Missed opportunities

We modelers are a selfish bunch. Linger on any discussion forum longer than a fortnight and you'll be sure to find a hijacked thread where someone starts listing their personal wish list of kits they'd like to see produced. It's safe to say that everyone wants everything.

But that's just one side of the coin. If you haven't thought about it (and you really should), the manufacturers need to make the best decisions possible when it comes to selecting a new model to tool and produce. They're in the business of making money; two or three bad choices and they could go the way of the Caribbean Ground Sloth, taking the prominent rivets, misshapen noses, and missing access panels with them. We'll build what we have until all that's left is a pile of bagged Frog kit, and nobody wants that.

That got me thinking about the aircraft that are sorely under-represented in the hobby on this day in 2013, the aircraft that could have earned the manufacturers a lot of money over the last 10 or 15 years had they made better decisions. I call these "missed opportunities," because while I could easily name three aircraft I'd like to see in model form (a 1/48 L-17 Navion being at the top of the list), they wouldn't necessarily be a wise business investment. Clearly, there are aircraft that we all would have purchased years ago had Special Trupegawa Boss produced them.

So here are five aircraft where I think the market has missed out. Note, these are not necessarily my favorite aircraft, just those that meet the following criteria in my cursory analysis:

The airplane must be historically significant.
The airplane must not be available beyond a first- or second-generation kit.
The model must have wide market appeal.

Here we go.

A U-2 in 1/48 scale. If one aircraft epitomizes the Cold War, it's the U-2 (and probably the B-52). That we don't have a new-tool kit is an embarrassment to the hobby and an insult to everyone who designed, built, and flew the airplane, not to mention all of the civilians who unknowingly benefited from its capabilities.

A 1/48 UH-1B/C/H in 1/48 scale. The Huey is the most popular helicopter ever and the best we have is the old Monogram kit. Yea, Hobby Boss just release a new tool kit, but I'm not sure it really represents the best that the industry can offer.

An A-1E in 1/72 scale. Sure, there's the Monogram kit, but have you seen what it takes to make it accurate? I bet you'd go through at least a hundred No. 11 blades to get it right! Hasegawa's A-1s are beautiful kits, and they missed the mark when they failed to leverage the molds to produce an E. I could say the same for their 1/48 kits as well.

A Boeing C-135 series in 1/144 scale. The airplane entered service in 1957 and has served the U.S. Air Force in many capacities since then. It's easy to envision an expansive line of the more prominent variants beyond the KC-135, such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint, EC-135 Aria, and VC-137.

I'm not sure about this last one, so I'll look to my expat friends and readers across the Atlantic to set me straight. Why haven't we seen a new-tool Blackburn Buccaneer? For crying out loud, we have a Gloster Meteor Prone (whatever that is) and the fugly de Havilland Sea Vixen, but not a good kit of an aircraft that saw service in the Gulf War and with the South African Air Force? What has this bloody world come to?

Is there any hope for humanity?

A favorite hobby shop 30 years later

“Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” 

That is Jodi Picoult from her novel Handle With Care. I came across it recently after spending a long weekend in Orlando for the IPMS National Convention. Because I was in the area I thought it would be fun to make a quick trip to one of the more memorable hobby shops I’ve been to, Colonial Photo & Hobby.

If you’ve been in the hobby for more than a few years you’ve had the opportunity to visit many different hobby shops. I’m not the only guy who seeks them out when traveling for business or spending a vacation with the family. A quick glance at the forums will find quite a few inquiries from modelers looking for advice on local hobby shops to check out. Visiting hobby shops can be a hobby within the hobby!

I sometimes think about listing or counting up all the shops I’ve been to, but I’m afraid I’d forget a few only to remember them a day or a week later and then feel compelled to recount. With Election Day just around the corner here in the United States, the only recount I want to know about is one in Florida.

I don’t have to make a list of hobby shops to know that a handful would immediately come to mind; those would be the shops that are most special to me. One of them is Colonial Hobby.

I grew up in Florida, about 90 minutes northwest of Orlando. I first visited the shop sometime around 1983. I don’t remember the exact date of course, but I do remember going there with my friend David and his father Larry, one of my early mentors in the hobby. (That’s David looking cool under the colonnade of the distinctive, Art Deco building.) It wasn’t a great shop -- and still isn’t -- but I remember they had a decent variety of kits and modeling supplies that I couldn’t find in the area of Florida where I lived. At the time that was more than enough to light my fire for the hobby.

I also remember what I bought. The Hasegawa 1/48 F-4 Phantoms were relatively new to the market, and Colonial had them in stock! The price? A whopping $21. At the time that was a lot of money for a 15 year-old kid. Nonetheless, I dug deep into my pocket and bought the F-4B/N, which I still have in my stash…and fully intend to build. Some day.

It was surreal being back in Colonial Hobby nearly 30 years later, knowing that some of the employees weren't even born when I was there. If my poor memory serves me correctly, the layout is basically the same, though the model kits are now located at the front of the shop rather than at the back. That’s where I found one of the latest additions to the stash, a Testors 1/48 O-2 Skymaster, which David will tell you I’ve always been fond of. I wonder if it will still be in my stash 30 years from now.