back to your response on a blister pack for the 32 kit, it would be one hell of a blister! But it can be done.

I speak from personal pain - I have an Academy P-38 in 48, which came in a cardboard box with warped wings that I just don't know how to fix.

nanduN wrote:

I speak from personal pain - I have an Academy P-38 in 48, which came in a cardboard box with warped wings that I just don't know how to fix.

Actually, I agree with you.  I've experienced that also with their 1/44 international space station.  The main truss was in 12057 pieces.  So I don't know about blister packs but it would be defenitely great to have better packing.

12057!!!

Yann, that would have been something!

nanduN wrote:

12057!!! Yann, that would have been something!

Oh ...... sorry........typing error, it was 120 570 pieces.

I don't know if blister packs would be that good.  Heavier boxes wouldn't cause an increase to the cost of the kit.  Dragon and AFVClub boxes are pretty durable.  However, I think the problem comes from the hobby shop, some places stack kits twenty or thirty high without any rhyme or reason, big on little.  If it's damaged in shipping then it would still get damaged in a blister pack.  If the guy packing kit boxes into shipping boxes by punching them into the tight squeeze(it happens), then he'd be smashing blister packs instead.  I've noticed Revell has started to use two-piece boxes instead of the one-piece foldover.  They seem to hold up better, but the tops still get caved in.  Reinforcing boxes would be my move if I ran a kit maker.

About the blister-pack idea....  Although it would be nice to see the product, I imagine that you would get a greenhouse effect in there.  I've seen some shops display their wears in the front window where the boxes end up bleaching right out.  I can only imaging how the plastic inside would react with the UV and increase in temp.

Another thing I'd like to see stop is the use of shrink wrap on boxed kits.  If the wrap isn't taken off in a couple of years the wrap ends up winning over teh structure of the box and you get that box "implosion."  Not a big deal unless you have an older collectible kit that is more value MIB.

Blister packs can indeed be dangerous.  In the hobby shop where I used to work we learned the hard way never to put a blister pack with any plastic product inside it in the show window, where the sun could hit it.  I remember losing at least one N-gauge train set and a Cox gas-powered airplane that way; they literally melted.

I imagine we'd all like the opportunity to inspect the contents of the kits we're thinking about buying.  Having worked for a few years  in a hobby shop, though, I have to say (reluctantly) that I understand why dealers think shrink-wrapped boxes are necessary.  One of the "customers" at the store where I worked succeeded in sneaking an unwrapped Tamiya 1/25 Tiger I tank out the door, one sprue at a time.  We also found unwrapped boxes with things like cigarette butts and wads of gum inside them.

The first time I went to England, in 1978, I was surprised to see that scarecely any plastic kits in British hobby shops were shrink-wrapped.  I have the impression that's no longer the case.  And I have to admit that if I, as a purchaser, have the choice between a shrink-wrapped box and one that's been opened, I'll probably pick the shrink-wrapped one.

The other side of the coin (as I remember pointing out to my employer more than once) is that, especially in these days of fast mail-order service, a local hobby shop needs to offer something that the mail order firms don't.  I the customer can't see the product in advance he might as well order it from Squadron or one of the other mail order houses - which probably will charge less.

In the ideal world, the hobby shop would keep one unwrapped sample of each kit behind the counter for customers to examine.  Few, if any, hobby shops can afford to do that, though.  I guess the problem has no good solution. 

jtilley wrote:

........... In the ideal world, the hobby shop would keep one unwrapped sample of each kit behind the counter for customers to examine.  Few, if any, hobby shops can afford to do that, though.  I guess the problem has no good solution.

That's what reviews are for! Examining a kit.  When the review is well done, it is pretty usefull and there is no need of opening the box.

Yann Solo wrote:

jtilley wrote: ........... In the ideal world, the hobby shop would keep one unwrapped sample of each kit behind the counter for customers to examine.  Few, if any, hobby shops can afford to do that, though.  I guess the problem has no good solution.  That's what reviews are for! Examining a kit.  When the review is well done, it is pretty usefull and there is no need of opening the box.

Good point.  I do have to add, however, that any hobby shop thats worth it's salt (Hi Ron!) should be willing to open the box if a customer is genuinely interested in the contents and be willing to re-seal.  There's obviously going to be some judgement calls here.

I've bought kits that were opened for inspection as long as I too was able to inspect for completeness.  I'm very anti-shrink-wrap.  I like "raw-doggin'" it.

I agree completely about the usefulness of good, competent reviews.  Reading them can, in fact, reveal some things that a look inside the box can't.  (If the reviewer has built the kit, he can comment on such things as how the parts fit and how well the decals stick.)

But not all reviewers are equally competent, not all reviews are equally thorough, and many, many kits don't get reviewed.  That's especially applicable to the hundreds of reissues that appear every year - and they're the ones that are most likely to mislead the purchaser. 

For a while FSM was running a series of articles that described all the representations of a particular prototype in kit form.  (All the P-51s, all the P-38s, all the Sherman tanks, etc.)  I really liked those articles, but I haven't seen one in some time.  It would be nice if the approach were extended to ships.  Somebody really ought to warn newcomers away from that gawdawful old Revell Missouri....

A kit reviewer has to be competent, but it also helps if he's known and respected in his field.

I have to admit that I like the "first look" type review that some publications print.  Just an appraisal of the contents of the box and general opinions of the quality, in other words exactly what we'd do at the hobby shop counter - number of parts, quality of moulding, variant choices, quality of decals, etc.

I have heard many criticise this approach as being too shallow (compared to a full review build) but it tells me exactly what I want to know before I buy the kit so I like it.

Plastic blisters have their good and bad points but they aren't going to happen.  When kits are shipped in bulk around the world they are not even in their boxes, which are folded flat and packed, with the decals and instructions, alongside the plastic bags containing the sprues.  This saves exporting a vast quantity of 'air', especally now that freight costs have gone ballistic and minimises transit damage.  Usually it's the distributor in the country of destination that assembles the kits into their cartons, and sometimes prints the instructions from a PDF file.  Even the decals may be supplied from a third party.

I think Academy has the best boxes. On the front you get cool, inspiring artwork. On the sides you get multiple views of the built up model.

But for me reviews are more important than the box when it comes to buying a kit. 

I would like to see for one the old Hasegawa aircraft box art of the late 80s, with the 3 view on the box side, and additional art on the opposing side... but I'm a huge fan of quality box art.

That being said... Dragon/DMLs new idea of 3D imaging, along with shots of the photoetch/etc included in the kits is nice...

Anyhoo, just my from an old dog.

 

MJH wrote:

Plastic blisters have their good and bad points but they aren't going to happen.

Well, I know it's not quit the best example to present (item-wise), but it proves it can be done.

 

Cheers,

Luc

What kit is that?  My guess is the Sweet 1:144 Bf109F.

thehannaman wrote:

What kit is that?  My guess is the Sweet 1:144 Bf109F.

Nope!

It's this one: