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why is it new Tamiya models come out so rarely


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The plastic kit part of Tamiya is an insignificant blip on the radar of a huge company. It is the plaything of top management. Tamiya makes its money on things we never see or hear of.

Hasegawa, on the other hand, is a tiny company. A few dozen people, and they don't even own an injection molding machine.

Jennings, I'm curious as to where you can find this information? Last I checked Tamiya and Hasegawa had huge warehouses and factories in Japan. I never made it out to their location to see it for myself, but a few dozen people? I'm surprised about that.

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From personal, first hand experience. Hasegawa does not own a manufacturing facility. All of their molding is farmed out to small shops. The only thing they do is packaging it. At least that's what I saw when I visited them. Tamiya's HQ is visible from the main railway station in Shizuoka City. The taxi driver had never heard of Hasegawa, and we had to give him the street address. Tamiya is a HUGE company and a huge presence in Japan, with fingers in all kinds of toys and hobbies.

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From personal, first hand experience. Hasegawa does not own a manufacturing facility. All of their molding is farmed out to small shops. The only thing they do is packaging it. At least that's what I saw when I visited them. Tamiya's HQ is visible from the main railway station in Shizuoka City. The taxi driver had never heard of Hasegawa, and we had to give him the street address. Tamiya is a HUGE company and a huge presence in Japan, with fingers in all kinds of toys and hobbies.

Okay thank you

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I thought I read somewhere that the owner of the company (Mr Tamiya?) tends to focus on subjects that he is interested in, regardless of commercial appeal. You can definitely see this in their armor offerings, maybe less so with their aircraft.

He brings up tanks and aircraft a lot in his book. Episodes about crawling around tanks at Aberdeen and seeing a Corsair in the sky as a kid during WWII. It's pretty clear where his interests are.

The plastic kit part of Tamiya is an insignificant blip on the radar of a huge company. It is the plaything of top management. Tamiya makes its money on things we never see or hear of.

Hasegawa, on the other hand, is a tiny company. A few dozen people, and they don't even own an injection molding machine.

This. For example, they have been in what is being called a "2nd Mini 4WD boom" here in Japan, so lots of focus on that stuff. Mini 4WD are those little cars that are powered by 2 AAs and run on closed tracks. There are comics, animation, merchandise, etc. related to that, and local race weekends for these cars regularly draw hundreds in Tokyo. They are also famous for being one of the first manufacturers of R/C cars, trucks, and tanks. They even own tracks and sponsor a factory R/C car racing team that takes part in races around the world. Then there's their paints, tools, educational kits, stuff to make miniature cupcakes, and clothing/shoe/accessory collaborations with designers in Japan...

If you've ever been to their HQ, or seen videos filmed by people who have, you'll see that their R&D dept. is just one floor of their building. One floor for all of those categories of products, and they even share it with their box art/decal artists. So each category is essentially a cubicle of guys.

Meticulous research + small headcount = not a whole lot of all-new releases in each category per year, let alone each scale in a particular category.

As for costs, owning their own molding and production factories in Japan and the Philippines probably adds a bit to the overhead.

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