Hobbycraft Canada

[alien]

I was talking to their office today. Also if you look here http://www.hobbycraft.com/index.php?option...r&Itemid=36 go into All manufacturers. Go to Hobbycraft Canada. Skip through the 2 pages. You will see "availability" "Y" = yes "N"=N0. There seems to be a lot of "n"s. They also moved from a major complex at 140 Applewood Crescent in Concord to a small unit at 445 Edgeley Blvd Unit #1 Vaughan Ontario. If you look at the main page here http://www.hobbycraft.com/ they are saying

"To all our valued customers, thank you for visiting www.hobbycraft.com. We are happy to bring you our new online site/store. We have changed the format so now there will be two sites. One site will be dedicated to Hobbycraft Canada with only a few pages that will bring you general information such as whats new from a particular manufacturer, or recent news from an event. With all the web sites out there, to list all the information would be redundant. The other aspect of the site will be concerning Hobbycraft Canada as a manufacturer of Plastic model aircraft and model trains as well as a distributor for over 70 years. We appreciate your patience while we get these new sites up and running! "

Then if you look just below they say "WEB DESIGNER WANTED!"

Seems to me they are down sizing big time and are going to be doing a lot of out sourcing. I am going to be talking to a sales rep at a store here in the next few days and see if i can find out whats going on.

So you were talking to their office today and you asked what? and they said what? Since they opened their new and improved website and promised that they would inform us better, their web site has looked the same way. So for that matter nothing changed with the new site. And yes there are alot of Y and S, but I have been watching the site for a while now and some of thr Y and S have changed."WEB DESIGNER WANTED!" That too has been their for quite sometime. From past experience with HC they seem to produce only a couple of different model numbers at the same time, thus a possible reason for all th N. So my question to you is, did anyone official tell you the company was getting out of the modeling business?

Stephen

[alien]

The molds for all of the Hobbycraft Canada kits are in Asia. Many of their older items have already been reissued by Kitech, including the CF-100, so I'm sure we will see them being repopped by newer names in the hobby industry.

It's events like this that I began hording kits decades ago, you never know when there will be a sudden shortage of models.

Alvis 3.1

From what I recall about the HC moulds noted above, HC was claiming that companies like Kitech stole or acqired the moulds illegally, but since possession is 9/10's of the law it was too costly for HC to sue for the return of the moulds. I have also been told that should you buy a Kitech kit, that it should be inspected to make sure the pressing of the moulds came out correct. Heard stories of not enough styrene so that the fusalage and wings would crumble.

Now, If we only know the truth and nothing but the truth!

Stephen

[RiderFan]

From what I recall about the HC moulds noted above, HC was claiming that companies like Kitech stole or acqired the moulds illegally, but since possession is 9/10's of the law it was too costly for HC to sue for the return of the moulds. I have also been told that should you buy a Kitech kit, that it should be inspected to make sure the pressing of the moulds came out correct. Heard stories of not enough styrene so that the fusalage and wings would crumble.

Now, If we only know the truth and nothing but the truth!

Stephen

Maybe not at all related to Hobbycraft, but I have a Kitech "reissue" of the AMT 1:48 Airwolf kit and it seems okay. Lots more flash than I remember from the AMT kit but other than that, the parts look fine. AT $15 I wouldn't be opposed to a Kitech CF-100 if it's the only game in town.

[alien]

Maybe not at all related to Hobbycraft, but I have a Kitech "reissue" of the AMT 1:48 Airwolf kit and it seems okay. Lots more flash than I remember from the AMT kit but other than that, the parts look fine. AT $15 I wouldn't be opposed to a Kitech CF-100 if it's the only game in town.

I didn't say they were all bad. I said they should be inspected. As for Me, I don't mind paying a $100 for a kit that is worth it, but it bothers me to pay a $1 for a kit that is not worth a cent. Thats the way I am

Stephen

Edited July 23, 2010 by alien

[Dakota Roo]

Nearly two years later, it still prevails.

I had to go overseas to get a Heller Canadair CL-415. I found it odd that nobody else made the kit (that I know of), and didn't seem to be available on any North American sites.

