paints up some WWII Soviet aircraft.
Hellcat
As everyone knows, the Hellcat from the Base Set is strangely sized — it's a little bit too big and a little bit too long. It’s especially strange since the first versions I saw of the Hellcat were all the right size. In fact, I remember playtesting with an unpainted early sculpt that had the correct dimensions. The photo that Bob posted a while back was of one of these early unpainted models, and not a fixed version.
When we got the first batch of finished product from the factory (we always check the first few boosters off the production line for collation issues), we immediately noticed that the Hellcat was wrong. At this point, full production was already just underway. We thought that we could fix it as a "running change" and that a corrected version would appear in a large percentage of the finished boxed product. It seems, however, that this was not the case, and that no versions of a finished, correctly sized Hellcat made it to stores.
As such, if you buy a Twin-Pack Starter, and the Hellcat is your rare in the Base Set Booster therein, it will not be a new corrected version.
There are no current plans to "reprint" the Hellcat. It could potentially appear in a future set, but this is speculation on my part.
Spitfire
The Spitfire in the D-Day set is unfortunately a Messerschmitt Bf109E from the Contested Skies set painted in British colors. We took a lot of flak on the boards for this mistake and rightly so. Some people posted on the boards that we used a Messerschmitt mold just to save money. This is not the case. It was just a mistake — albeit a mistake of colossal proportions.
Sculpting started on the Spitfire during the Contested Skies set (incidentally, at the same time as the Messerschmitt), because we knew we wanted to use a photo of it on the packaging for the D-Day set. For each set, these packaging minis are always produced with the previous expansion so that paint masters exist by the time we need to print the packaging. In fact, you can see a photo of the Spitfire paint master on the side panel of those boosters.
A correct Spitfire was modeled and approved. However, during final tooling, the factory made a mistake and used the Messerschmitt sculpt (which was being tooled at the same time) and applied the Spitfire paint scheme to it. Although clearly different, they do look similar. We didn't notice that the sculpt had been switched, since, at that late stage, we're predominantly checking for paint issues.
This is particularly frustrating for us, since a correct Spitfire sculpt exists. I was personally very excited when I found out it was to be included in the D-Day set (us Brits have a soft spot for the Spitfire), so to find out about a last-minute mistake like this was extremely disappointing. Everyone on the AAM team is extremely sorry about the Spitfire. We've instituted an extra step in our QC process as a result of this mistake.
There are no definitive plans on what we're going to do next with the Spitfire. There is a chance that it might be released as a promo, or included in a future expansion. This is still being discussed internally and again is just speculation on my part at this time. In the mean time, if any of you still feel dissatisfied, please feel free to send in your Spitfire with its stat card to our Customer Service department. They will replace the Spitfire with a random rare.
On behalf of the AAM team, I'd like to apologize for the mistakes on the Hellcat and the Spitfire.