I was railing against Revell 10 years ago when all the Dragons, Trumpeters, and Accurate Miniatures suddenly disappeared from Hobby Lobby's shelves, replaced almost exclusively with ****TY Revell kits.
The last Revell I bought was a 1:32 F4-U Corsair, about 17 years ago, that went in the garbage before it was half finished.
Ask me about the amazingly detailed cockpit. Go ahead... ASK ME! :darnkids
I swore to myself then that I'd never buy another Revell as long as I lived.
Then comes news that Revell bought the Millennium Falcon from Fine Molds.
I thought "Great! Now I can finally afford an FM Falcon!"
What does Revell do? They decide to charge the same damn price FM was charging! WTH, Revell???
That was the last straw for me.
To see them now marketing toys as models doesn't come as any surprise to me.
Revell is the Budweiser of model kit manufacturers. They're hacks. I hate them.
It's nice to know that my seething RAGE for this utterly USELESS business is in good company here.
I can't tell when some of you "guys" are being serious or not...'rage' and 'hate' would be wasted energy if you truly feel that way, Axlotl - though I can relate. Revell & I have a long history of disappointment! And mostly with their "marketing" practices.
I must note that the 1:32 scale kit you purchased was "cut" a *
long* time ago. If it was of recent production, then the parts are from a seriously tired tool, resulting in many issues like flash, molding seams, large push-pin marks and compromised parts fit. But then, it didn't cost as much as a Trumpeter kit either (nor should it - Revell should be selling some of these old 're-pops' at extreme discounts, if at all...)
However, in mild defense of Revell, it is a
business that is having to survive in an extremely tough market, so I expect they are going to "pump" every possible revenue stream as hard as they can. To be fair, they do produce some very nice 'new tool' stuff as well as keeping some (lots?) of 'vintage' kits sporatically available. For example, Revell produced a very nice kit of the Spirit of St. Louis, a beautiful Stearman and a handsome Lockheed Ventura (all 1/48 scale) as well as, by all reports, other new and quite good armor & auto subjects in other scales. So Revell can do an excellent job - if only they could quit making some real bone-headed marketing mistakes, like replacing an outstanding new & original tooling of a 1/48 scale Dehavilland Mosquito with the same scale, extremely tired and rather inaccurate ex-Monogram, 1960's vintage kit (!?). Only possible explanation is they failed to properly market the new kit as, well a NEW kit, so many saw it as just another re-pop to avoid. Hence poor sales performance, the marketing whizes noticed and decided the new kit was too expensive and lacked 'features', like the many optional parts, of the old kit. So, Mossie back-pedal 40+ years! Or perhaps the new tools were lost in a typhoon? Wish I knew, it is inexplicable (like selling an equally old kit to compete with a new Trumpeter kit...)
I truly think the word 'reputation' does not exist in the Revell corporate office since they routinely do things that maims it.
But as you noted, they frustrate us by their seeming lack of focus & poor commitment to the core business of producing high quality scale models. Unlike Tamiya, which pulls down a majority of their corporate business from products other than plastic models, Revell is a injection-molded plastic model company. Granted, it is part of a larger corporate entity, which may be the part-reason for their unreliable product standards overall, but then what model company these days doesn't suffer from similar issues with oversight? The terrible truth is, however, Revell may be "right" from their viewpoint if the Star Wars line is doing well (the apparent performance of the kits on the LHS shelves indicates otherwise, but who knows what online sales are doing...) and so they may continue.
We would like to continue supporting our model manufacturers but it is difficult when we're getting slap-bottom on a routine basis. Especially when we know they can do better and others are doing just that!
All this said, I expect many will get the SD kit and turn it into something wonderful, since that is what we do - or we "bin it" [One of my favorite quotes, by my buddy D. Garcia: "This kit one where I shook the box and then threw it away..."]
Hang in there - and remember, any day modeling is always better than cutting the grass.
R/ Robert