I'm a de Havilland Canada fan, and I'm flabbergasted at how difficult it is to get some of their famous stuff...the Otter, and Dash, and especially the DHC-6 Twin Otter. Hobbycraft Canada marketed those and the Canadair rigs. I'm just puzzled that nobody else seems to be making them...in my desired scale, 1:72. Sure, there's lots of mahogany and composite diecast models, but that's not what I'm looking for. Plastic kits of Twin Otters seem to be nonexistent. Why is that?

Roo.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Dakota Roo

[Miccara]

This is too bad. It was Canada's one and only model kit manufacture (save for the garage kit folks). But also not at all unexpected. I'm more surprised they lasted as long as they did.

I really don't think economy had anything to do with their demise. Because they were heavy with Canadian Content, there are government programmes available that would have helped them if it was truly an economic problem.

It was the quality (or lack of) of their kits that killed them. The 1:48 Tutor screamed for a full detail cockpit and they gave us two armchairs and a stick. I spent more time building out the cockpit than I did building the rest of the kit. And gees do you think they could have had a bigger box? That Tutor box is massive and the parts trees take up barely half of it. The cost of shipping boxes that large alone would drive a company out of business.

The Arrow kit, even after being retooled, was still inaccurate in so many places it boggled the mind. From the general profile, to the detail of the landing gear, to the shape of the nose, and all dimensions of the wing, there was just about nothing accurate with the kit.

Really, it just proved to me that the Arrow product manager was some dude in Asia that just didn't care. The instructions looked like they were drawn by the 5 year old that lives next door. And lets face it, Hobbycraft was charging $50 for the kit because it was the Arrow. The kit was in no way worth that save for it being the only kit available of a subject that is iconic in this country. If that had been an F4 Phantom, it would have been about $25. As much of an ArrowHead as I am, I could just not justify spending over $50 on a kit I knew had so many flaws. I purchased one for $20 at a flea market (still shrinkwrapped) and proceeded to spend $50 on after-market resin parts to add some level of accuracy greater than zero. But I just could never bring myself to spend $50+ on the base kit more than once.

The CF-100 was a great little kit in 1:72 but the 1:48 was lacking detail of any kind. I have one 1:48 kit Clunk and I'm really afraid now to build it because I know I'll never get another.

In both cases there were vastly superior 1:72 scale CF-100 and CF-105 vacu-formed kits available, but hobbycraft flooded the market with cheap injection kits and forced Victoria Products and Astra out of business.

The decals in all their kits are just junk. The F2H Banshee kit I have has the red maple leaf actually overlapping the blue of the roundel. That's how out of register those decals are. I'm sure 90% of CanMilAir's sales go to people needing to replace their kit decals.

The Bluenose kit was not too bad if you stood way back. But it was not accurate and properly detailed for a ship model of that scale. The hull lines don't match up at all against scaled drawings and the only real detail provided by the kit is the ships wheel.

If Hobbycraft had built kits that were compatible in quality to Hasegawa, or Academy, or heck, even Monogram, then I don't think we're having this conversation. But people bought one Arrow to say they built an icon, realized it was a very bad kit and never bought another. But how many Hasegawa F-18's have people built? I'm sure a heck of a lot more even though they are pretty pricey.

Oh well, I guess I'm going to have to make a hobby shop run today and buy a couple of Tutors and hope there's a CF-100 left.

[Miccara]

Opps... forgot my comments!

I just could never drum up a sympathy for HC. To me they were the definition of corporate arrogance. I don't care how rare the subject was it was an embarrassment at how inaccurate and sloppy the kits were - and they did not care... as is evident by there total disregard of the complaints and inquires of hobbyists over the years. If you produce crap, you SHOULD go out of business. Some are not going to agree with me, and I'll probably get the usual "There are no bad kits, just bad builders" line... but really, it's not like their kits were $10. I paid some good cash for kits from them that were no joy to build. Listen, I don't mind a challenge - but some of them were just ridiculous.

[anotherP51nut]

Plastic kits of Twin Otters seem to be nonexistent. Why is that?

Roo.

