What ever happened to Verlinden stuff?

background of myself:

I have always been a Verlinden "fanboy" - that is I have loved their products for decades and usually thumb their catalogue for figures and dio accessories before anyone else. When I was a teen starting out I was awestruck at his builds and was envious of people who could purchase the accesories (no internet back then and the LHS had a few items grossly overpriced). Now I am experienced enough to try andmatch his standards and wealthy enough to buy anything I want.

The issue at hand:

His standards today just plain suck. I am really annoyed at the moment having just bought the accesory set no.307 "framed paintings and carpets" . I bought this set as a kid about 20 years ago and it was a brilliant piece of kit. but now its just a laser copy scan of what it once was. Absolute garbage and half the stuff isnt even recognisable. perhaps they didnt think people had an old set to compare it too? photos of this down a bit after the rant.

I dont know whats happened but while other companies have improved in their quality, the big V has not. I would be happy is the standards were just maintained but how can a company claim any sort of reputation for quality when it has gone backwards? Where I work we get it hammered into us all day long about quality and market share being interwound. These guys at the V have made some curious decisions over the years.

The figures

I bought the figure set 'souvenier hunters Iraq" recently - another pile of garbage. firstly I noticed that the boxes no longer the camo but a cheap plain cardboard ( an indicator they are cutting costs). the photo on the box is so bad that it is a blur - I could actually see the pixels at about 1mm size. So its a digital image that hasnt been edited properly. The picture was useless as a reference for construcion. The resin has changed too - it used to be this pea green colour with no bubbles - Mine was an opaque yellow resin with some bubbles . I am told the opaque appearance in resin is from cutting it down with thinners - so are they using a cheaper resin and then even if they are adding only 5% thinners tha would add up over alot of time to save money. so many obvious signs of cost cutting. One of things that goes first when cutting costs is usually quality assurance processes followed by the sku range (catalogue reduction). lets notbegin the discussion on their scale which has always been questionable.

Now if they have been in financial trouble and I assume every company has been at some stage, they have really dropped the ball. Rather than stick with their strengths they have cut corners in my opinion. I have stood by them and argued for them from time to time, i have bought thousands of dollars of their products and always read their magazines and books. But I feel rather aggrieved at this stunt.

So heres the example I talk about.

I had the old set for about 20 years,I have used some of the carpets, but have 90% of the original. It has been floating around in the spares box / sheds/ garages for a loong time and multiple house shifts. It shows it age. yet even though its older its qulity is superior in every way.

immeadiately you can see that its not the same item. the top one (original) is on heavy card - maybe 150 - 200 gsm? all the old products are on this card. The new one is just plain old printer paper. Not only that,the old one is actually printed from print plates or whatever method was used - so it has superb crisp details and colours. The new version has lost almost all the detail, and the colours have been lost, the images are actually out of focus too. It looks like they just scanned the original with a terrible quality printer bought from some budget office supply shop for $50 with a dpi reolution of about 2!

see for yourself when I place them side by side: (original one on top/right)

as close up as I can get with my camera,

And the other carpets - not the red one is now just a black square.


All pictures taken with the same details in the frame so no cuting and matching.

I have loved V products for the longerst time, i have been happy to pay for them too, but now the quality has just dropped to a point where I demand higher stndards for my work. companies like Reality in Scale , Royal models, and so on have leapt ahead in leaps and bounds and even if more expensive , I will pay for it because I dont want my work to be dragged down by examples such as the ones above.

Ok so this was a rant and a bit unstructured but I think i got my point across. Moderators I dont know how you rate something like this and keep it or delete it but I guess we'll see.

Oh one last thing - ALLthese products are bought from V are genuine originals and not fakes. My first reaction was these are rip offs. They were bought from official Verlinden distributors or from Verlinden online itself (official wesite). Why do people get upset when someone copies their product? because it deprives them of income and it gives them bad name for quality- well I argue what happens when a company copies their own products? In my opinion Verlinden is pirating its own products as they are not nearly as good as the originals.

sadamskii

Adam, I agree entirely with your assessment. (for what it's worth). Not only have they changed the resin, the definition, which used to be very good, has become soft. I still buy, but from Ebay...the older products.
Cheers
Tony

It has always been hit & miss with Verlinden!

