Trumpeter

[Out2gtcha]

I'm with Barry regarding the 1/24 Hurricanes.

Really great kits.

I'd also agree that the decals can leave a bit to be desired but like most people I use am decal sets or masks and there's plenty out there.

As Brian said there are a few with fit issues and others that if you are looking for hyper accuracy might need some work or am stuff to help them out.

The main thing is to do your research and choose what suits you.

The very name Trumpeter makes some people's blood boil but as already has been said, if it wasn't for them kicking off a whole plethora of large scale kits years ago we wouldn't have the choices we have today.

 

 

Well said buddy

[Zero77]

I'll just say it now as a preemptive action,  please keep it nice folks.

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

Ron

Lol !

 

 

 

Trumpeter is a pretty good manufacturer, who supply a lot of LSP kits of both jets and props. The quality can be poor (the early kits as the Mig-15 or 17) to very good (Dauntless, Me262). In some kits, they have misshaped the windscreen or canopy (the problem is that this kind of parts is not easy to correct, except with a replacement with a vacuformed one), but the rest is usually pretty good (except for some special kits with specific shape issues).

 

I like trumpeter, and have a lot of their kits. At the moment, i've built a Mig-19 (yet a very early Trumpy kit) and a Su-25, and i really liked them.

[Jack]

Ok, i'll chip in as well: i've said or asked this before, since this Trump like/dislike item isn't new, i understand that before Trumpeter came out as a "producer of kits with the Trump brand" it produced parts for the main brands at that time, so Hasegawa could have parts made by, Tamiya could have parts made by, well, etc etc etc.

Could anyone shed some light on this question?

 

J.

 

Oh, and btw, as a kid i "used to dream" of kits like the ones made by Trumpeter, so yes, with all the shortcomings sometimes, i really like Trumpeter.

[Zero77]

If i am correct Trumpeter belongs to a huge chinese injected plastic company (which make many other stuff than model kits), but i doubt that Hasegawa or Tamiya have ever sub contracted any job to them.

[Jack]

I've never heard that at all.  Given the toy-like quality of early Trumpeter kits, I seriously doubt the veracity of such a rumor.  It's clear Trumpeter didn't have much of a clue at first.

 

Ok then, that settles that......any other opinions? I didn't just make this up, it was a topic years ago at the time Trump released the A10......

[Lee_K]

I think I have an insight into why Trumpeter's efforts are maddeningly inconsistent, and it comes from my job in a very large Fortune 500 company.  I work with my colleagues in China every single day and have traveled there extensively with a focus on IT development and deployment and Supply Chain logistics.  These are just my observations, so please take them as opinion only:

 

