Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled stashes!

This campaign celebrates the unsung minorities of our hobby. Academy, AFV Club, Dragon, Tamiya; they've all had their moment(s) in the Sun with campaigns dedicated to each manufacturer. This one is all about the (relatively) little guys. Draft rules:

1) Any kit, any scale from any manufacturer that is not Academy, AFV Club, Dragon, Tamiya (I'm happy to add to this list if anyone has more suggestions) or any of their subsidiaries or reboxes. Honor system applies on that last bit since I'm not up on which kits are re-pops.
2) In order to show case the relative merits and demerits of each manufacturer I'd like to keep this OOB, but am open to persuasion.
3) Shooting for early 2017 start and run for six months.
4) Shipwrights, Aeroscalers, and Figure-heads are most welcome; this is NOT about AFVs.

WTY?

I have 1or 2 odd balls in the stash I wood be down for this but I would add Trumpeter to the mix of not allowed

Howdy Y'all
This sounds real interesting. If you open it to airplanes then you might want to add Hasegawa and Revell to the excluded list. Why not just have a campaign for one of the "little guys" such as Monogram? Six months later you could have another campaign for another "little guy" such as Italeri. Just a thought, it's your campaign idea and I like it. Count me in.
Take care,
Don "Lakota"

My $.02 worth, Sal's right about Trumpeter. If I built nothing but Trumpeter Armor new releases alone I would never be able to keep up. Those cats are prolific !
But, there are quite a few "new kids on the block" with some interesting releases.
So, this is a great idea you have Mark. Count me in !

Sounds cool -- willing to sign up for this. Alan, Mirage, Maquette, CMK, and Zvezda come to mind (all in the stash as well! )

I'd second the call to exclude Trumpeter. That would include Hobby Boss being a subsidiary. Not sure if we had a previous Bronco campaign though.

April 2014 through December 2014 there was a Bronco only campaign

I would be interested.

I agree.

I'd probably would be in with an ICM ZiL-131 truck or an Ashimo Stand-On Platform Lift.

Are Revell and or Hobby Craft "out there" enough? If so, I'll be in.

Gaz

Hi all, i could be interested




Just a word to say that here in Europe, or at least in France , Italeri is not really a "little guy" but is widely distributed (isn't it the same in USA ?), so i thought it would be among the excluded ones
That was just my 0.02 €

cheers
nico

Mark,
It might be useful to see what companies you would consider as "little guys". The list wouldn't need to be all inclusive, but it would help bring things into focus.

Just a thought...
PH

How about this as delineation? If you look at Scalemates, and filter by “Full Kits” then look at the entries by Company you get the following results for Companies that have >900 entries:
Revell (5778)
Hasegawa (4851)
Airfix (3373)
Fujimi (3063)
Aoshima (1908)
Italeri (1901)
Tamiya (1862)
Heller (1777)
Monogram (1644)
Trumpeter (1369)
Dragon (1273)
Academy (987)
AMT/Ertl (936)

Now there are issues with the Scalemates database, it is not 100% complete, there are a few duplicate entries, it also includes OOP kits and the entry of a particular manufacturer can cause a skewed result, i.e. Trumpeter and Hobbyboss are separate, but it is the best available and close enough to provide an accurate enough guideline.

Therefore, the theme can be anything from anybody other than those above.

Just a suggestion.

Graham

Everybody has raised some excellent points. My original idea was to focus as much as possible on the 'not-oft-heard-from" manufacturers, but realized that may not be practical for everyone so I figured that the most objective discriminator is whether or not they have had a campaign in their on honor in the recent past. Under that criteria, Ivanhoe is correct; Trumpeter would be out, and I think somebody already pointed out that Hobbyboss is a subsidiary (of DML, isn't it?) and therefore also ineligible. I'm less familiar with campaigns from Aeroscale and the other sites, but I think Don is right that Hasegawa and Revell are common enough to be excluded.

I could probably be persuaded to use Graham's extract from Scalemates as basis (if they are on the list with >900 offerings they are out of the campaign) if everyone thought that would be fair and not so restrictive as to severely limit participation.

