EDITORIAL

Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen

Allow me to introduce today’s Newsletter, on

this, the Eve of the Epiphany, marking the first

to be posted for 2022, with the belief that the

year will be a good one, will be successful, and

that all upcoming obstacles will be overcome.

We can probably count on these obstacles being

many. Last year at this time, our forecasts for

the year were not particularly rosy, and the end

result is now plain for all to see. But really, the

year didn’t end up being all that bad. Compared

to the year previous, there was an anticipated

decrease in sales, but it was not as dramatic as

one would have anticipated last January. Sales

dropped by somewhere in the vicinity of five

percentile, and the most heavily hit department,

kit production, fell by thirteen. At the start of

the year, it looked significantly worse, when

kit production dropped by forty percentile right

from the get-go, inventory of plastic sprues was

down to zilch, and rebuilding stock took a lot of

time and energy throughout the balance of the

year. The pre-fire range of our catalog has not

yet fully recovered. Despite that, the last quarter of the year saw an average increase in sales

of twenty percentile over the annual average

of the year before, and last year’s average was

surpassed in terms of the overall market, with

November being the most successful month in

our history with respect to overall sales. So, as

far as I am concerned, things ended up well. Or,

at the very least, with room for much optimism.

We are going into the new year with the goal of

exceeding last year’s output. So… How do we go

about doing that?

New Kits for January

This year picks up where last year left off, with

the Zero. This time around, it’s a ProfiPACK kit

of the A6M2 Type 21. The marking options are

more striking than they were with the Limited

Edition Tora Tora Tora! kit, even though there are

only five options in all. For one thing, they aren’t monotone grey overall, although the one that

is probably the most interesting for us Czechs,

Saburo Sakai’s V-128, is in that scheme. Besides

the brief look at the marking of the aircraft offered in the kit, I can highly recommend a more

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detailed study of the chosen pilots, their aircraft,

and the stories behind them. It is certainly worth

the time! You can take this ProfiPACK kit as a

little teaser for the upcoming Zero themed Limited Edition kit named “Zero Zero Zero!”, which

will feature ten options of fascinating subjects to

choose from. There may even be twelve options,

we are not quite sure yet. The Zero Zero Zero! is

being prepared for the second quarter.

A similar situation will hold true for January’s Z-126 Trener Limited Edition kit. As with the

majority of Limited Edition kits released on the

basis of our own sprues, this will be a Dual

Combo kit, meaning that two complete sets of

plastic will be included. We chose a mix of historical and current subjects for the marking options, and these make a good impression. Truth

be told, I originally had my reservations about

the marking possibilities for this type, but I was

wrong. In fact, there are plenty more interesting

subjects left for future ProfiPACK and Weekend

kits.

There were to have been two Limited Edition releases in January. The second was the Tornado

ECR in 1:48th scale, built around the Revell kit.

However, we ran into a little stumbling block that

was for us an issue, but turns out to be a bit of a

bonus for you. We figured on a larger sheet, approaching the European A4 format (roughly corresponding to North America’s 8.5 x 11”), along

with a smaller sheet to cover stencil data. As it

turns out, there are actually three sheets, and

each approaches A3 format (roughly 11 x 16” for

you North Americans). As if that weren’t enough,

the mask sheets that are included are also considerably larger than originally planned. It’s not

only larger, but it’s also quite complex. So complex that its production had to be delayed due

to the failure of one of our cutting plotters. The

bottom line is that both of these kit components

were delayed in production and the kit release

has been moved to February. I would see this all

as fairly good news for modelers. The bad news

is that the production cost of the kit went up, but

we raised the retail on it by the amount of the

production cost increase only, meaning that the

Tornado still presents a great value.

In January, we also have two new Weekend kits

coming out. These are the Spitfire Mk.Ia and the

MiG-21SMT, both in 1:48th scale. We are also releasing a re-edition of the recently sold-out P-51D-5 Mustang Weekend kit, and the ProfiPACK

MiG-15bis in 1:72nd. The latter represents a revival of the MiG-15 line in 72nd scale in our range.

This has prompted the question as to whether or

not we plan on ever releasing the subject in 48th

scale, and the answer is yes, we will. At some

point...

January Accessories

As a direct result of the original intention of releasing the 48th scale Tornado ECR this month,

we have several accessory items coming out

for it first. As mentioned earlier, the actual kit

is now slated for February. The correspondingly

delayed release of its accessory items too would

have meant absolute chaos within our system of

notifying retailers of new items, and simply was

not an option. It is built on the grounds of the release of complete tables listing all new releases

for retailers, a part of which also includes the

release of the Distributor Newsletter, which

many modelers download from our site as well

to get a six week advanced notice of what’s coming down the pipes. At the moment when I

decided for the postponement of the release of

the Tornado ECR kit to February, the corresponding changes to these tables would have created

massive chaos and a delay of detailed information for retailers. For this reason, we avoided

changing the release schedule of these accessory items, despite the resulting minor confusion in the release sequence of them. I believe that

our reasons are understandable.

The Brassin lineup is extraordinary this month,

because the majority of them, six out of the

eleven, are 3D printed, while only five are cast

resin. This is the first time this has happened,

and is set to become the norm. It will have to

wait till after February, though, because our 3D

printing capacity will need to be dedicated to the

printed production of parts for the USS Arizona

INFO Eduard - January 2022