"Why the sudden explosion of plastic manufacturers?" Topic

Margard – "Well, Tamiya have been making 1/35 scale military models for years, so I see no reason why 1/56 scale wouldn't work."

Can't see it… Tamiya already makes very decently priced 1/48 WWII armor and has been steadily expanding that line, I think they will be sticking to that instead of paralleling yet another scale in WWII armor that is so similar.

I would imagine that like most things there was a coming together of favorable circumstances; increasing metal prices, improving technology, ability to outsource manufacturing, mould prices reducing etc. I also would imagine that once one manufacturer started, they all had to get on the band waggon lest they get left behind.

It would be interesting to see what effect, for example, Perry's plastic Napoleonic British have had on the comparable lead ranges of other manufacturers.

Marketability is a key factor. Plastic figures come in a box that can be shipped easily and displayed easily on shelves in a store. In comparison, metal figures are poorly packaged and blister packs are difficult to display.
So plastic figures are likely to be far more acceptable to hobby shop distributors and stores.
I can visit the local games shop during my lunch break and buy plastics. The shop won't stock metals in blisters even those made by the same manufacturer as they are too hard to display, usually have swords and shields missing, and there is a different small pack containing 3 or 4 figures for each troop type. It is far simpler for a shop to order 20 boxes of Generic Troop Type plastics, rather 3 packs of this metal, 6 of that, 12 of this, 12 of that etc. And shops don't get stuck with odd blisters.
Plastic figures usually have local distributors which are a phone call away and deliver same week, whereas metals usually need to be sourced from a maufacturer overseas who can't deliver for a month or two.

And shops don't get stuck with odd blisters.

No, they get stuck with lots of boxes. Ever walked into an independent toy store and found mounds of unsold plastics, with a shop owner vowing never to order them again. I have.

There is no reason why metal figures can't be sold in attractive boxes, not blisters. And some manufacturers have done so.

Ever walked into an independent toy store and found mounds of unsold plastics, with a shop owner vowing never to order them again. I have.

Not yet, but then the local shop owner knew about the anatomical deficiencies of some brands, so didn't order anything that would not sell.

Not quite but I've been into a store that had a table groaning under the weight of massively discounted, excess stocks of WF plastics.

Metal is a small percentage of the total cost. While it is undoubtably a part of the total cost, the other 95% is made up of wages ( UK minimum wage now £5.93 GBP/$9.56 per hour ) utilities ( link ) , rent, transport, etc, etc, etc. We've looked at cheaper alternative materials such as resin, and concluded that it might affect the final price by a few pennies, but not a lot ( particularly resin, as the failure rate is higher and reusability of material is out meaning labour costs are increased ) .

the local shop owner knew about the anatomical deficiencies of some brands, so didn't order anything that would not sell

Hence you may see the 'bread and butter' models of Shermans, T34s, etc in plastic, but are unlikely to see the more obscure items. However it is those same bread and butter items that fund the more obscure items, which would mean metal manufacturers either do something else, or charge enough to recover the costs…

Plastics are here because CAD techniques, rapid prototyping and tooling costs have come down from astronomical to just very expensive, putting them in the upper end investment market. Yes, it may be 'his choice' but it's still a higher risk investment. The next 5 years will indeed be interesting as those same manufacturers try hard to recoup their initial outlay investments. Some may succeed, many will fail. What will be interesting is to see what's left of the market at the end.

Hi Malandro – I'm really interested to know what store that is? We've been having a devil of a time keeping up with restocks from all of our retailers and distributors.

Thanks,
Tony

Tony Reidy
Wargames Factory
wargamesfactory.com

Me too! Hard as blazes to keep them up at my local!

It was a branch of Mind Games in Melbourne. They must have had 50 or more of the polythene wrapped packs. Ancients, zombies, Zulus etc etc. All drastically reduced in price to clear. Overstock? Whatever. Most of them were still there when I popped in a fortnight later. And at the risk of sounding catty, even the thrifty part of my nature wasn't tempted.