• Travel is very difficult for PRC residents outside of China.  When Tamiya wants to go visit a museum in the UK for example to measure a Spitfire, they get the appropriate visas, arrange the visit with the musuem, and arrive with laser measurement tools to inspect the subject in the nth degree.  They also give a generous donation to said musuem for the exclusive access.  For Trumpeter, this is much more difficult (not impossible, but difficult) and they have not shown any propensity to do this with their projects.  Everything is done from the comfort of their offices in Guandong Province.
• Research is more difficult.  In China, there is no access to YouTube, Google, Network 54 and many other internet portals that we in the West take for granted.  We may think it's just a matter of doing some really good internet searching, but if you can't get to the search engines in the first pace, it makes life harder.  They obtain various reference books that are widely available like the Squadron In Action and Verlinden Lock-on books, use published plans that may have suspect origins, and work mostly from photographs.  I believe this is why you so often see them getting canopy shapes wrong as the subtle nuances are very hard to determine from a picture.
• Trumpeter is a business first rather than operated as a model company filled with people passionate about the hobby.  They are not a bunch of modeling geeks who got together to make an excellent company (like the orginal Accurate Miniatures, Eduard, ZM, and WNW), they came to this industry in a very different way than the traditional model companies we know and love.  It's all about product rather than passion and I think that leads to a number of their exasperating failures.
• Chinese culture is a factor.  Dealing with my Chinese colleagues day in and day out, I have observed that they are very reticent to speak up, are very mindful of a tops-down hierarchy, and pretty much do what they are told by their management team, whom they fear.  If the project plan says two months of research is allocated to the design phase, then that is what the designer will spend on the task plan.  If it takes more than that to really get the last bits of details done, too bad.  The designer is already working on a different project, which probably is a ship or a tank.  That phase is now closed.  I know that Western subject matter experts have offered to help Trumpeter and their efforts are usually ignored.  Lots of material gets sent via e-mail but it doesn't appear to be used much if at all.  Offers to review CAD designs fall on deaf ears.  It's not polite to say "no" in China, so it doesn't get said very often.
• Trumpeter does best when there is a good copy of the subject to study.  Anybody who's been to China knows that product knock-offs and copyright infringement is widely accepted without regret.  Intellectual property is not a concept that is highly regarded or respected.  So when Trumpeter makes their P-47 kit and has the excellent Tamiya 1/48 kits to study, there is no question that they do so.  This is not just simply copying the design of the other kit as Trumpeter usually adds features that makes their offereing different.  But if they get stuck and can't determine something quite right from photos or plans, they appear to have no qualms about seeing how someone else did it.  In the P-47 example, I can see how they copied Tamiya's 1/48 scale kits' mistakes in the too-large boss on the Hamilton Standard propeller and the strange engineering of the wheel well detail that doesn't include the canvas cover.  Why are the SBD and TBM relatively good kits?  Accurate Miniatures was there before them.  Note that this isn't always true -- Trumpeter blew it shape wise with the A-7 canopy and intake, and the air intakes of the F-14 are really hosed.  They could have used Hasegawa examples to help them but they didn't for some reason that is not obvious to us.
• Good enough is good enough.  There isn't a culture of perfection in this industry that I have seen, as opposed to the Japanese.  Their kits fits together pretty well due to CAD design and injection molding knowledge, and they know how to provide a lot of content in their kits.  I wish I could understand the insistence on including engines and internal structure that will be buried inside the finished product never to be seen again, but that is what the bossman says so that is what is provided.

 

I think that Trumpeter's contributions to this niche of the hobby (large scale models) have on-balance been tremendous, but with the realization that they don't go the extra mile towards the perfection that we Western modelers would really like to see.  Personally, I got burned when the A-10 first came out and was sorely disappointed when the reviews by SMEs pointed out some serious shape flaws that are almost impossible to correct without a ton of work.  I vowed to never buy a Trumpeter kit until it had been thoroughly reviewed and built by modelers whom I respect.  This has worked out pretty well and I look forward to more interesting subjects to be released by them in the future.  Like anything in life, you need to be a little careful of what you are buying and what you are willing to put up with.

 

Again, these are just observations as I don't have any insider knowledge on Trumpeter's actual operations.

[Bill Cross]

Not sure I can add much, but that has never deterred me from chiming in before....

 

Trumpeter puts out kits that, for the most part, no one else does or hasn't in quite awhile. Fans of Soviet post-war aviation, USN carrier planes and Soviet helos for three. Other kits they've put out I would consider or have in my stash:

 

Harrier II

ME-262

P-47D razorback & N

MiG-21

Wildcat

Avenger

Dauntless dive bomber

P-38

 

The quality and accuracy vary kit-to-kit, but overall I'd rather have a less-than-accurate kit than none at all.

 

And as a long-time China hand, Lee_K's observations about Chinese business culture are spot-on. Trumpeter has done well making things they way they do; we would do things differently, but they don't really care what we think from all I can see.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Bill Cross

[Bill Cross]

I know for a fact that Trumpeter has been offered free assistance by those of us in the west with access, but (at least in my own case) it was patently ignored.  That's not the case with other Chinese manufacturers.

Jennings, admitting you need help in Chinese socieity is a HUGE loss of face. Nothing powers social interaction there more than face considerations. There is even an expression "to give face" when you do something that makes another person look good to their peers or superiors. Asking for help is a sign of weakness.

