2019 in review

What a year. Whatever we scale modelers might expect, there’s always something that takes us by surprise, and 2019 was no exception. HK released an unexpected 1/48 B-17G, Miniart released a series of 1/35 Grants, and we finally got our hands on AMK’s looooong awaited 1/48 F-14.

That said, some things seemingly never change, well, at least over the course of two years. Two trends that I wrote about in 2018 continued into 2019 — sexy female subjects and egg planes and all their offshoots. I’m anxious to see if that will change in 2020.

January

The influx of female subjects continued with many manufacturers introducing sexy figures in every scale imaginable. Right out of the 2019 gate, Nutsplanet introduced a new line of female busts with many more following through the year, most of them fantasy oriented.

Reedoak showed off this 1/48 figure of Miss Santa, posed on the intake of an F-14.

ZPLA jumped on the bandwagon with its 1/20 scale Girls in Action series.

Miniart released another variation of their weird ball tanks, this one with training wheels.

On a more mainstream note, Airfix’s announcement of a 1/72, new-tool Buccaneer was very well received by modelers, particularly on Britmodeller. Before the end of the month, Xtradecal announced a new sheet of Buccaneer S.2 markings.

February

In 2018 modelers were giddy when the remains of the USS Lexington were found. Nearly a year later they got equally excited when researchers found the USS Hornet.

March

RMG Resin Models released a 1/35 "modern toilet," and there was substantial discussion about toilet variants on Armorama. I shit you not.

April

Meng set the hobby on fire when they announced a new tool 1/35 Sherman, because, well...we didn’t already have enough of them already.

AMK assured us that their F-14 Tomcat was still coming.

And a small corner of the interwebz went berserk when someone suggested using cinnamon rather than pastels to represent mud. Seriously, this actually happened.

May

Not content to let a trend from 2018 die, Hasegawa announced four 1/24 scale female figures (Companion Girls Figures and Fashion Model Girls Figures) at the 2019 Shizuoka Hobby Show.

And Northstar Models teased a new line of naked figures, though I don’t recall them having been released yet.

June

The appetite for cutsie, egg-like models continued with Scale75’s release of toon figures of Rocky Star Cooper, Otto Von Lokimerg, and others.

 

July

Asuka left me scratching my head when they released a model of a tiny hamburger. Fess up guys; who's had this on their wish list?

Then something huge happened. Tamiya announced a new-tool P-38 in 1/48!

August

The month kicked off with buzz from the IPMS National Convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Tamiya offered a number of their new 1/48 P-38s via a raffle/sale, and quite a few of them found their way onto eBay, selling for over $100…never mind that they would retail for $50-60 just a couple of months later; I wonder how many of those early, overpriced kits were actually built before the kits became widely available. Also at the show, Eduard sold out of all their new 1/48 P-51D kits they'd brought with them.

Not to allow Eduard and Tamiya to dominate the news, AMK announced that their long-awaited 1/48 F-14D would be in distributors' hands at the end of August. Keep in mind that AMK first announced the kit back in June of 2015, so you can imagine that modelers were…skeptical, one person commenting, "End of August? Which year?"

September 

As if new tool kits of the P-51D and P-38 weren’t enough, HK Models announced a 1/48 version of their B-17. And the crowd went crazy.

October 

October saw armor modelers get WW1-era buses in both 1/35 scale (from MiniArt) and 1/72 (from Roden), which got me wondering why buses aren’t more popular, even in 1/25 scale.

Later in the month modelers freaked out across Facebook and the online forums after a rumor circulated that Rust-Oleum was going to discontinue the Testors line of hobby paints. A quick call to the company confirmed that that was not true. It turns out we can’t believe everything you read on the internet. Who knew?

November

Airfix announced their release of a 1/72 Vulcan, and guess what? Some modelers were excited about it and some were not, so bickering ensued. One forum participant said what more modelers need to say, “I’m not interested in the Vulcan. But I’m pleased to see Airfix still in business and releasing new kits." Amen to that!

December

Remember that 1/48 B-17 that HK announced in August? Well it hit the shelves this month. Quite the contrast to AMK’s 4 1/2 year launch of their F-14, eh? Naturally there was some rivet counting over the kit, but I think modelers generally agree that it’s very nice.

Here’s Flory Models' review on YouTube.

That's 2019 in a nutshell. We modelers remain a passionate group, and our conversations both online and in person are always amusing.

A Happy New Year to all of you! Bring on 2020!

Let’s talk about Top Gun: Maverick

Paramount dropped the second trailer for Top Gun: Maverick this morning, and odds are very good that you’ve watched it. Maybe even two or three times like me.