Personaly I kinda like the company, they made some amazing kits and conversions back in the 90's when nobody else could do it, but I dont think I've bought anything in a few years with all the amazing new AM companies that have sprouted up, particulary over the last 6 or 7 years.

Verlinden is profit first quality second, Verlindens own sculpted stuff was great but products started to show when you could nearly walk in to them off the street, offer a product and if Verlinden thought it could make money it went straight into production, never mind if it wasn't to scale or had huge inaccuracies!

..you should check out the history of the company, its interesting, particulary why the company left Belgium for the US..

I'll keep it simple

WELCOME to the world of BIG BUSINESS!!!!!!
This is what happens when overpriced CEO's put their hands on things.
Cut cost,cut quality material being used,cut quality product being shipped,cut wages,cut cut cut cut cut........except price and CEO salaries!!!
The final cut will be..................their own throats!
I wonder how long it will be until they move from the USA to another country to cut costs once more????
I would be curious to see what kind of money the CEO's for verlinden bring home???
Just my 2 cents,whatever that is worth

Did you buy their products from their official site? Sounds like somebody tries to rip them of some business by badly copied products.

Did you contacted somebody for your complained, store/distributor/official website???

cheers,
Marco

Hi Adam,
I share your disgust - just like you, I used to lust after V's stuff when I was a kid, but could rarely afford it. Having just returned to the hobby, I splashed out £18.50 for the KV-1 engine (still in the camo box) for the Tamiya kit. In anticipation I'd cut out the engine deck from the kit. Imagine my surprise when I found that the resin part was considerably smaller! The 'engine'(ha!) is basic in the extreme and lacks detail and definition - the bits look like LEGO bricks with the knobs cut off. A resin AA MG is included - but not only was the stock really chunky and badly defined, it broke when I carefully tried to remove it from its casting block (I made my own out of 5amp fuse-wire and a bit of PE fret/sprue(?)) Also, the engine deck is a direct copy of the Tamiya kit, so retains all the short-comings of the original whilst managing to add a few of its own. And how they managed to make the PE mudguard stays look chunky is a mystery to me...I ended up using an ancient (from 1987) set from On The Mark, which was superior in every way. I ended up re-fitting the original engine deck and just used the (quite nice, actually - even if they are the wrong shape) engine grills. Of all the four letter words I could use to describe this over-priced piece of junk, 'good' is not amongst them.
Any resin figures, weapons and equipment I buy now I get from 'TANK' in Russia - well-priced, crisp mouldings and hardly any clean-up!
Sorry, if I go on a bit, but bad quality when it costs so much really gets my goat.
I rant, therefore I am

In my humble opinion you have bought a cheap "erzatz" product and not the original from the original manufacturer.

But why don't you take a picture of a real carpet with a decent camera and make a hard copy of this in a professional photo print shop.

It si difficult to beat the quality of a real photo and you'll have a carpet nobody else has

Yes I bought the products from their official site - I am sure I mentioned this in the last paragraph quite clearly? In case its not crystal clear though.. these products are absolutely genuine from the official Verlinden online store. Thats the whole point of the rant - their official quality is in decline while everyone else gets better.

The recent history of the last decade of that company is very interesting to say the least. Unfortunately its hard to tell difference between fact, rumour and innuendo.

Andits not like I just want to bash Verlinden, if you read my build log, I reckon I mention his products dozens of times in a positive light. So thats a bit more why I feel so aggrieved.

Adam

Adam, you re absolutely right

I could be able to do a lot much better those carpets with my camera, Photoshop and a HP inkjet printer...

