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Good day, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Sometimes I get lucky and write these
editorials in an interesting place, and this
is one of those times. I am writing the June
newsletter editorial during the first weekend
of June at Bublava in the Ore Mountains, at
a police recreation center where this year's Iron
Bunny competition is taking place. This time, the
competition teams are building our 48th scale
P-51B Mustang. In addition to the kit, they also
have a number of accessories available to them,
including the engine, and the usual 24 hour
allowance of hard work to present their efforts.
Those of you who watched this year's Iron Bunny
on the live stream from Bublava know the
winner, something I personally won’t find out
til Monday, when this newsletter comes out, but
at the moment, I am in the dark regarding the
winner. It’s been raining heavily here steadily
and the meteorologists' warnings of heavy
downpours and possible flooding are coming
true. This year, Iron Bunny is an even bigger
adventure than usual!
When I left for Bublava on Friday, we were
testing what should be the next-to-last mold
for the 1:72nd scale P-51D Mustang, the mold
with the fuselage and wings. On the first try, we
received a complete set of plastic, to the general
joy of the upper floors of the company, where
the designers who needed to verify the accuracy
of photoetched and decal designs were waiting
for these pressings. While the decal for the
first edition 1:72 P-51D, Royal Class kit is based
on the 1:48th scale Royal Class release, and
the 72nd scale kit design is based on the 1:48
kit design, that still doesn't mean we can just
scale the 1/48th scale item down and run with
it like a banshee. With the moldings in hand, we
can be sure of the accuracy of the design, and
the decals, photoetched and masks can go into
production this week. At the same time, we sent
the moldings to Omask so that they could verify
the design of the plugs used for masking off the
wheel wells for painting. These will be a part
of the Royal Class package. The final mold will
be going on the press this week, with the small
parts, and if all goes well, we will be packing the
Royal Class kits next week and starting to ship
them to customers in the second half of June.
The logistics surrounding the realization of
a new kit is complex, the processes follow each
other very precisely and we are pleased to have
it tuned in such a way that it usually works
precisely and reliably for us. Of course, it is not
without cost and the whole process carries with
it a lot of stress and tension. Major screwups
and delays are rare, but they do happen.
We just got over one of those little gems. Moldings
for June’s release of the B-26F/G Marauder in
1:72nd scale left the Shimitz port near Shizuoka
at the end of February. It normally takes six
weeks for cargo ships to sail from Japan to
Europe, this time our ship sailed twice as long
thanks to the attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on
cargo ships at the entrance to the Red Sea. A lot
of maritime traffic is diverted along a route that
circumnavigates Africa, making it longer and
more expensive. Our Marauders have endured
exactly that fate. To make matters worse,
after the truck's arrival in the Czech Republic,
the shipment was stopped by Czech customs
officials, who inspected it and thus delayed
the delivery of the pressings for another week.
As a result, boxes with ready-made components
were waiting for the plastic until May 27th, and
several dozen incomplete shipments were also
waiting for dealers from all over the world. The
result of the whole sh*tshow was that we did not
start sending shipments until May 28th, instead
of May 15th, which would’ve been our standard-
procedure date to send out new releases for
June. It sounds like a fun story, but in our setup,
where we pack and ship an average of eighty
new items a month, a delay of even a single
item means a stop sign for all shipments. We do
prepare them as far as we can, but most orders
wait to ship til they are complete. Of course, it
depends on the type of item being held. If it's
a mask or a small piece of PE, for example, some
people opt to have it sent to them a month later.
On the other hand, you probably understand that
the production of masks or small PE items don’t
generally suffer delays at our end. However, an
item like the Marauder, which has the highest
sales numbers of any June release by a wide
margin, has significantly higher destructive
potential if any of its many components fail to
show at the right place at the right time. And
man, was that ever the case with the Marauder!
Almost 100% of orders were waiting for the
Marauder and our business completely froze for
two weeks. So if they don't have Marauders in
your store yet, please be patient and hold out for
a few days. They are definitely on their way and
they will definitely arrive. The Houthis should no
longer play any role in their delivery.
Coincidentally, on the same day as the sprues
for the Marauders, the plastic for the 72nd scale
Delfin arrived. They flew in by plane and there
were no tricks associated with their arrival.
This makes the Delfin another of the kits that
have returned to the range after our fire in 2020.
Another item is making a comeback today, the
Adlerangriff 1/32, a Limited Edition kit dedicated
to the Bf 109 E during the Battle of Britain. Some
time ago, we mistakenly advertised its return
to our range on Facebook, but unfortunately
we did not have all the components ready at
that time. On top of that, we needed to abandon
the injection molding queue due to the high
demands imposed by the new P-51B. We've
churned out 16,000 sets for the Royal Class and
the Limited Edition ‘The D
-
Day Mustangs’ kit, but
we're scraping the bottom of the barrel again
and need to produce more for the August P-51B
Profipack release. We made modifications to the
mold to prevent that mysterious bending of the
center strut above the wheel well. I hope this
solves that tricky anomoly.
Among June new releases there are, as usual,
interesting pieces, whether it is the 72nd Bf 109
G-6 in the Profipack line, the 48th Spitfire Mk.Vb
in a special sub-edition of the Weekend series
dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Operation
Overlord, or the reissue of the 48th Profipack
Fw 190 A-2. Among the new Brassin products,
you will find a collection of kits for the P-51B
EDITORIAL
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