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Hobby Boss, you´re just kidding us, right?


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This is the decal sheet for the upcoming J 29 Tunnan from Trumpeter.

5618b766a5001.jpg

See anything strange?

Maybe this might give you a hint?

DSC1620.jpg

Not to mention the letter "S" that looks like (but isn't) Comic Sans.

If the plastic in that box looks anything remotely like the J 29 I will be surprised. And if it turns out that it is actually a nice kit, why ruin all that work with such shoddy workmanship when it comes to the decal sheet?

Fortunately there is also the Pilot Replica Tunnan..

Edited by erik_g
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Two toughts:

-majority of modellers do not know how the Swedish roundel is supposed to look like precisely but...

- I believe that a manufacturer screwing up country X roundels sends a bad signal to modellers of country X

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Two toughts:

-majority of modellers do not know how the Swedish roundel is supposed to look like precisely but...

- I believe that a manufacturer screwing up country X roundels sends a bad signal to modellers of country X

Well, perhaps not, but

1. Someone who is likely to buy a kit of the J 29 Tunnan is likely to know the look of the Swedish roundel.

2. A manufacturer putting the amount of effort needed to design and produce a model kit should have no problem getting this right. It takes just as much effort getting this right as it is getting it wrong. Well, to be honest, less effort to get it right, since if you google you will soon find a good svg representation of the roundel. It´s on Wikipedia even..

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flygvapnet_roundel.svg

So, HobbyBoss, you have absolutely no excuse.. just copy the file in the link above.. and fix that font.. Even Arial will be an improvement..

3. Makes you think how much research they do when it comes to other subjects.

Edited by erik_g
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Two toughts:

-majority of modellers do not know how the Swedish roundel is supposed to look like precisely but...

- I believe that a manufacturer screwing up country X roundels sends a bad signal to modellers of country X

Two more thoughts:

-if you are manufacturing decals that include the Swedish roundel, you should determine what it looks like precisely! If I don't know what it looks like and want to build the subject, you can bet I'll find out. Not like it's big-time classified...

-a manufacturer screwing up country X roundels sends a bad signal to modellers of country X -and just about everyone else.

This kind of screw-up by any manufacturer is simply baffling. Maybe, like the hakenkreuz in Europe, three points has a contentious cultural significance in the Far East...?

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This kind of screw-up by any manufacturer is simply baffling.

What I find baffling is that Trumpyboss advertises everywhere that they're working with Abrams Squad for armour stuff but nothing is done for aircrafts.

Edited by Laurent
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What I find baffling is that Trumpyboss advertises everywhere that they're working with Abrams Squad for armour stuff but nothing is done for aircrafts.

That's only because they have 'real' competition in the armor side of things by the likes of Dragon, etc. They do, of course, have competition from others in the aircraft arena but, 1) they know they can pretty much never compete with Tamiya and certain others so they don't care to and, 2) they probably think aircraft modelers are more forgiving because, you know, if it looks like XYZ, it must be XYZ :rolleyes:

Rob

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Two more thoughts:

-if you are manufacturing decals that include the Swedish roundel, you should determine what it looks like precisely! If I don't know what it looks like and want to build the subject, you can bet I'll find out. Not like it's big-time classified...

-a manufacturer screwing up country X roundels sends a bad signal to modellers of country X -and just about everyone else.

This kind of screw-up by any manufacturer is simply baffling. Maybe, like the hakenkreuz in Europe, three points has a contentious cultural significance in the Far East...?

I also use the term Hakenkreuz when talking with friends, thats what i do to avoid scaring or hurting the feelings of coworkers (work university setting)

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So what's worse? And I'm just asking. An average priced kit - whose decals are usable (but may have some mistakes)? Or Tamiya / Hasegawa decals - that almost everyone struggles with, dislikes or discards? I've got the new $200 Tamiya Mosquito - and while we should certainly be getting Cartograf decals for that price. What we get, is something - that while technically accurate - is still difficult to work with. I've never heard of anyone, ever buying a Hasegawa or Tamiya kit for the company decals. They look good (except that Hasegawa often doesn't know what white looks like), but are a real pain to work with - and many of us still have to use aftermarket stickers.

So - which is worse???

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So what's worse? And I'm just asking. An average priced kit - whose decals are usable (but may have some mistakes)? Or Tamiya / Hasegawa decals - that almost everyone struggles with, dislikes or discards? I've got the new $200 Tamiya Mosquito - and while we should certainly be getting Cartograf decals for that price. What we get, is something - that while technically accurate - is still difficult to work with. I've never heard of anyone, ever buying a Hasegawa or Tamiya kit for the company decals. They look good (except that Hasegawa often doesn't know what white looks like), but are a real pain to work with - and many of us still have to use aftermarket stickers.

So - which is worse???

In general, I would prefer good plastic and can do away with sloppy decals. In this particular case, I guess the point is, it doesn't have to be either/or. The mistake is so easy to avoid in the first place, but seems egregious enough to contribute to the negative perception of the brand (as evidenced by this thread). In this day and age where every little detail is scrutinized, I think it is baffling to some people why a company doesn't pay attention to such trivial things to better their image. Most of HB/Trump complaints seem to be around this general issue. I am not saying this reflects my thinking, but this is my understanding of most people's frustrations.

That said, the counterargument would be that HB/Trump simply does not care. It might be ok for a company to position the bar not too high for themselves and just be happy at their own M.O. I can also see this view.

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One additional observation: In this case, making this mistake takes more effort than doing it correctly. The real thing has straight lines and sharp corners. The decal has curves on the side of the crown as well as the top. It takes more mouse clicks to generate the graphics for the decal.

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No surprises there. Seems like 99% of Trumpeter/Hobby Boss aircraft decals are pretty much junk: inaccurate, bad/wrong colors, misspellings, etc.

I don’t understand is why did they team up with TwoBobs for the 1/32 F-105G kit? I think that is the only Trumpeter/HB kit that I have that has decals provided that are good out of the box.

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