[WWI] What happened to 1/72 plastic?

[Hooper, Dave]

Hi all

 

I've been following this thread with interest as a keen modeler in the
'one true scale'. 

 

My own opinion is that every thing goes round in circles and I'm sure
1/72 will become flavour of the month again at some point. Twenty or so
years ago there was very little new injection moulded stuff unless you
count the short run kits (ie Merlin, Veejay) which were very crude, so
most modelers either built vacforms or scratched and as such the vacform
market in the mid eighties was in many ways the golden period for WW1
plastic modelers. Then the likes of Eduard and Toko came along and we
all ditched our scratchbuilding tools and declared a new golden era. Now
this appears to have come to an end and we are now seeing a golden era
in high quality resin which may be more expensive, but is gradually
becoming more accepted in to the mainstream. It would be nice to see a
return of vacforms to fill the void left by the absence of newly tooled
injection mouldings, but I suspect this will not happen as they will
still be considered expensive (look at Broplans prices) by those who
have been used to buying high quality injection moulding kits at a
reasonably low price and I think generally modellers have become lazier
than they were thirty years ago (I await the angry comments on this) in
that there is less of a do it yourself attitude to modeling and more of
a 'lets see what aftermarket items are available - Oh dear nothing yet -
I'll just have to wait until something is produced' attitude.
Admittedly, this attitude is less prominant in WW1 modeling than in
other genres but I think there is more of a reluctance to do it yourself
these days. 

 

My personal feeling mirrors Diegos comments in that the current move to
1/32 in the mainly driven by the industry itself. You can't blame them
for doing this as they undoubtably make a larger profit margin on a 1/32
kit than they would on a 1/72 kit of the same subject and the investment
in new equipment is high, especially if they want to use CAD, SLA
technology to produce the masters. But there is no reason why at some
point in the future Wingnuts could not scale down some of there products
for the 1/72 scale market. I think this is unlikely to happen in the
forseeable future but it's always a possibility.

 

But I also agree with Bud, in that we have been very spoiled for years
and years compared to the other main scales.

 

I tend to be an optimist and feel that 1/72 WW1 still has some life left
and in time the mainstream manufacturers will recognise this, even if
they only concentrate on larger aircraft such as the HP 0/400, but I'm
hoping that someday somebody will see the worth in giving us a new
Sopwith Triplane, Pup or Hanriot HD1/2, maybe a pipedream, but who
knows.

 

In the meantime, if I want to build something that I can't get, I
scratchbuild

 

Regards

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

In the meantime, I'm not too unhappy. As a part time reviewer the drop
in 1/72 products has given me a bit of a breathing space



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