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Hasegawa newsletters 2021 - 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11 & 12


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On 1/9/2021 at 4:35 PM, Jackman said:

Hasegawa would make a killing if only they'd scale up their 1/72 F-111s to 1/48.  And another killing if they'd scale down their wonderful 1/48 Skyhawks to 1/72.

 

A new tool 1/72 Neptune would also go a long way too. If they can re-tool their ancient 1/72 IJN Emily, they can re-tool their old Neptunes.

 

Sigh, Hasegawa, why are you sitting around, letting other people eat your lunch? As Tyas above noted, it's getting hard to get excited about Hasegawa's 'new' releases anymore. 🥱

Hasegawa does not seem to be too overly excited about tackling worldwide market these days. This is evident by just looking at their instruction manuals.

Now, I have experiences with Hase's older, popular models (by which I mean their F-14 kits). The instructions in English are done properly, with proper translation. Easy to understand. Things are still pretty good with their Super Hornet kits (which is also rather popular). But a glance at their latest release (the 240Z kit with chin spoiler, for example), and it is easy that they could not be bothered. Whatever English there on the instruction is clearly done by machine translators and was not proofread by translators. Hard to comprehend.

I don't blame them from concentrating on local markets, they just don't have the monetary power of Tamiya. It's just a shame that this might going to make it harder for me to get things like new F-14 liveries that aren't VF-84/VF-103s or more Typhoon FGR.4s.

And the rumour of 1/72nd F-22A of their own tooling has long disappeared from radar (pun very obviously intended). Pity.

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On 1/9/2021 at 9:35 AM, Jackman said:

Hasegawa would make a killing if only they'd scale up their 1/72 F-111s to 1/48.  And another killing if they'd scale down their wonderful 1/48 Skyhawks to 1/72.

 

A new tool 1/72 Neptune would also go a long way too. If they can re-tool their ancient 1/72 IJN Emily, they can re-tool their old Neptunes.

 

Sigh, Hasegawa, why are you sitting around, letting other people eat your lunch? As Tyas above noted, it's getting hard to get excited about Hasegawa's 'new' releases anymore. 🥱

How I wish they would re-tool their P-3 Orion!

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23 hours ago, Tyas said:

 But a glance at their latest release (the 240Z kit with chin spoiler, for example), and it is easy that they could not be bothered. Whatever English there on the instruction is clearly done by machine translators and was not proofread by translators. Hard to comprehend.
 

 

I think some Hasegawa kits are only aimed for and sold in their domestic market.

Most of their JASDF aircrafts boxings (special edition in particular) are designed and named in Japanese (see the box side).

For this kind of kits, yes, english translation is very basic.

 

14 hours ago, dreamwriter said:

How I wish they would re-tool their P-3 Orion!

 

Hasegawa P-3 have raised panel lines, so a re-tool isn't possible.

New mold for a 1/72 P-3 is highly unlikely.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Web99 said:

Really wish they’d of carried on with the raptor because the 48th one is spot on, it was just the raised details being too heavy. 

 

Hasegawa is japanese importer for Revell, who got a 1/72 F-22.

So they know perfectly how much a 1/72 F-22 people buy in Japan.

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9 hours ago, plasticguy said:

 

I think some Hasegawa kits are only aimed for and sold in their domestic market.

Most of their JASDF aircrafts boxings (special edition in particular) are designed and named in Japanese (see the box side).

For this kind of kits, yes, english translation is very basic.

 

 

Hasegawa P-3 have raised panel lines, so a re-tool isn't possible.

New mold for a 1/72 P-3 is highly unlikely.

 

 

 

Hasegawa is japanese importer for Revell, who got a 1/72 F-22.

So they know perfectly how much a 1/72 F-22 people buy in Japan.

The Emily also had raised panel lines and they retooled it.

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3 hours ago, dreamwriter said:

The Emily also had raised panel lines and they retooled it.

Not really. Retool implies they changed an existing mold. The Emily kit released in 2017 was completely new, and had nothing to do with the 1960s Emily. 

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17 hours ago, Asmodai said:

Not really. Retool implies they changed an existing mold. The Emily kit released in 2017 was completely new, and had nothing to do with the 1960s Emily. 