This one?

link

I don't see any discounts at all?

Hi Malandro, I sell the plastics to Mind Games (they are one of my biggest accounts) They have no Zombies no Zulus and only small amounts of other sets and to top it off keep reordering WGF saxons with almost every order. I talk to John (the guy who runs the wargames section) every week and look after his stock. In the 2 years I have been selling to Mind Games they have moved over a 1000 plastic kits.

Ian
War and Peace Games

Well gentleman, I can only faithfully report what I saw, a few months ago. A table covered in WF plastics, that did contain Zulus, that did contain Zombies, was mostly Ancient Germans, Numidians and Celts IIRC. Packets were on sale at about half to 2/3rds of the prices listed on their website.

I know they had Zulus becuase I looked at the figures to see if any of the heads would be useful for a project I'm doing. I know they had the Zombies because I remember thinking that those were the best of the lot but I had no use for them.

Ian if you are saying you have never sold WF Zombies or Zulus to Mind Games, then I suggest they must have sourced them elsewhere. I saw what I saw. The clear polythene bags with multiple sprues inside.

The last time I looked they were gone, replaced by sale items like the Battlefront(?) or is it GW prepainted river sections, modular hills, pine trees etc so maybe John has shifted them.

Mind Games is not somewhere I frequent all that often even when I am in Melbourne. I saw them, they were there and were still there a few weeks later.

I don't have any reason to make this stuff up gents.

Plastics? To each their own but if this was a plastics hobby I wouldn't be in it. I love the heft of the metal figures.

I've spent a year selling a deceased friends collection on behalf of his family (100 file boxes of stuff) and the plastics have basically zero resale value and most of them were given to charity or just given, the balance is likely to end up in the trash (with how many thousands of years of decaying half life?). The metal? Even the worst of it has some resale value and the unsellable stuff (broken off legs, bases, etc) can certainly be melted down and recast.

A few years ago my elder sister, who looks askance at my hobby, asked me what would happen to my figures. I told her I harbored a hope that the various collections would be handed down from one generation to the next and that their is the real possibility that some of the figures may still be extant in the world a thousand or more years after my bones have shrivelled to dust on the wind. She was duly impressed that what I said had truth – witness only what's come out of the tombs of the pharaohs.

What's the oldest plastic item on the planet? (Purists sit down, I know there are different ways of interpretation. Same as the argument glass is, in fact, a liquid. Not germaine to this discussion, really.)

Metal forever! And as we age we just need go down and scale and switch to light skirmish figures to be able to portage them about.

Make you feel better, Geoffrey? : )

Early,

if you've got plastics that need a home, shoot me a PM.

I know a high school teacher in CA who teaches students who are overwhelmingly qualified as "disadvantaged." My pal runs the school's wargames club, and has already given good homes to many hundreds of my own redundant metal and plastic figures.

If you want to find a good home for whatever you feel has no monetary value, contact me by PM.

Leland R. Erickson

You need to sell 1 million boxes to break even on a plastic mould?

If that's the case then no one has ever broken even.

I simply can believe that any box of plastic minis can sell a million copies.

"You need to sell 1 million boxes to break even on a plastic mould?

If that's the case then no one has ever broken even.

I simply can believe that any box of plastic minis can sell a million copies."

That number I cited was over 20 years ago, and it was in the context of speaking to a rep for Revell and specifically referring to a typical 1/48 scale aircraft kit.

As others have pointed out above, thanks to improvements in technology including CAD systems, it's now cheaper at the tooling cost end of things for making plastics.

And yes, Revell used to sell a million units per new release consistently enough to have been one of the biggest producers of plastic model aircraft and other kits for much of my lifetime, and they're still in existence today. Model airplane buffs can be nearly as obsessed in their own special way as wargamers, especially when they decide they want to build every variant of the same aircraft, and there were a dozen variants, and while I'm at it, I want to do some of the Lend-Lease aircraft we supplied to the Dutch, RAF, Aussies, and the Russians too!

Leland R. Erickson