It's true that you may have to look overseas but I Googled and found several online stores that still stock the 1/72 Revell Twin Otter (re-release of the Matchbox kit). Here is the link to just one:

Lucky Model, 1/72 Revell Twin Otter

The Dash-8 and Otter are also around, but you're right, it does take a bit of searching.

Richard

[Alvis 3.1]

Nearly two years later, it still prevails.

I had to go overseas to get a Heller Canadair CL-415. I found it odd that nobody else made the kit (that I know of), and didn't seem to be available on any North American sites.

I'm a de Havilland Canada fan, and I'm flabbergasted at how difficult it is to get some of their famous stuff...the Otter, and Dash, and especially the DHC-6 Twin Otter. Hobbycraft Canada marketed those and the Canadair rigs. I'm just puzzled that nobody else seems to be making them...in my desired scale, 1:72. Sure, there's lots of mahogany and composite diecast models, but that's not what I'm looking for. Plastic kits of Twin Otters seem to be nonexistent. Why is that?

Roo.

The hobbyshop I work at is able to get in the Heller CL-415s, via Squadron/MMD. Oddly, we can't seem to find a Canadian distributor that wants to carry Heller kits.

The Twin Otter was originally molded by Matchbox back in the 70s, or maybe early 80s. Revell Germany has the molds, and did a small run a few years ago. We ordered 20 from a supplier, and got 3. He got a fraction of the kits he asked for, and it seems that somebody poached the majority of them from Revell early on. Since then...nada. Kind of frustrating for us, since we are near Viking where they are currently making the Twin Otters!

Drop Revell Germany a line and let them know how much you would like to see the Twin Otter return. However, since they're under new management....:(

Alvis 3.1

[CorsairMan]

I built the Arrow back in the 1980s and I built another just last fall. Same kit... same box. Accuracy aside, that kit required a lot of work! the fuselage and nose section had major sink marks and by the time I sanded 3 or 4 layers of putty on the sides of the fuselage to make it uniform, the panel lines were gone. I was able to reasonably smooth the join between the pitot piece and the nose but that took a week's worth of CA, sanding, putty, sanding, prime, sanding.... and so on. The interior was terrible and the lines on the clear pieces were shallow and inconsistent.... impossible to mask.

I only did it because the guy really wanted an arrow.... he'll never know how much effort it took to build a kit with less than 20 pieces (wheels up display)

I might build their 1/32 sea fury someday... but only if its cheap!

[Alvis 3.1]

I actually have minor twitches whenever I think of their 1/72 Arrow. Building one or two, sure, not much fun. Building 22 in a month for a show....aaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The result:

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Fea1/201-300/Fea265_Arrow_Petrie/Fea265vsm.htm

But never ever again. That was uhm, 11 or 12 years ago, and I've not built an Arrow since. Which is a shame, because I never did do RL 203, 204, 205 or 206. Not a good fitting kit, and a boatload of inaccuracies as well. However, it's the only game in 1/72 injected kits!

The diecast Arrow put out by Canadian Warplane Heritage is beautiful! nice detail, a cockpit that's not hysterically bad, markings look good, and so it's been released in 2 markings, 201 and 203 dayglo.

Free plug for them:

http://www.warplane.com/Gift-Shop/DesktopDefault3.aspx?tabid=41&productid=2498

Still, it isn't a kit. :(

Alvis 3.1

Edited March 30, 2012 by Alvis 3.1

[RiderFan]

I couldn't actually bring myself to finish their 1:72 Arrow. I mean.. it's just too high on the horrible scale. That said, the giant hole in my workshop wall is from my head smashing into it after wrestling with their 1:48 version for a month.

[Stratospheremodels]

This is too bad. It was Canada's one and only model kit manufacture (save for the garage kit folks). But also not at all unexpected. I'm more surprised they lasted as long as they did.

I really don't think economy had anything to do with their demise. Because they were heavy with Canadian Content, there are government programmes available that would have helped them if it was truly an economic problem.

It was the quality (or lack of) of their kits that killed them. The 1:48 Tutor screamed for a full detail cockpit and they gave us two armchairs and a stick. I spent more time building out the cockpit than I did building the rest of the kit. And gees do you think they could have had a bigger box? That Tutor box is massive and the parts trees take up barely half of it. The cost of shipping boxes that large alone would drive a company out of business.

