Landships II

Dear colleague, I mostly agree with your explanation, but at first glance.
 And I am sure You will agree , why not find room whithin the myriad of contemporary jets from any nation, or whithin the AFV and figures from the cold war, ie. or the endless saga of  Vietnam & Iraqui wars figures Dragon gave us , and yet they did never release a simple WW1 figures box!(ICM exception excluded)  Much modellers elevated a pray for a Scud, nowadays we have at least 3 differents and excellent model of ballistic sistems, very nive looking in their big size boxes,  Scud, Skrulls, Sams...
We have even have had a golden era for ISRAELI ARMY, plenty of those interesting armor, whit (again)2  different models of Shermans (-This time Super Shermans-) from both DRAGON & ACADEMY), and the same for M-60 Blazer, T-55 captured and from the URSS block, and more.
Several ABRHAMS,  post war to the present is a third of the catalogue of the mayor makes far from any doubt.
No room in this third part for a brave RENAULT FT, a tank that fought in 2 world wars and also in several foreign armies  & campaignes...History did not started in the late 30s! Yes,they have no sense of history.
So the problem In my modest opinion is not only limited to any preference for ww2,
I think you are indeed right,  after all, they make because they sell.
They just make what they think is the only thing that sales...
Well , if they tried releasing once a decent FT, they sold a lot !
Don´t you think so?
Very best regards,
EDUARDO

Thank You Philty D.,
absolutely agreed, we should start (I invite anyone interested) to join this thread so, making mine my comrade words, use this thread to link to a company's 'suggestion page' or 'opinion/vote on future sets page' . I have started to working searching such link/contac/suggestin page.
Any adition welcome.
Best regards

Eduardo

Hello Dear Paul,
indeed I have been trying ( and still I am) with tamiya adresses, http://www.tamiya.com/, sent several mails asking for any proforma or something so.
No response up to now...

May I add my 2 cents here?
A few years ago, WW1 aircraft modelers had the same question: why no more WW1 wings in the shops? To certain extent, our prayers have got resusts, when Toko  -later Roden- Eduard, and some good quality resin kits were released. The icing on the cake was the recent appareance of Wingnuts Kits, the extraordinary New Zealand company that makes near-to-perfect 1:32 scale kits.
However, WW1 keeps being a niche market. Scale models of that era are seen by the wide audience as obscure, complex and crude, when that's a completely erronoeus conception given because the most known kits of them were produced in the 50s when plastic models were conceived as toys, and were crude and easy to assemble, with thick parts to endure the young hands to which they were destined.
A few months ago, talking to a keen tank modeler of WW2 subjects, he complained that tanks in WW1 was nothing but steel pots with primitive track systems. A common misconception.
Surely this leads to poor sales of early armored vehicles and artillery kits, and that's what the kits manufacturers see in their marketing polls: they won't risk the considerable amount of money they must spend to release a new kit in a subject which is unknown and probably don't sell as much than a surefire nazi tank with zimmerit and swastikas all over. They just don't even think of it.
Just watch what happened to Eduard and Roden: they started in WW1 subjects for our niche market, then, when their models start selling well, they switched to more profitable releases, like Me109s and WW2 armored vehicles. It's the driving force of the mass market and unless there's a Peter Jackson with loads of money to risk in a WW1 subject, we won't see any mass-produced WW1 subject.
So, mes amis, let's keep our styrene sheets handy, because we will be scratchbuilding and kitbashing for a long time...

-- Edited by d_fernetti on Friday 11th of September 2009 12:07:42 PM

Hi all

well, there is another sad example. The US manufacturer "Commader Series" used to offer 1/32 kits of a Schneider Tank, a St Chamond, and... a 21cm Morser (yes, I'm into Artillery !).

I promised myself to buy these when I'm living for a while in USA. Well, here I am, but Commader stopped that production and is only offering ships.

They should still have the molds and drawings for the former kits, so developpement fees would be zero. Would they resume that fabrication if we were interested and show a market ?

Bernard

Hi
I thought I would join in on the discussion as you are aware it is some time since I set up W^D models. OK so far I have brought out the figure sets but as the website suggests there is also the A/C guns etc to be released. I had no idea how long it would take to choosing a particular kit to when the actual kit would come out. The Dennis has taken so long in that I was unhappy about some of the castings the mudgaurds in particular,so I searched for an etcher at last I found one but it has taken months to sort things out At last I am almost there. The rest of the masters are with the castors and trying to keep the quality to the same standards as the figures means that it is a fair investment in getting them done. They will get done but I a m a small manufacturer and have found out it does take a lot of effort and capitol.
But the reward of producing good quality kits is worth it. There may not be a lot of us 1 War modellers out there but be patient we will get there!!!!

Airfix make, made, or will make, two 1/76 Tank Mark I (male & female), 1/76 German, French, American & British Infantry (and RHA), and 1/32 Model T Fords, Rolls Royce, Ole Bill Bus and Dennis Fire Engine. They can be contacted, and they respond to emails:
http://www.airfix.com/contact-us/

HaT make many 1/72 Infantry and Artillery sets, and two 1/72 Renault FT tanks. They can be contacted in their forum, or by email:
http://www.hat.com/emalehat.gif

Roden make a 1/35 Rolls Royce Armoured Car, 1920 Pattern. They can be emailed:
roden@rodenplant.com

There are a number of WW1 tanks in resin for the 28mm (1:56) wargames market from Old glory, Brigade Games, Great War Miniatures

Keith

davros, the Matchbox Renault and Char BI were re-released by Revell.