 

It's why Chinese restaurant menus frequently are linguistic howlers: the owner would never admit that he needed help or worse, took the help of a "big nose."

 

These attitudes are changing, but that doesn't mean they are changing everywhere.

[D Bellis]

Let me point out ONE instance where Trumpeter actually listened and corrected an issue of a misshapen kit..

 

The famous F4F Wildcat fuselage shape.

The first run of kits was hideous, and the kit was thoroughly thrashed in the modeling press.

Trumpeter, (to their credit), recalled the kit's, performed a complete redesign on the fuselage, and reissued the kit at a later date.

This little episode must have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it sure did make a huge splash in the industry.

 

Their Wildcat is now one of their best efforts, shape wise, even though it still has small issues...

They didn't do it because they felt it was the right thing to do. They retooled that kit because Stevens International refused to distribute that kit.

 

D

[Bill Cross]

... if you keep getting slammed for putting out crap products, at some point you need to swallow your pride.  And as I say, other Chinese companies don't seem to have any problem with actively seeking out help and accepting it when given.

The "slamming" doesn't seem to harm their bottom line. I don't see vast amounts of Trumpeter stuff remaindered all over the place. In fact, several kits like the A-6 or Super Hornet remain quite expensive. Their Skyraider got mixed reviews, but it, too, remains pricy.

 

I can't really comment on Trumpeter's internal processes or why other Chinese companies are willing to take outside help. It may be a function of size, but I'd only be guessing.

 

In any case, Trumpeter continues to thrive despite what some think about their kits.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Bill Cross

[wunwinglow]

... and remember, it is a free market out there, overall, so if you think you can do a better job, there is absolutely nothing standing in your way. Knowing the shapes of your subject to such a fine degree is more than half the battle in generating decent CAD data, and nowadays, the link from decent data to decent tooling to decent mouldings is a well-worn one indeed. Get the first bit right, everything else is a relative doddle.

 

Oh, apart, maybe, from raising the cash.

 

But even that is not an impossible thing!

 

Tim

[hayaman]

Correct, and an understatement.

 

Best bet is to do a lot of online research about the specific kits you're interested in, and choose to/not to buy accordingly.

 

D

Excactly,for example while the bubble top Thunderbolt is a mess the Razorback is quite fine

[Tnarg]

I appreciate the clear description in this thread of which kits are done well, and which are done OK, but fixable. I appreciate even more the "tweak lists" and aftermarket parts that help fix those kits.

 

It is frustrating to want a kit that has serious flaws as executed by any model company. For example, look at the Revell Mig-29 and how much effort has been thrown at it, from Zacto-Man's replacement of vast portions of the kit to the latest amazing cockpit work. Look at the fuss and the huge number of aftermarket parts generated by Revell's latest Spitfire. Even Tamiya's Spitfire, P-51D and Corsairs have a large number of aftermarket add on parts. It is possible to build these kits to a high standard which you might desire or just throw them together and get some sort of model that will make your 8 year old grandson pretty happy, racing around the room making fun sound effects,

 

We are just below the level of possible detail execution in so many places with 1/32 scale (legible text, for example). We will always want more than we can get, but we should be able to get a reasonable shape to start with. That seems to be the root of the problem with the worst of Trumpeter's kits.

 

Tnarg

[kalashnikov-47]

I've built several and generally like them.  I built the F6F-3 and standing alone, it looks like Hellcat.  Of course put it next to an accurate model, then you see the differences.

Built the Razorback P-47 and the only complaint I have are are those sunken rivets.  My favorite by far is the TBM-3.

 

[Sparzanza]

So did American Motors and Edsel (for a while).

 

From what I've read, the Edsel was a fiasco from the word go - apparently it became a thing to ask an owner "where'd you win yours?" because the lottery companies were their main customers.

 

I also know that the word Edsel is immediately associated with failure.

 

(I personally like the thing, haha)