The Arrow kit, even after being retooled, was still inaccurate in so many places it boggled the mind. From the general profile, to the detail of the landing gear, to the shape of the nose, and all dimensions of the wing, there was just about nothing accurate with the kit.

Really, it just proved to me that the Arrow product manager was some dude in Asia that just didn't care. The instructions looked like they were drawn by the 5 year old that lives next door. And lets face it, Hobbycraft was charging $50 for the kit because it was the Arrow. The kit was in no way worth that save for it being the only kit available of a subject that is iconic in this country. If that had been an F4 Phantom, it would have been about $25. As much of an ArrowHead as I am, I could just not justify spending over $50 on a kit I knew had so many flaws. I purchased one for $20 at a flea market (still shrinkwrapped) and proceeded to spend $50 on after-market resin parts to add some level of accuracy greater than zero. But I just could never bring myself to spend $50+ on the base kit more than once.

The CF-100 was a great little kit in 1:72 but the 1:48 was lacking detail of any kind. I have one 1:48 kit Clunk and I'm really afraid now to build it because I know I'll never get another.

In both cases there were vastly superior 1:72 scale CF-100 and CF-105 vacu-formed kits available, but hobbycraft flooded the market with cheap injection kits and forced Victoria Products and Astra out of business.

The decals in all their kits are just junk. The F2H Banshee kit I have has the red maple leaf actually overlapping the blue of the roundel. That's how out of register those decals are. I'm sure 90% of CanMilAir's sales go to people needing to replace their kit decals.

The Bluenose kit was not too bad if you stood way back. But it was not accurate and properly detailed for a ship model of that scale. The hull lines don't match up at all against scaled drawings and the only real detail provided by the kit is the ships wheel.

If Hobbycraft had built kits that were compatible in quality to Hasegawa, or Academy, or heck, even Monogram, then I don't think we're having this conversation. But people bought one Arrow to say they built an icon, realized it was a very bad kit and never bought another. But how many Hasegawa F-18's have people built? I'm sure a heck of a lot more even though they are pretty pricey.

Oh well, I guess I'm going to have to make a hobby shop run today and buy a couple of Tutors and hope there's a CF-100 left.

I was thinking the same since many years: i was surprised they lasted that long.

Actually i believe what hurt them was probably not kit quality (there are other injected kit companies whose's kits are poorer in terms of details, fit, shape and molding quality and which keep selling continually since more than a decade). What hurt them was the Canadian subjects. The market for those models is way too small to support a model kit company. I haven't checked their catalog recently but i believe they also had Me-109 and many other type of US and European aircraft from WWII and beyond, so theoritically it should have helped them, unless they too had poor molding and couldn't compete with their other Me's out there).

Most modelers located overseas or in the US are far less likely to purchase a Tutor, a CF-100 or a CF-105 than Canadian modelers. The market was simply too small for them. To give you an exemple: i made 2 1-48ths scale model kits of the Avro Arrow in the 2nd year afterr i started my company in 1995. One was the Arrow Mark 2 and the other was the Mach 3 Arrow. Though both kits were low priced vacform kits with resin, metal, and photoetch (!!) and with the correct shape of wings with conical camber (they even had whole missile bays and metal landing gear and metal wheels). I even made a special trip to Ottawa to the aviation museum there just to take photos of what is left of the Arrow and it's engine to further detail my product. They both sold in very very low quantities (and ironically most of the clients for those 2 kits were from the US and from Europe. I must have had only 2 or 3 Canadian customers for them). So following that, i quickly got out of Canadian subject.

By the way... about the CF-100. In 1995 or 96 i met the ORIGINAL maker of that 1-48th model kit: He is from Montreal and his kit was a VACFORM KIT. He told me all the story and because i was just starting in the business, he told me, beware of pirates... Even the scratches that were on his kit were reproduced into the injected kit... (So Trump and Hobby Boss were definitely not the first to copy other people's work, unfortunately). The quality of the original vacform CF-100 kit was Superb by the way. I saw it directly from him at an IPMS meeting and at various Mtl hobby shops at the time (where many were catching dust, a store owner even tried to give me one of the kits gratis, but i couldn't accept that knowing what had happened to its manufacturer (who had a family with a small newborn baby) and because i think hard work have to be paid for, not given away.