Paramount’s Facebook post includes 11,000 comments, most of them summed up with, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this!” But it’s the comments from friends who are aviation enthusiasts that have amused me the most.

"I expect high grade cheese, but it should still be a good time."
"I want to hate this but…."
"But I'll still go see it...Sadly."

I share these sentiments. I loved the original movie, but I was just a stupid teenager then. I like to think I have more refined tastes now, and in fairness I’ve become less inclined to watch action movies in my 50s, because, well…they all seem the same to me.

Nonetheless, why all the apprehension around Maverick? Here are a few theories.

Is it Tom Cruise? A lot of aviation enthusiasts aren’t fans. Even though he's quite the eccentric, he does some cool stuff. He looks great at 57 and has dated beautiful women. He flies his own P-51D Mustang, which he used to arrive to the set of Maverick, and appears in the movie. Are we jealous? I couldn't fault you for that.

Is it the flying? This latest trailer shows an extraordinarily risky stunt, an F/A-18 shooting up precariously close between two other Hornets. Enthusiasts know these types of moves are unrealistic, so it takes away from the reality of the movie. We’re also wondering why there’s an F-14 in the trailer. How they incorporate it into the plot might be the most intriguing part of the movie.

Is it the plot? I imagine the trailer has been edited to appeal to the movie’s original fans, but we see the same, smug Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now a captain, as well as him racing his motorcycle against a jet taking off, singing in a bar, a volleyball game on the beach, a fight, and a funeral. As I remarked on one Facebook thread, “I’ve seen his movie before.” Did the producers and writers have to include these tropes in Part 2? Probably, if only to ensure that Maverick is familiar and will appeal to the masses.

Is it the characters? There’s an Iceman lookalike, all sweaty as if he’d just come out of that volleyball game, and a Goose lookalike, whose image appears with the chilling line, “…or death.” And a beautiful brunette who we ultimately see on the back of Maverick’s motorcycle. There's an inevitable nod to the aviation community today, with a female fighter pilot.

Here’s the thing. Maverick wasn’t made for the aviation enthusiast. We all know that, but we seem to want something more from the movie. We’ll find out in a few months, because we’re all going to see it.

Five models I did not buy on Black Friday

This is something of a companion piece to an article I wrote four years ago, “Five kits I did not buy at the Nats.” I often see conversations about the kits that we buy, so I think it’s interesting to talk about what we did not buy and why.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and quite a few online shops offered a variety of discounts and deals. Some were lackluster (7 percent off -- really?) and others were more enticing (offer me 20 percent and I start looking for my wallet). The traditional highlight of the season, Squadron’s 40 percent sale, no longer excites me now that the threshold for the maximum discount is $500, though in fairness it’s a no-brainer f you and a few friends can compile an order together.

Nonetheless, there were a few sales that prompted me to browse for bargains. I found a few, but I fell short and spent literally nothing over the weekend.

Zoukei-Mura 1/48 F-4C - Try as I might, I couldn’t find a vendor here in the US that has these in stock, so this one was a non-starter.

Zoukei-Mura 1/48 F-4S - Found this at Sprue Brothers. Could have scored one for $60, but it was out of stock.

Trumpeter 1/48 T-38A - I’ve always appreciate the sleek lines of the T-38 and would like to build on in an old school, 1970s white scheme. MegaHobby has it in stock, but I just couldn’t quite pull the trigger knowing that I have too many 1/48 scale models in the stash while my focus has been largely on 1/72 scale. I also learned that the Wolfpack model is slightly more accurate, so there's that, too.

Trumpeter 1/35 BREM-1 - I’ve always had an affinity for Soviet/Russian engineering vehicles. I was thrilled when Trumpeter released their BTM-3 last year, so I've been eager for them to leverage their molds of the BMP-1, T-72, and T-80 to produce respective examples. I was excited to find Trumpeter’s BREM-1 at Squadron, but lo! It was out of stock. So this shall have to wait for another sale or an order from a seller in China or Japan.

Italeri 1/12 Fiat Mefistofele 21706cc - If you’ve seen photos of this model on web sites or Facebook groups, you know it’s an outstanding model. I’m continually tempted to get one, despite it’s heft price tag (around $200), so Black Friday seemed to be a good opportunity to get one at discount. But after a good deal of thought, I decided to wait. I’m not a car modeler, so I’m not sure I can do the kit justice, and, frankly I have many other models in the stash that excite me more. Who knows; maybe I’ll come back to it some day.

I hope you had more luck than me. Happy hunting!