There was little old stuff brought back,
little military overall, and the entire 1:48th scale range (which Airfix seem to have invested a fair bit
of effort in over the last few years) has been retired - so if you want any
it's evilBay or old stock; before it all dissapears into other modellers
'piles'!
And this . . . is the entire as-advertised
HO/OO range, now described as 1:72, but we all know they're closer to 1:76th!
It is pitiful; no World War I tie-in stuff, well; that's a boat they will have
totally missed after September, no 100-years of the RAF tie-in stuff (unlike
another stalemate - Corgi) and the catalogue
is puffed out with a larger section on Humbrol (with as little as six items per
page) and some 'comparison tables' which are fanfared as really useful, while
not being very useful at all!
The only other thing which may interest
some readers of Small Scale World is a new colour-variant of the Lego-likey
construction brick Challenger Tank model, the green (temperate theatre) one
becoming available from next Sunday . . . like they are going to rush round the
worlds toy outlets on a Sunday!
As it's a show report of a catalogue image
- which is itself clearly nothing more than a couple of re-coloured CAD-image
of the previous sand version - I can't even guarantee it's the actual, or close
to the final colour to be issued! Further - Cobi;
one of the winners in the wars with Lego have a much larger range of equally
nice AFV's in three price-brackets to compete with this pair.
All-in-all a piss-poor performance from Airfix who seem to think contracting
into yourself is the way out of poor trading and supply-chain problems? Still,
they are really only a trademark these days and it's Hornby's grave that actually being dug.
3 comments:
It is very sad about the shrinking of the Airfix line. Given their amazing catalogue of great Airfix kits and playsets, it is hard to understand why Hornby has failed to dominate its market. I suppose we should be grateful that at least these six basic WWII sets will be out in April. Will they be produced in India with the brittle plastic that was used for the 1/32 figure reissues of a few years back? I was also struck that the Airfix catalogue says that US Marines fought at D Day - I would have hoped for better from a company with such a history, even if they are stuck in the mildly embarrassing situation of not having standard WWII US Army GIs in their line.
How depressing... But I was slightly amused by the blurb describing the WWII German Infantry as "This set of perfectly scaled figures..." when (like the Marines) it is one of those infamous Airfix sets which contains figures in two completely different scales !
Cheers, Dave
Cheers both! They used to call it 'resting on your laurels' but in this case I think even the laurels are getting thorny!
H
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