Editorial
Good day, Ladies and Gentlemen!
With July and the start of the latter half of the year, we can proudly say that we have achieved our set goals. What we planned for the first half of the year, we put into production and made available. During the last two weeks of June, we shipped all the preordered P-51D Mustang Royal Class kits. With this item, we have inaugurated the 72nd series of Mustang kits. It will largely copy the 48th scale line of Mustangs, but it won't be strictly a downsized version. The Limited Edition version ‘Aces of the Eighth’ is slated and on time for August, which carries over some specific aircraft from the various 48th P-51 releases, but also offers new options that have not been components previously. Of course, this will also have a bearing on the color profiles in future 72nd scale Profipack and Weekend items.
We launched the Mustangs, both the new P-51D 1:72nd and the P-51B in 1:48th released in May, last Saturday, June 29th, at the airport in Líne in the company of a live Mustang, the P-51D ‘Little Rebel’, which in the Line hangar was recently replaced by a Spitfire Mk.IX. Those who were in Líne on Saturday will certainly not regret it, we enjoyed a pleasant and relaxing aviation themed morning and learned a lot about the Mustang and other aircraft. And those who weren't in Líne can take a look at the photo report in this issue of our current newsletter below. It was already the third such event that we organized in cooperation with the Classic Trainers Association, and I'm sure it wasn't the last.
We also launched the preorder of the 48th B-17F, ‘The Bloody Hundred 1943’ Limited Edition kit in June. This is actually a new item for August, currently sold out here. However, this does not mean that this kit will not be available. A large part of the shipment was bought by retailers who will continue to sell this kit for some time. But as an item offered through our e-shop, this piece is gone. As of today, we are missing the core item to box all of our B-17Fs, that being the plastic. The bulk of these, some 4,800 complete sets, are traveling by train and are already in Poland. We have the rest of the components that make up the kit, and once the plastic arrives, we will package the kits and send them out to those that preordered around July 15th. In the second half of July, we will ship the B-17s together with August new releases to retailers. The delivered by air portion of the plastic, some three hundred sets, is already in our warehouse as of the end of last week. We will also pack these up this week and send them to the States. ‘The Bloody Hundredth 1943’ will then go on sale for the first time at the IPMS Nationals 2024 in Madison, Wisconsin, July 17-20, along with other August items.
The most common question when launching a new kit is ‘what's next?. What other versions are you going to release?’ There are also cases where someone in the middle of a Mustang discussion asks when we will release the MiG-21F, but it is, of course, perfectly legitimate to ask about other versions of the Mustang along with other types of aircraft. Then, sometime around the third or fourth incarnation of a specific theme, another type of debater appears, who will start ranting about another uninteresting and completely unnecessary Messerschmitt or Spitfire and demand, in the stream of a perceived boredom, the release of something ‘interesting’, such as a KB-3 Chuchuliga, or at least a Shorts Tucano. I have to disappoint these folks, they will have to accept that we are a mainstream company and they will have to look for such types from someone else. There are many manufacturers of high-quality construction kits on the market today, so they will surely see not only the Tucano, which is already on the market, but also the legendary Chuchuliga. As for our next step with the Mustang, the P-51B in 1:48th, we will release the first Profipack of the P-51B with the original canopy, and then, also as a Profipack, the filleted P-51B/C at E-day. There, things get a little tricky with marking options, since there is no clear division between filleted and nonfilleted P-51Bs and Cs. Both had or did not have the fillet. In the end, it's the same for canopies, so the labeling of specific boxings for B-type Mustangs will probably be a bit of a pain in the ass. The last of the Profipacks, the B version with the Malcolm hood, will be released in the middle of next year, and then we will deal with the Weekends and possibly other Limited Edition releases. It will be similar for the 72nd scale Ds, the first Limited Edition kit, ‘Aces of the Eighth’, is also scheduled to be released in August, followed by a Profipack P-51D-5 in November and a D-10 in January of next year. Further little Ds will gradually be released through more Limited Edition kits and will basically mirror the 48th scale versions.
There are also inquiries about other versions of the B-17. We are counting on those, but we'll let you rest for a while. The B-17 is a big plane, after all, and the kit is also big and above all, pretty pricey, so give it at least a year or two of peace and other projects won't hurt the budget quite so much. In any case, we want to continue the history of the 100th BG with a B-17G kit, and we also want to release B-17Fs and B-17Gs that will cover the entire 8th Air Force. We also want to continue working with HKM, so some B-25 Mitchell and Lancaster projects are beginning to take shape. A TBH 1943 release in a different scale is also not out of the question. It's certainly within our power to release a 72nd scale version, but technically a 32nd scale item is also possible.
Another frequent question is about the development status of the P-40E Warhawk kit. The Warhawk is currently with the technologists, the development of the molds is underway, as well as minor modifications to the structure so that it optimally corresponds to the technological parameters of the actual airplane. I am assuming that the second half of July will see the first molds, and on E-day at the end of September, the plastic will be available for viewing. At that time, the plastic will not be complete, I think we might have three or four sprues out of a total of six, but that will change quickly and in November at Telford we might be introducing the complete kit and selling it in ‘pre-production’ form in white boxes, similar to how we did the Mustangs at Easter in Prostějov.
In addition to the P-40E, we are working on other projects. Work continues on molds for other versions of the Zero, the A6M5, A6M7 and the two-seat A6M2-K, as well as molds for the MiG-21F. Both are projects for next year, the Zekes will be introduced in the first half of next year, the MiG-21F in the second half of next year. Absolutely no need to worry about us abandoning these projects.
And that will be it with my summarizing current and future projects. I hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter, and happy reading!
Keep on modelling!
Vladimir Sulc