Yes I know, re-tool might not have been the appropriate word. What I meant is, if they did a new Emily kit, more detailed and engraved lines, then they can do the same for the P-3 Orion or the Neptune.

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The main difference is the Emily is a Japanese produced plane, used by the Japanese military. Not something ‘borrowed’ like the Neptune and Orion. Thus, the new Emily may make much more sense when considering Hasegawa’s primary interest these days seems to be serving the home market alone. Other than reboxings, they seem to have largely abandoned aircraft models the last few years in favor of autos and sci-fi. 

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  • Homebee changed the title to Hasegawa newsletters 2021 - 01, 02, 03, 04 & 05

The Japanese schemes look good but the F-14A l remember from way back and not sure why it is a 'new product' and not a 'resale'.

 

Regards

Robert

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I have to wonder how much Hasegawa’s lack of new product is related to the Hobbico bankruptcy in the US. Hobbico was Hasegawa’s US distributor and when they went under they owed Hasegawa over $1 million. As an unsecured creditor, Hasegawa would have gotten little or, most likely, none of the money that was owed. As people have noted , Hasegawa is not a big company so that would have been a major financial hit and would have constrained what they could do in terms of new kits.

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2 hours ago, VMA131Marine said:

I have to wonder how much Hasegawa’s lack of new product is related to the Hobbico bankruptcy in the US. Hobbico was Hasegawa’s US distributor and when they went under they owed Hasegawa over $1 million. As an unsecured creditor, Hasegawa would have gotten little or, most likely, none of the money that was owed. As people have noted , Hasegawa is not a big company so that would have been a major financial hit and would have constrained what they could do in terms of new kits.

This I just heard about now. No, seriously, I didn't know about that one.

No wonder I can no longer access Hasegawa's USA page last year. If they owed Hase about $1million, that would hit Hase real hard. Makes sense if they decided to concentrate on Japanese market plus some kits that they know would still make sales like the MV-22, F-35 or (sigh) Jolly Rogers-liveried F-14s...

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6 hours ago, VMA131Marine said:

I have to wonder how much Hasegawa’s lack of new product is related to the Hobbico bankruptcy in the US. Hobbico was Hasegawa’s US distributor and when they went under they owed Hasegawa over $1 million. As an unsecured creditor, Hasegawa would have gotten little or, most likely, none of the money that was owed. As people have noted , Hasegawa is not a big company so that would have been a major financial hit and would have constrained what they could do in terms of new kits.

that of course is sad to hear, but I fear more common than you think. Always remains the question of why having someone pile up so much dept....

 

kind of a vicious circle unfortunatly....  ....this new insight does not make it easier for me to buy kits from Hasegawa that interest me.. because those are rarely released and difficult to get hold of in they are .. and expensive here in Europe :(

good luck!

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It was change of menagement in 2008/9 that tilted the company away from aircraft to mix of Japanese centered subjects, not to mention huge price hike at the time ( 50%)+ no so good trade policies ( linked purchases) , to top it all , after "rubicon" of 2009, they had some big flops like Su-27/35+F-22, what is astounding is that they are incapable of issuing back some (even today )superb toolings, instead selling them to other brands for substantially higher final price.

 

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19 hours ago, Thomas V. said:

It was change of menagement in 2008/9 that tilted the company away from aircraft to mix of Japanese centered subjects, not to mention huge price hike at the time ( 50%)+ no so good trade policies ( linked purchases) , to top it all , after "rubicon" of 2009, they had some big flops like Su-27/35+F-22, what is astounding is that they are incapable of issuing back some (even today )superb toolings, instead selling them to other brands for substantially higher final price.

 

 

Really?

They used to lend some moulds for others brands, typically Revell.

They do the same now with those eastern european brands like Eduard and Hobby 2000, not a new trend.

It's not a matter of be unable to reissue a kit, it's a matter of schedulde, those mould aren't used by hasegawa, so they lended them to others brands.

 

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I do not zhi

45 minutes ago, plasticguy said:

 

It's not a matter of be unable to reissue a kit, it's a matter of schedulde, those mould aren't used by hasegawa, so they lended them to others brands.

