Best Plastic Ship Model - Your opinion

   I liked building the Hasegawa Mikasa. Excellent fit and detail with a large number of accent sets to increase it's already high level of detail.

Yup, yer probably right; anybody who really wants to build accurate sailing ship models either builds from scratch in wood, or works from one the various plank on frame kits.  I think Corel came out with an 'Agamemnon' recently, and I have heard rave reviews (but it is an expensive kit!!!!)

I was just looking at my original starting comment back in  May of '05.  Boy I can't believed ths is still a topic, GREAT!

searat12 wrote:

It's funny, because on the West India Station, ships were always kept in the most spotless condition, all the time, even though much of the ship was composed of putty filler and shiny paint and blacking (the 18th century version of Bondo!).  The battle between 'Constitution' and 'Guerriere' showed this up in a big way, as the 'Guerriere' was literally blown into bits, not so much by the power of the 'Constitutions' broadsides, but by the very frail condition of the 'Guerriere' (despite her brilliant paintwork and perfectly blacked yards).....

Actually it was superior gunnery.  Don't you recall Hull's famous words during the height of the battle:  "Aim for the Bondo, boys!"

;)

Mark

Searat12 - is the Agamemnon you mentioned perhaps the one from Jotika (otherwise known as CalderCraft)?  I know that company makes one - and its kits have a fine reputation.  I can't claim to be familiar with everything Corel makes, but the examples I've seen from that firm have been garbage - like most of the kits from the other HECEPOB (that's Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead) manufacturers. 

searat12 wrote:

I'll dig in the attic for mine and take a couple photos later today.... All that said, I notice a lot of rave reviews for Imai models, and as I have a couple (the Chebec, and the Napoleon) and have seen the list of their productions, I think I know why they went bust, and it isn't that they made their kits too well!  I think it is mostly the subjects they made models of that caused them their problems.  Most of their subjects are of ships that are either quite unfamiliar to most people, or are so obscure or 'niche' oriented that not too many people would be interested in building them.... Too bad they didn't choose their subjects better!  Wouldn't it be great if a few mosdel companys actually took the time to look at forum surveys such as is found here to make their next modelling subject decisions?  Trumpeter has been taking some great leaps by producing kits that no one else does (and making a bundle doing it!), and yet they mostly seem like obvious subjects (CV Saratoga and Lexington, etc) that are mostly ignored by other companys.  Have you ever sat down to think about how many versions of 'Bismarck' and 'Yamato' are out there?  Why would another company want to produce yet another version??  Only reason I can see is they consider them 'safe' subjects with a guaranteed revenue, but you would think that enormous competition would just be counter-productive!  Seems to me that it wouldn't take a marketing genius to figure out that producing 'opposing,' or closely associated ships would be a market winner.  For instance, would the HMS Victory be as famous if it was not closely engaged with 'Redoubtable' and 'Bucentaure?'  What of the 'Santissima Trinidad?'  'HMS Prince of Wales' was sunk with 'HMS Repulse,' yet other than the old Airfix 1/600 kit, who has made a version?  'Bismarck's' great battle with HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales relied to a great extent on the presence of 'Prinz Eugen' (some say it was her shells that actually caused the explosion on Hood), yet no-one makes a 1/350 version of her?  ICM comes out with three versions of SMS Koenig, yet no-one makes a 1/350 HMS Lion or other WW1 British ship?  What's wrong with these Bozos?!?  These aren't obscure vessels like 'Napoleon,' but very famous and important in their own right!

 

As Mr. Tilley has already stated, the bulk of the IMAI vessels were either well known or specifically popular in Japan. And I guess that the 1/350 line of contemporary Sailing ships must have been quite popular - even very little Hobby shops and Souvenir shops used to sell them here in Germany back in the late 70s!

You could argue that IMAI spent too much effort on an already decaying market, and, looking at their other lines, it is quite evident that they have never established a solid line of more popular subjects such as tanks, planes etc. But from what I have heard, the reason of IMAI going bust (not one, but FOR times!) was that they focused their attention on too many lines of Sci-Fi/Anime- subjects back in the early 80s - Bandai made(and still makes) lots of money with their incredibly succesful GUNDAM robots and, in order to become a major player in that branch as well, IMAI aquired the rights to produce kits of other shows - but those were not as sucessful or popular and didn´t return the vast investments. One has to compare: IMAI made about a good dozen of sailing ships over a decade, but they hammered out at least 100 Macross, Mospeada, Orguss, Zamac etc.- Anime kits from 1982 to 1984 alone! It is easy: they completely relied on the anime market - and lost!

