| GeoffQRF | 21 Apr 2013 1:00 p.m. PST |
My (5 year old) son was given a Grafix "British Battle Fighter" for his birthday. It's a clip-together scale model (although what scale it is may be dubious) with some quite nice box art of a Mk IX. I opened the box not quite knowing what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised by what appeared to be a decent plastic kit of a Spitfire. However when we put it together, we discovered the wings can only go on this way….
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 Doms Decals  | 21 Apr 2013 1:06 p.m. PST |
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| GeoffQRF | 21 Apr 2013 1:17 p.m. PST |
I think that is what my daughter would describe as "epic fail" They actually did a decent job of the fuselage shape, and even managed to capture the distinctive elliptical wing… …but mysteriously have managed to reverse the artwork prior to production such that they can only go on backwards! |
| wrgmr1 | 21 Apr 2013 7:51 p.m. PST |
Yes, there seems to be slight problem with the flight characteristics. |
| GeoffQRF | 22 Apr 2013 2:35 a.m. PST |
See, the box looked quite good:
It has niggled at me so much , I have cut the locating tabs back to reverse the wings and am in the process of trimming back the wing roots to see if I can get them to fit the right way round. |
| Doms Decals | 22 Apr 2013 4:56 a.m. PST |
To be fair the box is a straight rip-off of the current Airfix style; that's instant alarm bells for me…. |
| GeoffQRF | 22 Apr 2013 5:30 a.m. PST |
Well roughly so:
…but you would have thought having gone to all the effort of a reasonable representation of the shape of the wings, they could at least have got them the right way round! ;-) Grafix seems to be the house name of RMS International. I've written to them, so let's see what they say :-) |
| Coabeous | 22 Apr 2013 10:41 a.m. PST |
Geoff, yep they got me to, I also picked up the P51 and I am glad to say it does not suffer from the same problems. I offten wonder HOW they could have went all the way with out antone noticeing the wings were backwerds. |
| GeoffQRF | 22 Apr 2013 11:30 a.m. PST |
How reasonably correct is the P-51? |
| GeoffQRF | 23 Apr 2013 1:57 a.m. PST |
Well, credit where credit is due :-) Hi Geoff, thankyou very much for your e-mail regarding the British Battle Fighter. We will pass this information on to our supplier to be corrected for future. I did not realise this myself on inspection, as I have no idea about planes and just assumed the wings were the right way round. Please forward your postal address and I will send a different model from the set of 4 planes. Best regards
Marie Phillips
Quality Technologist
RMS International To be fair to her, I did point out that on inspection of the sprue it appeared to be a reasonable representation of the shape of the wing, and only became evident that they were backwards when trying to assemble it. Needless to say I am trying to reverse the wings, as I just cannot look at a Spitfire (or even a British Battle Fighter') with wings that way round… |
| fernworthy | 23 Apr 2013 4:15 a.m. PST |
Maybe you can convince your friends it was an "experimental"? |
| GeoffQRF | 23 Apr 2013 4:17 a.m. PST |
I couldn't even convince my 5 year old son of that… |
| Fatman | 23 Apr 2013 8:57 a.m. PST |
Obviously he got his brains from his mum, hopefully his looks too! ;-P Fatman |
finds his interest in WWII air-combat gaming has rekindled.
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