My point exactly. This post is not only for Trumpeter but any new companies to the scene. With today’s technology and the high cost of the kit, we expect to buy off the shelves and have a respectable replica. I am a NOT a 70 YO rivet counter or a 7 YO kid either. I now must do research on each T’s kit before I build one. Chinese products are not known for their quality and in MOST cases they show. DP
I don’t look that close either but I still expect reasonable accurate kit. Remember the AA (Chinese company) model of the 1/48 Mig 19 ? I was so excited when it was released but it was so off that it cannot be even used as a presentation desktop model. That model made Lingberg kits looks like Tamiya’s. Look at Japanese kits, accuracy all abound (ofcourse with few exceptions). Dai
Something i have noticed with the new batch of Chinese companies is the lack of attention to detail. It seems to me as though they produce their models simply by looking at photo’s without knowing what they are looking at. They don’t do any indepth research into the product. I have noticed this on armour kits rather than aircraft, especially with Meng and Takom.
With the Trumpeter armour kits i have bilt it was slightly different. There lack of attention to detail meant engine hatches which had nothing to hold them in place and raised location lines which reminded me of the really old Italeri kits.
But that being said, they are producing some stunning detailed kits and any issues can be over come with a bit of research and some good old fashioned modelling.
Welcome to the world of scale ships–sigh.
There’s a reason why Bill felt compelled to cut the entire bottom off a $110 kit and rebuild it from scratch.
Kit manufacturers of ships often just put the sme kit in a new box (and perhaps a token 1/4 sprue of different parts) and call it a different kit. How different? Think as bad as a Spitfire boxed as a Hurricane, and as a Dewoitine; or as “good” as an M4A1 boxed as M4A3 and M4A4.
Revell has been bad about this, reboxing Bounty as Beagle which are about as similar as an Me 109 to an 110. Lindberg also has committed some similar fauxes pas. The egregious I-19 a recent one.
The Trumpy 1/48 U-Boat is a fascinating example. This is an $800 kit that builds to four feet long (like 1.3m), and while it has rather a lot of detail for a ship model kit (it’s designed to be see-through), they just up and faked a number of items just to fill up the interior spaces. But, the detail, for 1/48 is surprisingly crude by other 1/48 kit standards. Builds into a respectible kit out of the box, as long as you squint a bit and know very little about submarines. (In a now classic bit, they made the starbord (right hand) hull clear, and managed to make the clear part of the conning tower (the bit on top) be on the port (left hand) side–Oops.)
Yet, there are some outstanding kits out there.
Sometimes we just have to squint and just tell oursleves “It’s just a model.” Or, we spend endless dollars on AM stuff trying the halve the halves. (3d printing has made ship modeling both worse and better, as an example.)
Or, at least that’s my 2¢
…to say nothing of the Arizona/Pennsylvania, the North Carolinas, the South Dakotas, the Iowas, the Yorktowns, the Essexes (before and after post-war modernization) the Midways, the Forrestals, the destroyers of various classes, and the Kriegsmarine subjects. I’ve probably missed others, especially among the sailing ship kits.
Of course, most of Revell’s customers at the time didn’t know or care too much, we were kids having fun building the models. But yours is a point well-taken.
Me too [dto:]
Brad- Cutty Sark became Thermopylae.
Eagle became “Seeadler”, although Eagle kit itself was a derivation of another ship, Gorke Fock, not the Horst Wessel which became the real Eagle.
But this was an aircraft question. I’m not a big fan of the Trumoeter kits because I don’t build the big scale stuff, and in 1/72 there are a lot of choices.
I do think they deserve credit for a wide range of 1/32 kits that weren’t available before.
Thanks, GM! I remember the Gorch Fock/Eagle kit now, too. And wasn’t the Kearsarge the same as the Alabama kit, too?