Don's suggestion about doing separate campaigns for each manufacturer, does have it's merits, but I don't have the time to do enough campaigns to catch all of them and I also think that the really small companies--the ones I really want to set about highlighting--would have trouble drawing enough interest to support their own campaigns.

So, unless the majority prefer the idea of limiting the campaign to manufacturers with fewer than 900 offerings as listed on Scalemates, this campaign currently would be open to any kit that is not an issue or re-pop from Academy, AFV Club, Dragon, Hasegawa, Revell, or Tamiya (or any of their subsidiaries.

So, after coming up with the filter suggestion, I looked at my own stash on Scalemates. I put in the suggested filter, and by taking away the manufacturers that I listed that have >900 entries I reduced my stash of kits from 618 to 112.

Made me realize how much I like the manufactures that are included the big 13 (14 if you include Hobbyboss with Trumpeter). I think it also puts in perspective the object of this Campaign Proposal, do one of the "Other Guys" kits.

Despite this, I like the idea whichever way it works, count me in.

Mark,
I like your idea, it's obvious you put a lot of thought into this. As I've said before, count me in. Might do an old Bandai or Skybow kit. Although I have an Airfix Baily Bridge I've been contemplating...
There are still so many choices.
Take care,
Don "Lakota"

Hello,

Going thru the list of campaigns, past and present, at KitMaker nets this list:

Academy (2016)
AFV Club (2016)
Tamiya (2016, 2011)
Trumpeter (2016, 2013)
Airfix (2015, 2013, 2012)
Bronco (2014)
Dragon (2014, 2012)
Matchbox (2012, 2010)
Frog (2013)
Pegaso (2008)
Romeo (2008)
Fine Molds (2008)

I believe it would be easier and simpler to go by Mark’s original thought of giving exposure to those manufacturers / brands that have not had a dedicated campaign. Thus one’s kit qualifies as long as the manufacturer / brand is neither on the list nor a subsidiary as in the case of Hobby Boss ‘ relation with Trumpeter.

Cheers,

Tat

I just received my very first (certainly not the last) ModelCollect 1/72 S-300PM/PMU (SA-10 Grumble)，5P85D Missile launcher. Would this qualify?

This sounds like a very interesting campaign. If allowed, I would like to do one of the recent Tristar repops from Hobbyboss. I know that Hobbyboss is 'blocked' as such, but would the reboxed Tristar kits count also? Just wondering. Otherwise, I am sure that I can find something else in the stash, well, more of a pile!

Thanks,
Stephen

Howdy Y'all
Would models that were previously started be allowed? It might increase the number of completed models in this campaign. Just a thought.
Thanks,
Don "Lakota"

@Joseph: Can't see any reason why not.

@Stephen: I was thinking re-pops would not be permitted, but having never even heard of Tri-Star I suppose we could say there are enough degrees of separation there to allow it in.

@Don: Normally, I would say we have enough Unfinished Business campaigns that started kits are generally barred from other campaigns.

@EVERYONE: Is there anyone out there for whom Don's suggestion would make a difference in your decision to play or not?

Not allowing started models would not prevent me from joining.

It wouldn't bother me at all f you allowed previously started kits, but it might some. If you kept the requirement at having no more than 20-25 percent or so complete then it might attract participation. As you said, there are unfinished business campaigns on Armorama frequently for those who have builds above the beginning stage.

Just my 2 cents worth...

Cheers,
Paul H

I'm sure I can come up with something for this campaign, count me in....

Mark,
Do you have a projection for when this campaign would start? I already involved in the AFV Club campaign and I'm pretty much committed to the upcoming 750+ campaign beginning in the October/ November time frame. I do like the idea of doing kits from the smaller guys a lot...

PH

I think January or February is when I'm thinking of starting, subject to whatever John says regarding timing.

WRT started kits, I think NMT 20-25% complete is the norm so we would go with that. Anything that is well on the way to completion would need to be saved for the next UB campaign.