The model ship market, especially in terms of sailing ship kits, has always been a small niche, so producing one or two unpopular items could not have hurt too much. But, again, as Mr. Tilley said, they made some incredibly strange mix-build-kits and some of them must have been awfully expensive to produce: I remember a 1/250 Yamato with all of the major parts in wood and the rest in white metal! I mean, who is going to spend a fortune for a Yamato that 1. wasn´t even built out of wood and 2. is readily available as a fine plastic kit in the same scale for a fraction of the price? IMAI did interesting things in the past but some of their decisions were outright ridiculous.

I can only hope that Aoshima who own all the molds now might try to "test the market" with a new release - ship modeling seems to be on an "all-time-high" at the moment with all the new 1/700 kits and the recent "awakening" of 1/350 in Japan - so maybe someone dares to release a new sailing ship kit - how about the new "Nippon Maru"?      

I would like to add two comments to the previous posts:

 

1. Decks of Heller’s Superbe/Glorieux: They are perfectly flat in my kit (it is a new kit and I bought it one year ago). I posted some photos of the hull in the thread /forums/2/748243/ShowPost.aspx#748243. The camber of the poop deck, which is noticeable on the first photo, was added by me.

 

2. Some recent sailing ships by Revell Germany: I am aware about at least two relatively new kits from Revell: Batavia in 1/150 and Passat in 1/250. The latter was reissued this month and I have seen it a few days ago. A copyright notice on the hull says 1991. It is a very nice kit with a lot of details. I have only one reservation about this kit: The wood grain detail of the decks is done in the same way as in Revell’s kits of Batavia and Emden: it is overdone, out of scale and there is no evidence of individual planks. I think that it will be difficult to add planking (from wood or paper or any other material), because there are many details molded to the decks. Btw., an instruction sheet of the kit is available for download from http://www.revell.de/en.

Stefan.

hnneamise - That information on Imai is interesting.  The subject of anime kits is one about which I know virtually nothing.  I recall reading that, for a while at least, they were by far the most popular kits in Japan.  It sounds like Imai was, in a variety of ways, just too adventurous for its own good.

I join you in hoping that Aoshima will (a) keep the existing kits on the market, and (b) work up the nerve to invest some money in one or two new sailing ship kits.  One can, however, scarcely blame the manufacturers for hesitating to invest their money that way.  ("After all," I can almost hear them say, "look what happened to Imai.")

I recall reading on another thread in the Forum that Revell Germany was going to reissue the Imai U.S.S. Constitution.  I haven't heard anything about that recently; maybe the idea fell apart.

Regarding anime kits, there must be just as many "Space Battleship Yamato" kits on the market as there are kits of the sea-going one!

Ironically, Bandai acquired the old Macross molds after IMAI´s first or second bancrupcy and everytime they are reissued they seem to sell like hot cake - the series is considered a classic nowadays and even Hasegawa dare to release completely NEW plane kits from that 1983 series! Bad luck.

Revell of Germany had some IMAI ships in their line over the years, in the 80s they had the SMIT Frankrijk Tug and, more recently, the 1/350 Cutty Sark, Gorch Fock and Amerigo Vespucci, so there seems to be a certain "stay in touch" policy, but all of these were small kits. I wonder if Revell will release a subject that they have already kitted by themselves. They  have 3 Constitutions (same with Cutty Sark) and using these old molds will cost them virtually nothing while they would have to "rent" the IMAI molds from Aoshima (or some cheaply pirated ones from China-yes they did this in the past!) and, frankly, once the modelers notice the increase in quality, will they want those ages-old-Revell kits back? Not that I would mind having IMAI kits on the shelves in the local shops here...

As for newer Revell ships, another one comes to my mind: the green-sailed, Lightship-gone-Windjammer "Alexander von Humbold", star of numerous "Beck´s" beer commercials over here. Very nice kit, very detailed, in scale with Heller´s modern 1/150 sailing ships, even the rigging plan is very detailed, only drawback: the planks are too wide, as always. I had the chance to visit the real ship last year - it looks VERY worn out at the moment, lousy paint job and lots of rust: the Revell kit is really an "idealised" version of the ship, the hull lines are far from straight on the real thing.

Yes, that's it, Caldercraft... I won't be building one soon though, as the kit goes for about $500!  Oh to have a good plastic version!  Checked on the Heller Superbe decks, and you are right, they are flat!  I guess it would be a LOT easier to cast them flat than as a cambered deck, and Heller manages to partially conceal it with 'cambered' rails and bulwarks....Too bad though!