Stephane

Stratosphere Models

Email: stratospheremodels@yahoo.fr

Website: http://www.picturetrail.com/stratospheremoddels

Edited March 30, 2012 by Stratospheremodels

[Stratospheremodels]

I actually have minor twitches whenever I think of their 1/72 Arrow. Building one or two, sure, not much fun. Building 22 in a month for a show....aaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The result:

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Fea1/201-300/Fea265_Arrow_Petrie/Fea265vsm.htm

But never ever again. That was uhm, 11 or 12 years ago, and I've not built an Arrow since. Which is a shame, because I never did do RL 203, 204, 205 or 206. Not a good fitting kit, and a boatload of inaccuracies as well. However, it's the only game in 1/72 injected kits!

The diecast Arrow put out by Canadian Warplane Heritage is beautiful! nice detail, a cockpit that's not hysterically bad, markings look good, and so it's been released in 2 markings, 201 and 203 dayglo.

Free plug for them:

http://www.warplane.com/Gift-Shop/DesktopDefault3.aspx?tabid=41&productid=2498

Still, it isn't a kit. :(

WOW...! I had not heard about that one. Where did they find the money to make a diecast of a airplane of that size ? It's surprising. I didn't know they had a line of die-casts either. Must be subcontracted from one of the big die-cast model manufacturers, most likely it is not their own private venture.

Alvis 3.1

Edited March 30, 2012 by Stratospheremodels

[RiderFan]

I was thinking the same since many years: i was surprised they lasted that long.

Actually i believe what hurt them was probably not kit quality (there are other injected kit companies whose's kits are poorer in terms of details, fit, shape and molding quality and which keep selling continually since more than a decade). What hurt them was the Canadian subjects. The market for those models is way too small to support a model kit company.

Meh.. I disagree. Properly done kits sell. There market is quite large enough to support a manufacture that specializes in Canadian content if the kits are worth anything. HC kits were junk and every modeller in Canada knew it. An ME-109? No. Nobody cares about another one of those when there are far, far better kits out there.

I'd suspect your Arrow didn't sell because nobody heard of it. I've built all the VP and Astra vacu kits for the CF-100 and CF-105 (and tutor). Excellent kits that sold well. However I can't say I ever heard of your Arrow and I'm one that keeps my eyes out for that sort of thing. I specialize in Canadian content and haven't had any reason to complain yet.

Edited March 31, 2012 by RiderFan

[CorsairMan]

Alvis - awesome work man! Bad kits or no, they look great. I really like the shuttle arrow and the stealth arrow.

I built a few dogs from HC before making my teenage break from the hobby. However on my return some 15 years later I discovered that HC put out a decent Corsair (only to be bettered by Tam and Hase). Their Seafury was not too bad either. But maybe a case of simply not keeping up with the competition.

[Stratospheremodels]

Meh.. I disagree. Properly done kits sell. There market is quite large enough to support a manufacture that specializes in Canadian content if the kits are worth anything. HC kits were junk and every modeller in Canada knew it. An ME-109? No. Nobody cares about another one of those when there are far, far better kits out there.

I'd suspect your Arrow didn't sell because nobody heard of it. I've built all the VP and Astra vacu kits for the CF-100 and CF-105 (and tutor). Excellent kits that sold well. However I can't say I ever heard of your Arrow and I'm one that keeps my eyes out for that sort of thing. I specialize in Canadian content and haven't had any reason to complain yet.

