Well more and more new stuff's coming out all the time from Dragon, Tamiya etc but none of them seem to be doing any WW1 tanks or vehicles (or between the wars). Virtually nothing!

We're getting more obscure German armour but some of the most important vehicles of the last century such as the Male and Female tanks, the MkVIII international are going completely ignored. The only kits we have are the old small Airfix kits and the 1/35 Emhar tanks which aren't very good. We need some state of the art WW1 tanks from the likes of Dragon, AFV Club, Bronco, Tamiya with modern essentials like individual tracks links but how do us early armour fans get the word out that there's a market for these?

The most effective way would be to do their groundwork for them. Get photos, get line drawings, ideally get blueprints. Build a scratchbuilt one, give it all to them and hope they think it's worth investing in the tooling to put one out and see how it sells.

Basically you need to talk directly to all who will listen, try resin figure makers for WW1 figures, try fringe manufacturers for weapons and vehicles, but really if you can put together everything that's needed in the preproduction stages to get them interested you'll get a lot further.

Doesn't mean it will actually work and I doubt one person could do it but if there is a WWi focused group maybe they could do something together.

If they made WW1 artillery I'd buy them, but they're not a must have so I'm not fussed, but if they were there I would, mainly as my Great Grandfather was an artilleryman in the big one.

Originally I was going to say "a light coat of oil and a pair of flip flops," but that might not be the sort of attention you're looking for. I agree with Gremlinz:




This I know for a fact. I have done the groundwork for four resin companies and one plastic company, all with the result of either producing entirely new kits, or improving kits on the drawing board. (And yet I still remain UN - biased)
There are several WWI artillery pieces at Ft. Sill I'd like to see done. It's a matter of getting my photos to the right folks.

I'm hoping that with all the new WW1 aircraft kits coming out, thank you Wingnut Wings and Eduard, that there will be a new renewed interest in this time period. I have been hopeing for years some new kits, but I'm still waiting. The Wingnut web site shows that they're coming out with some new WW1 figures. Maybe they MIGHT bring us some armor. If not, someone please give us some new WW1 armor.
Troy

Being a niche...within a niche...within a niche, is not easy. WW I has always gotten short-shrift from manufacturers, unfortunately. Unless you like aircraft, of course. Armor and naval offerings can be quite scarce.

Troy I can get you some ref pics for WW1 armour from Bovington and due to the simplistic construction of most it should be easy to scratch with the exception of the tracks.

As a long shot you could try contacting www.wingnutwings.com

They're an offshoot of Peter Jackson's company that makes full size replica WWI and WWII aircraft ( apparently a biproduct of getting replica flying aircraft made for his remake of The Dambusters ). He's a big WWI aircraft nut.

They primary work in metal and resin and their key focus is aircraft but they also do WWI figures and dioramas. They may be a good place to try and sell an idea seeing as their focus is already on WWI.

But like anything do it professionally, send them photos, measurements, contacts for people willing to provide ore info, details of any known WWI market that is out there etc.

I suggest them as they are NZ based and a lot of companies here are used to dealing with products with a limited local market so not like the Chinese manufacturers who want to see the potential to sell a million units of something.

Besides which they have this on their FAQ page :

How can I help Wingnut Wings?
Like all modellers we are always looking for research material to assist us with future projects. If you have original photos, plans or drawings you think will assist us in providing you with even better models in the future please send them to our contact address.

If you can afford resin models panzershop might be the way to go

RPM has a series of the FT17 style vehicles in 1/35 and 1/72 scale. While they are not the easiest kits to assemble, they do look well when completed. They made seven different variations of the kit.

Even better, Modelkasten makes working replacement FT-series tracks. No real shock as the Japanese originally used Renault FT-series tanks in their armed forces.

Lots of good ideas there. I'd agree that it would be great to seee a new generation of decent WW 1 Tanks c/w interiors and modern casting, along with some early softskins and a range of decent figures. Who knows - we live in hope.

Roden, might come up with some vehicles as they have done the RR in 1/35, which I believe has proved popular and seems a pretty decent kit.

MK do sets of tracks but are sold at a silly price so out of most peoples reach.

Currently I'l rooting for some new British Softskins for WW2 but I may or may not be on a beaten docket there.

Al

I think the real key would be to show a significant amount of interest. A new A7V, Mk IV or V, St Chamond, etc would be great. However, unless they believe it will sell it's a no-go.

I know I'd buy them. Wingnuts might be the way to go although I think Peter Jackson's real passion is for the aircraft and not the tanks.