In my opinion Verlinden has had very few competitors for ages and that's the reason why it haven't felt the necessity to improve its quality.
Distributors sold just his products and internet had a very low diffusion so for the consumers pratically there were no alternatives to Verlinden products
Not improving its products was a HUGE mistake 'cause nowadays there are a lot of new companies and a modeller, thanks to internet,can compare and chose the best products on sale. Furthermore he can buy on line, so the product distribution is less important than the past

In my opinion it could be hard for Verlinden filling the gap...and to be honest I think they will shut down in a bit of time...unfortunately

Unfortunately, I have to agree that there's been an extreme decrease in the quality of Verlinden products.
As you said, they used to be the best in the business. But, that was years ago. Their magazine and books were the best. I couldn't wait for a new release.
Sadly, I don't even consider purchasing anything from them now. The figures have become to resemble old Tamiya's, which is definetly no compliment, and the scales appear to very different from other companies. They can't be used with other figures because some almost dwarf most other 1/35 scale figures.
Fortunately, there's been an increase in new manufacturers whose sculpting has picked up the torch Verlinden dropped and they're all available on the web.

Yeah, I think to be fair Verlinden has been an industry leader for a long while as far after the market resin/complete resin kits, I recall the first time I lay eyes on his work, damn stuff was simply amazing and to me at the time everything he did had a photo realistic look to it. There are still some good kits, mostly older. In saying that though, I wonder if a focus on quality would mean down sizing his operation, it must be extremely hard to compete and continue to employ those currently under his wing, what, with the rise of Asian competition and those from the former Eastern block where wages aren't as high as in the US.

One things certain, at the height of his success he was a prolific maker of kits, dioramas etc, as well the monthly releases, that must have burnt anyone out. hell I have trouble trying to finish anything I start. Maybe he needs a Bailout?

Wow, Im sure sorry to hear of the decline of the great V. I too recall their dominance in the old days and I never had the funds or the skills to partake of their offerings, but now its different. Ill pass them by...maybe they will improve their product when they notice sales going down.

I also like the TAHK figs but they are haveing a problem gettin goods into the USA,been waiting for about a month now for a order I placed with MMW.it is not their fault either as I have been waiting for orders from United Kingdom and Holland also.Damn Homeland Security thugs have items tied up in customs.

Sounds like Fracois may be having his stuff made in China and is cutting corners to increase profit? Its always the same story with companies that have been around for years creating excellent quality products only to start going down hill in recent times.

Anyway Adam, don't you have a scanner?

If i were you I would scan the original sheet on heavy paper....

Adam, I too was a "fanboy" of Verlinden (still am. . . ) as it was the original aftermarket accessories that were around in the mid to late 80's. I am going to offer a suggestion, take it or leave it, bring this to their attention. Let them know how disappointed you are and show them the pictures. If they do nothing, they have lost you and many others. If they fix the issue they might just save their collective hides from becoming obsolete.
Most companies are unaware that there are problems like this. Most companies LOVE feedback from their customers, good and bad. Let them know what they are doing right (or what they used to do right) and what they need to fix and why. I think you'll find that they are really willing to listen. Cheers.

I bet they still tell you 'if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about'
Welcome to the age where we're supposed to give up a few liberties to preserve our freedom

I, too, used to be a Verlinden fan because of their wide variety of figures and accessories, but I've noticed that the quality varies widely. A lot of their figures, especially US WWll, are very poorly sculpted with bad anatomical proportions, and especially poor fit. And the figures' personal equipment is scaled all over the place - I have to use DML Gen ll equipment and Hornet heads to complete Verlinden figures (when the figure is actually worth redeeming!). Imagine that - using after market to improve after market! Now I use Verlinden figures ONLY if no other better figures are available.

Adam,

I kinda blew off you post at first because I hadn't had any problems.
Last night I opened and built one of their Arab buildings in a white box.Your absolutely right.The front was broken in pieces,the left side had the exposed brick on the inside and most of it fit together like crap.I agree that at first it was too expensive to buy and now that I can I am quite disappionted.

Tom

Threads like this are the reason I introduced my lads to model building. They love it, and that is what will keep companies like Verlinden in business.