Off course properly done kits sell (!), it wasn't even in question, what we were talking about here were low quality moldings (HC), and i pointed out that there are Other companies out there that also make low quality injected kits, and their companies are still here and i know for a fact they sell and some of those companies are making good money (i won't go into the details here). The fact is, there is simply not a big enough market for Canadian subjects (in Canada alone), and even adding the very marginal international market for those subject, it is still not sufficient to keep a company afloat, not when you are competing with people who make high quality F-16, F-15, F-22, Me-109, P-51 kits overseas and so on. Trust me, the maths are just not there. You cannot compare sale of after-market tail resin sets with those of injected Canadian seaplanes and obscure fighters like the CF-101 and so on. The maths of injected kits business are Very different than the maths of resin kits aftermarket parts made at home by one or 2 persons. We are talking millions of dollars of expense here for those companies. So when the market is not wide and solid enough and when the economy does not help, without mentionning quality and other factors, you are talking massive losses. No comparison possible. Try selling aftermarket fins for just a couple of aircrafts for a living just to get an idea (no main job, just resin casting and selling), and you will understand. HC's kits were their livelyhood, but apparently not a very good one since they also had to go into distribution of other people's products. That's already a very good indication that their kits sales alone were not sufficient to sustain their ocmpany.

Though i must say, if they had chosen more subjects with good international appeal they might not have had as much trouble selling even if the quality was not on par with Tamiya and Hasegawa (as long as they did the shape and details right. We know a lot of well molded, finely engraved kits from big companies that make major shape errors on their kits, while several smaller companies may not have the best molding but can have the right shape because they researched their subject very well (seen many times)).

About my CF-105 and Mach 3 Arrow kits, well then it might be that you were not keeping your eyes open in those days because the kit samples of all my kits of that time got sent everywhere to most of the major model kit publications around the world in 1995-96, as far as Japan in fact, and listed in the new products section. Even a paid ad in FSM with many of those kits listed (but which brought many sales not for these 2 kits but for several of my other products, proof concrete that Canadian subjects didn't have a wide-appeal, at least here. I must say that before i started to sell kit products, the vacform and resin market was practically unknown here, i might say i almost helped that market to develop here almos single handedly as there was only 2 or 3 other companies here, most of which made only 1 or 2 kits, while i kept digging in and then many local people started to buy their first vacform or their first resin kit (and telling me they had no experience with these) and i sold them those kits, slowly building up an interest for that 'new' medium here in Quebec ). I must sasy i have never heard or seen the two kit companies that you mention, they must have gone under the radar in those days, though possibly one of them is the company that made the CF-101 vac kit that i mentionned and i have just forgot his company's name (been a long time since i saw him).

Edited March 31, 2012 by Stratospheremodels

[RiderFan]

Hobby Craft failed because their kits were junk and they made poor buisness choices. Not because of their subject matter. In fact that was the ONLY part of their business they got right. I'm looking at a box for a 1:48 CF-100 on my desk right now. The box is more than 2x the size it needs to be to hold all the trees. I can literally fit TWO nicely packed full CF-100 kits in one box. Imaging how much money they would have saved with a box 1/2 the size. Less shipping, less material, more orders because the boxes don't take up shelf space. The CF-100 could have fit nicely into a typical Hasegawa 1:48 sized package.

Then there's the decals. Wow... worst print job I've ever seen. It's like they were done with Crayon. And it's not even what's on the package!. The package states: "Includes 413 Tusker Squadron RCAF". Even the box is an AB+3 era 413 job. Yet inside is a poorly printed 425 squadron sheet. So they can't even get their packaging people to talk to their product development people.

Then of course they did nothing but tick off their retailers by opening up their warehouse to the public. So you could buy the CF-105 kit for $50 from Bobs LHS, or you could buy it directly from HC for $35.

I'm well aware of the cost of tooling. I was a product manager for a technology firm and had a lot of steel tooling budgeted. I've also specialize in Canadian subject matter in other industries, with multi million dollar budgets. There's a market for Canadian content. No question.

I'd love to find out who owns the tooling for the two scales of the CF-100 kit because I'd love to pay for a run, supplement the kit with resin parts (ala Czech Model's T-33), proper decals, and sell them under my brand name. The kit, with some improvement, and proper business strategies would do well.

As for your Arrow. Nope, never heard of it and couldn't find a single source of it on the net. No old ads, no references on model sites, nothing. Not even people that run Arrow modelling sites have mention of it http://www.avro-arrow.org/Arrow/models.html. I rooted through my old FSM pile and can't find any ads for the kit. In 95-96 I was building models of it for museums.