Matt

I would also like to see new tool WWI tanks, especially a British Mark I or Mark IV. No one buys and builds WWI tanks because the existing models are difficult, expensive, suck, require after market tracks, dimensionally inaccurate, or some combination thereof. Mostly they suck, and everyone knows it. The Char B1 is practically the same thing and Tamiya sold a ton of those because everyone loved the well engineered kit and unusual subject.

For anyone who wants to go the scratch building route, Modelik, a card model company, sells 1/25 scale Mark IV Male and Mark A Whippet tanks. A card model is essentially a set of extremely detailed plans. Just scan the model, resize to the scale of choice, print it out, and cut the parts out of plastic card. I am not sure if they are accurate, dimensional or otherwise, but they have the virtue of being very cheap. I eventually plan on going this route unless a new release makes it unnecessary.

-Doug

IMO the market for WWI tanks is too small.

There were only a few hundreds in duty on both sides (Entente and Germany) what is nothing, absolutely nothing in comparision to WWII.

For sure they have got a certain appeal but I suppose that there is only a minority amongst modelers who is really interested in.

That group might be that small, that an investment in creation new molds seems not to be justifiable.

Incorrect. Over 1000 Mark IVs were built. FT-17 tank production went into the thousands.




The same can be said of people who build paper panzers, Japanese tanks, or pick the niche subject of your choice.

If Trumpeter can afford to pump out a model of an imaginary tank based on a real tank of which not a single example was completed (E-100), I think the market can support well engineered, accurate models of the most historically significant tanks ever built.

-Doug

Ja, 1220 Mark IV - so what?

I wrote about the dimensions and proportions.

BTW: I won't change my opinion.

Mr. Peter Kempf runs a cracker-jack WWI website: www.landships.freeservers.com.
It features prototype pictures, questions, answers, and book and model lists and reviews.
I'm very interested in WWI tanks, artillery and railway guns.
Landships and Armorama are next to one another on my Favorites list.
Best rgds,
G. W.

Marco, you made an erroneous statement so I corrected it. It was not intended as a personal insult.

The "so what" is that those large numbers of tanks allowed them to saturate enemy defenses and penetrate trench systems. Mark IVs did not have the endurance to effectively exploit such breakthroughs, but mass Mark IV attacks proved the concept. Earlier marks failed to make significant contributions precisely because of their small numbers. In essence, those massed Mark IVs made trench warfare obsolete and pointed the way to a totally new kind of warfare--Blitzkrieg.

-Doug

The Italian company Tauros makes an A7V in plastic. $40 Canadian at my LHS. I heard it is quite rare though.

I think well engineered, highly accurate and good fitting kits can create a market when they are not too expensive (not more expensive than new Dragon kits).

Look what happened when Tamiya "reanimated" 1/48 tanks.
Now there are already about 50 kits from Tamiya available and Trumpeter jumped on the bandwagon, too with some very nice T-34 and KV-1 kits. They wouldn´t continue, if there wasn´t a new market created.

Personally, I don´t build WW I armour, because I don´t want to spend my money on the few rather bad kits on the market and the Resin kits are way out of my budget.

But when a company like Dragon, Tamiya, Trumpeter or Hobby Boss (their AAVP-7 kits are excellent) would release a Mark I, Mark IV, A7V, or French Schneider and St. Charmond with a nice interior plus some crew, then I WOULD DEFINITELY BUY ONE OF EACH!!!!


2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the break- out of WW I, that might cause some additional interest as this date comes closer.

The subjects are very colourful camouflage wise and you could weather them to the excess.



Thomas

Having built the 1/35 Emhar Mk4, Whippet, the 18 pdr (?) Gun and the Ford Armoured Car from... (forgotten the name) I would love to see more WW1 vehicles in plastic.

Some of them are absolutely fascinating!

Just throwing my 2p'th worth in just in case anyone from a model company is reading.

I'd love to see more WWI armour but more specifically the between-the-wars and other rare stuff like various Vickers, A9, A10 etc. I'm hoping desperately that, having done a great job on the A13, Bronco will go for these next. The A10 must be one of the most infamously unreliable tanks ever built but nobody ever mentions it.

They do, but it's kind of a piece of crap. I still have nightmares about the tracks, which incidentally disintegrate over time when exposed to sunlight.

Matt

If your serious about this send the thread URL to Roden or Wingnut.com

Interesting replies. I've written to a few magazines and had a letter published here and there also. Sending this thread to Wingnut might be an idea but Peter Jackson is mainly as far as I'm aware interested in aircraft and Roden mainly do aircraft but it might be worth a try. Eduard obviously did WW1 aircraft but none of them really seem to want to get into tanks, apart from Emhar. It's as if they think well Emhar's done them so there's no point in doing any more. Anyone know if the manufacturers visit this site and others?