From MM: "Hasegawa has announced a 30% price increase on all products after 1 September. Tamiya is likely to follow suit, but by how much is so far unknown. This is from the manufacturer and not the importer or distributors."
The unthinkable is about to happen. I'm going to have to start building the stuff in my stash.
mmm. I think we all have more than enough to weather this storm.. Hasegawa prices were already too high. Noticed on one site that the Tamiya Staghound increased almost $10. Took that one off my wish list after that. $64.00 for the Staghound? Will be interesting to watch when even the average subject goes for Trumpeter prices...
Let's see...40+ year old molds, reboxed at ever higher prices every year...with last year's sold at half off at a lot of brick&mortars...not to mention 10-20 year old issues going for under
10 bucks on ebay...Will Hasegawa even be in business in 5 years? Will anyone with a stash of over a dozen notice? I think they don't really wanna be in the biz anymore...
Well this means I have to get just a couple of more kit's by then.
What it really means is that the brick and mortar stores are really gonna be hurting...... My favorite store closed up last year, there is only one really well stocked store left, and it's an hour away. Gas being what it is, Squadron Shop has been and will be even more important now...
Looks like I had better get the Tamiya 1/32 F 16 sooner than later
I'm not surprised. Plastic is made from oil and raw plastic prices have at least doubled, and sometimes tripled. It's not the major cost component of most productes, but I suspect plastic model kits are the exception. (assuming they already amortized the cost of the molds)
As for buying, I got very selective a few years ago, because my backlog and rate of building were getting too far beyond my probable lifespan. :-)
At the risk of sounding contrary, I for one am grateful for Hasegawa kits, especially the ones coming out lately. Their newer kits are beautiful and a pleasure to build (especially considering Trumpeter's approach to engineering and pricing), at least for me.
Everything is more expensive these days. I'm just extremely thankful there are good companies today willing to produce high quality kits that allow me to continue to enjoy this great hobby.
Disagree with that. The plastic material in even the biggest kit can only cost a dollar or two. The price of the kit is based on the development, the production of the moulds, the packaging and the distribution. The raw material is a miniscule part so even though it is oil based, even doubling it would simply add an extra dollar or two - not 30%
The Tamiya Staghound isn't Tamiya anyway. It's just a rebox of the new (and mediocre) Italeri kit with three Tamiya figures from the most recent reissue of the Universal Carrier kit thrown in. Just get the Bronco kit. It's a better effort and a much better value for money (especially if you get it from Lucky Model or one of the other Far East online dealers). Gerald Owens
I agree partly with the sentiments of almost everyone posting in this thread. I also think the price increase is due, because on the one hand there are government-sponsored inflation, while on the other there are government-fixed exchange rates.
Whether the price increase is going to be appreciated or not, it is no doubt a simple fact of economics. Whether the hobby will remain profitable enough for the existing companies to manage to stay afloat time will tell. And there is room for new companies to produce cheaper goods if that is what people want. I suspect though that those of us fortunate to live in countries where we can afford the luxury of building kits at all, that most of us are unwilling to give up the standards set. Only technological improvements can reduce prices and make it cheaper to produce kits, but I think those improvements are not enough to cover the huge development costs quite yet. Maybe improvements in the internet and computing platforms would help, at the moment it is not at all easy to do anything that requires multiple languages for example.
Well we all knew that the high oil prices would eventually spill over into kit prices. And while it is not just the cost of plastic its Transportation, energy costs, and all of the other costs we don't see like marketing etc. that have gone up to them. Now having said all of that and sounding sympathetic to the model companies, what I really think is, they are doing it "because they can". Take this into consideration "why does Trumpeter charge some of the highest prices of any company and yet should have the lowest cost"? Hell I bet more than half of there employees get to work on bikes. For being just recently Communists they learned Capitalism pretty fast. They (Tamiya, Hasegawa etc.) saw us buy those kits and figured out "Hey why not me". So we are our own worse enemy.
snipped-for-privacy@cox.net wrote: : : Take this into : consideration "why does Trumpeter charge some of the highest prices of : any company and yet should have the lowest cost"? : I will lay the majority of the blame at the doorstep of Stephens Enterprises.
Dragon does this with the Tasca kits (how else do you explain the $100 Sherman kit that competes with DML's offering?), MMD/ Squander did it with Accurate Armour kits, MPC is doing it with Fujimi, and they did it when they imported Tamiya.
I figure it's simply a case of Tamigawa seeing the outrageous prices being asked by Trumpeter and figuring "if they can do it so can we"! I doubt the price of oil has effected the cost of the kit, the cost of shipping, maybe.
That may be so, but I visited my brick 'n' mortar yesterday morning after my monthly retirement breakfast and found his shelves to be nearly bare of kits. The model railroad stuff, the RCs, the model rockets and the collectables are all fully stocked, but not the plastic. I asked one of the clerks and he told me that his boss (one of the owners) is trying to find more affordable suppliers.
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