 

I do not think they lend / hire the tools, they just sell a fixed number of packed sprues without decals, instructions or a box .

Quite a safe, risk free business.

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On 3/6/2021 at 3:46 PM, Thomas V. said:

It was change of menagement in 2008/9 that tilted the company away from aircraft to mix of Japanese centered subjects, not to mention huge price hike at the time ( 50%)+ no so good trade policies ( linked purchases) , to top it all , after "rubicon" of 2009, they had some big flops like Su-27/35+F-22, what is astounding is that they are incapable of issuing back some (even today )superb toolings, instead selling them to other brands for substantially higher final price.

 

Don't forget this

In their 1/72 catalogue they have/had:

F-16A

F-16B

F-16C

F-16C Block 50/52

F-16D

F-16I

F-16N

YF-16CCV

 

Excluding the F-16I with the very ad nausem set of decals which can be found everywhere, all kits never received other decal options, all F-16ADF are limited edition variants, ditto for everything they did with AM/BM/E/F variants, it's the same for their F-15J with MSIP parts, USAF specific MSIP parts can be found only on Ace Combat reboxes and F-15E. When Hasegawa upgraded the F-15E they first released a bunch of F-15E reboxes luring people into thinking that they had the upgraded parts, for example they released three different F-15E The Idolm@ster boxes, last one basically a month(?) before releasing the upgrade F-15E on their catalogue yet it did not contain upgraded parts, IDF F-15 same thing, basic kit with extra sprue parts taken from old tooling and resin parts for everything else, then another rebox that finally contains a new set of nozzles, two IDF specific pylons, the rest it's from the upgraded package, now I know that Bethesda loves to re-re-re-release Skyrim multiple times on Steam, but it's a crappy game good only for sexy mod and I do understand why people buys it, but I don't understand why Hasegawa forced people to double-dip this much for their Eagles. They are doing this since ages, a certain F-16A box has extra Wolfpack markings that didn't make the cut on the D or series boxes, said markings were never to be seen again on any kind of rebox that Hasegawa did, luckily Superscale covered them or at least they tried.

 

Do you want to build a specific MV-22 Osprey variant? Though luck! Some parts are only contained on limited edition boxes, what about some Night Fighter variant of the FW-190A which escape Eduard's attention? I don't even remember when I last saw an announcement of a yet another FW190A with extra parts for sale.

It's a long stream of wrongdoings dating back in mid 80's all the way up to modern days, I wasn't ever aware they did anything other than FW-190 A9/F9 variant with white metal parts till I saw 4 different boxing of that version for sale in Japan

 

Luigi

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On 3/7/2021 at 12:22 PM, exdraken said:

I do not zhi

I do not think they lend / hire the tools, they just sell a fixed number of packed sprues without decals, instructions or a box .

Quite a safe, risk free business.

 

"To lend" meaning to found a factory in the Shizuoka area which can produce a big run.

Hasegawa schedulde seems pretty tight, they have a lot of references to product each month.

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Hasegawa has quite large production capabilities( not facilities ), as they were among the first plastic kit manufacturers to introduce fully automated/robotized production, reducing manpower until last part of the process( shipping packs)

They produce their kits in house, and again have ample of production capabilities, unfortunately for all of us,  their new menagement decided to take u turn regarding aviation related subjects.

Even after decade of more or less passivity they still have dozens of excellent and unsurpassed toolings, they re-invented 48 and 32nd scale in early 90's and early 00's but stopped in 2009.

I had good fortune of seeing glimpse of their " world" and had they continued among others we would have seen new Eurofighter , Viggen ,Jake and Seahawk family in 48th.scale, new Ki-43 in 32nd scale as well as Greyhound in 72nd, as they produced 4-5 totally new toolings yearly , in my view huge , huge loss for all of us building and more realistically collecting aviation related subjects.

Edited by Thomas V.
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  • 5 weeks later...
  • Homebee changed the title to Hasegawa newsletters 2021 - 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06 & 07
1 hour ago, Robert said:

Guessed l hoped for too much.

I dunno, pretty chuffed with the Honda N360 & the BMW 2002ti - and the Bunny :P

And there's the A-4M re-re-re-release (lower right minimini pic)

 

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