Santa Claus in the Brown Uniform delivered me up a nice little package from the Mexican firm Zotz/Albatros today. I had no idea the bar had been raised so high on decals (yes, I know I’m in the wrong part of the house, but no one seems to look over there in the decal room). I received a large sampling of their sheets, and was more dazzled with each one (all 1/48, praise the Lord).
Sadly, I do not have one kit to go with these yet. For example, for the new Trumpeter Vigilante, this set has every RA-5 I have ever seen, and some I haven’t. For the B-17F, there are no fewer than six full-size sheets and four of varying sizes, a total of ten, with some of the finest nose art renderings I’ve ever seen on a decal sheet plus a fat, full color markings booklet. And the B-24’s, three separate offerings with two machines each (these are HUGE decals) took my breath away. (If any of my non-modeling friends saw the superlatives I’m heaping on decals, they’d abandon me for good).
On the A-37 sheet, I stopped counting at 20 different machines from a dozen countries. Same with the F-104 sheet. Though smaller, the Cuban/Latin American Hind sheet made me want to build my first helicopter. And the A-26 sheets, well…you get the picture.
Questions? Yes, I have questions. Since I’m the regular on this site who is always the last person to discover these nice goodies, can anyone give me any tips on using these beauties, or tell me what the catch is? Do they disintegrate when touched by Microset? There has to be something wrong with them. I know, for one thing, that they can cost more than the kit they go on, which is why I haven’t used any yet. But after seeing what goes into these things (such as a white backing for each of the painstakingly rendered nose paintings to prevent bleed-through), I now know why.
But who is going to build a couple dozen A-37’s? Or a dozen B-17’s? I think the solution is to do Zotz/Albatros group builds (or, just as easily, an Aeromaster group build, since they are the ones who started this multi-multi-plane sheet trend years ago. The Sky Decals sheet I’m using right now for my one Hurricane offers full markings for 15 'Canes of every subtype.). We do group builds for AcMin models. Why not decals? This group build, if it hasn’t been done before, would have each person taking one different bird from the set. Otherwise, we’re going to reach the point (and I think I may have today) where a set of decals is just too much, and it causes sensory overload and you can’t decide which to build.
(And, no, I own no stock in the company. Don’t know the people who work there. Only learned of it about a month ago. Got 'em as part of a job. And yes, if anyone wants to do the group build, when I’m done with them in a few weeks I’ll start handing them out, after I’ve finished prior mailing and writing obligations.)
TOM