I must sasy i have never heard or seen the two kit companies that you mention, they must have gone under the radar in those days, though possibly one of them is the company that made the CF-101 vac kit that i mentioned and i have just forgot his company's name (been a long time since i saw him).

Victoria Products and Astra models created the premiere version of the Arrow in Vacuform. They also did the CF-100 and Tutor as well. They are pretty much the de facto standard for quality Arrow and Canuck kits. Even in the late 80s and early 90s. HC pretty much killed them when they flooded the market with their injected molded kits. They're still highly sought after kits and now demand a high price. The only vacuform kit of the F-101 I'm aware of is the 1:32 Combat Models kit, which is just horrible.

Edited April 1, 2012 by RiderFan

[Alvis 3.1]

Considering that Trumpeter has molded modern Canadian armour in the guise of the LAV III, the Cougar and the Grizzly AFVs, and the HobbyBoss Leopard 2A6M Can variant is also available, and sell quite well, would indicat that demand for Canadian subjects is vey much alive and well. Price and subject, of course, are always a factor, and if you put out an obscure version of a Canadian only plane at a high price, it's unlikely to sell well. Hobbycraft Canada has sold a LOT of their 1/72 Arrows, not because it's a great model, but because it's well known in Canada and more importantly, it's not expensive.

VP and Astra kits were pretty common in hobbyshops I frequented in the 80s. Vacuform kits never did sell as well as an injected kit. I recall when the Astra Arrows became available, after years of people clamoring for an Arrow: First words usually said were: "Oh, it's a vacuform. Too bad they didn't do an injected one."

Riderfan, what was your experience between the Astra and VP Arrows? I never built either, and while I thought the VP one maybe had better detail the ASta looked like it may have been easier to make.

Alvis 3.1

[RiderFan]

Hi there.

Both kits were roughly the same general layout. When you're working with vacuform, there's probably only so many ways you could break this shape down into something you could make copies of. So both were fairly similar. I personally prefer the Astra kit. It seemed to have more definition on the parts and looked better when completed. I also really liked their CF-100 and Tutor's as well. That said, even though my preference was for Astra, if I could get my hands on a VP Arrow, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat.

And yes, most of the hobby stores I went into in the 80s and early 90s carried either Astra or VP arrows (or both) in stock. And I heard the same things you did. "Oh, shame it's not injection" was common at hobby shows. I just about jumped out of my pants when I saw the HC injection box at the LHS. And was soooo crushed when I got home and realized it was a poor rip off of the poor Aurora kit from the 50s.

Edited April 1, 2012 by RiderFan

[Stratospheremodels]

Hobby Craft failed because their kits were junk and they made poor buisness choices. Not because of their subject matter. In fact that was the ONLY part of their business they got right. I'm looking at a box for a 1:48 CF-100 on my desk right now. The box is more than 2x the size it needs to be to hold all the trees. I can literally fit TWO nicely packed full CF-100 kits in one box. Imaging how much money they would have saved with a box 1/2 the size. Less shipping, less material, more orders because the boxes don't take up shelf space. The CF-100 could have fit nicely into a typical Hasegawa 1:48 sized package.

Then there's the decals. Wow... worst print job I've ever seen. It's like they were done with Crayon. And it's not even what's on the package!. The package states: "Includes 413 Tusker Squadron RCAF". Even the box is an AB+3 era 413 job. Yet inside is a poorly printed 425 squadron sheet. So they can't even get their packaging people to talk to their product development people.

Then of course they did nothing but tick off their retailers by opening up their warehouse to the public. So you could buy the CF-105 kit for $50 from Bobs LHS, or you could buy it directly from HC for $35.

I'm well aware of the cost of tooling. I was a product manager for a technology firm and had a lot of steel tooling budgeted. I've also specialize in Canadian subject matter in other industries, with multi million dollar budgets. There's a market for Canadian content. No question.

I'd love to find out who owns the tooling for the two scales of the CF-100 kit because I'd love to pay for a run, supplement the kit with resin parts (ala Czech Model's T-33), proper decals, and sell them under my brand name. The kit, with some improvement, and proper business strategies would do well.

As for your Arrow. Nope, never heard of it and couldn't find a single source of it on the net. No old ads, no references on model sites, nothing. Not even people that run Arrow modelling sites have mention of it http://www.avro-arrow.org/Arrow/models.html. I rooted through my old FSM pile and can't find any ads for the kit. In 95-96 I was building models of it for museums.

Victoria Products and Astra models created the premiere version of the Arrow in Vacuform. They also did the CF-100 and Tutor as well. They are pretty much the de facto standard for quality Arrow and Canuck kits. Even in the late 80s and early 90s. HC pretty much killed them when they flooded the market with their injected molded kits. They're still highly sought after kits and now demand a high price. The only vacuform kit of the F-101 I'm aware of is the 1:32 Combat Models kit, which is just horrible.

From what you are describing, the packaging of the HC kits and the quality of their products had quite a lot of problems, admittedly i have never purchase any of their kits so i cannot comment, but i trust you on that. However, i still know exemples of injected kit companies that sell kits (and i know from a very good direct source how much they make) that are definitely not of the best quality and they keep selling them since years. I must point out that the exemple i give is a company that have kits that have a more international appeal (much more so than HC). So to me, it equation is clear and have always been. You won't make international sales in numbers great enough to pay for your tooling is you don't have a mass appeal subject. You can have the most detailled product in the world, but if it is a non-US obscure fighter from the 50's that practically no one knows internationally, it will not sell well.

You are comparing apples with oranges. I am talking about injected model kits of Canadian subjects, whatever the market is for 'other products' than injected plastic kits of Canadian subjects is a totally other matter. If you are talking Ann of Green Gable and such stuff, no doubt there is an international market for it, there's no contest, people come from Japan to go to P.E.I. just to see that house. But for the CF-100, Tutor, and so on, i don't think there is a waiting line of international customers, sorry.. (no matter what the marketing plan is). And as you said it yourself, vacform always was at a disadvantage versus injected kits (and resin). So you may put as many multimedia details in a vac kit, it will still remaina a vac kit. Been there done that.

Also, i never mentionned that my ex-vacform kits were on the web. They were listed in print form in FSM, japanese and European model kit magazines from 1994-95-96. Never on the web (i wasn't even on the web prior to 1998, so you can keep searching, you won't find them there unless you leaf through the magazines published in that time period).

Edited April 5, 2012 by Stratospheremodels

[aerofan]

Sorry to rehash this but I must have been asleep or busy when this was bouncing around again. Riderfan does have a point that if HC produced a better quality CF-105, Tutor and other Canadian subjects then sales would be good for HC - if they produced a 1/72 Arrow with the quality of the diecast one at about the same price, people would pay for that quality. Aviation fans (aerofans) are just that fans and an aircraft being from the US, UK, Canada would not necessarily stop it's appeal to them. Trumpeter found out that a 1/48 J-8B Finback II wasn't just limited to the domestic market and has now since being in their product lineup, now if they'd do a 1/48 Q-5 Fantan.

As for Stratospheremodels point, aircraft with very little publicity don't do very well in sales and is the reason for short run kits of esoteric subject matter. The J-8B is only known for the run in with the US Spyplane during Dubya's administration. Yet the Arrow has more publicity thru videos, books and that movie with one of the Blues brothers so Avfans are well aware of the CF-105 and shouldn't limit it's appeal to only a domestic market.

Both Astra and VP kits were available upto the mid-90s, I rarely saw them at the LHS because they were always sold. Until the release of HC's Arrow, they hung around for a while until people discovered how bad the HC kit was and bought out all the remaining Astra and VP ones. I have heard of the Stratospheremodels 1/48 scale Arrow Mk.2 and Mk.3 from a small obscure website that no longer exists. The site mentioned a long wait for his to arrive and never put up any pictures of the kit nor an indepth review. And not knowing much about it was a reason why I never got one - still have never seen pictures of it. However, I'm sure it must have been a much better offering than HC's first 1/48 Arrow Mk.1s (HC1651 & HC1658).