Talking to the model companys

[Greg Myers]

Many questions have been brought up on many boards through the years, and answered by many of the on board experts. I was wondering if any of the model company's have anyone in their employ that would field general questions other than gripes, complaints and specific product questions. I'm thinking about questions dealing with company history, different stages of how kits are brought to market, or possibly why some decisions are made, scale,parts counts, what happened to such and such kit?

If not someone from the model company's someone that may have worked for them in the past.

Edited January 27, 2011 by Greg Myers

[ra7c7er]

I have wondered why they don't have people that do just what you are saying. Have people answer questions on forum sites is a very very common thing amongst hobby companies. I know just about every slot car company has a employee or representative on several boards same with model trains and RC. Seems like the Model companies try to stay out of the light. I think most companies are afraid to hear real feedback. I mean honestly we bash kits left and right and rarely offer praise for a kit. We question motives and releases but hardly ever say I have been waiting for that forever. The American (Revell and R2) model companies are stuck in a very bad situation with the aging model population their lack of forethought for new releases and their live or die by the muscle car attitude. Honestly I don't think they want to know what we really think.

They can live in there muscle cars rule the world bubble but someday the muscle car generation isn't going to be building models anymore and the model industry will implode.

Lets see some reissues of things from the 80's and 90s the obscure cars that haven't been release 10 times already. How about the Jag XJ220 or geez anything. To bad by the 90's companies were already in the lets only make a couple kits of the most popular things. So many cool cars got past up. They might have saved themselves in the short term but hurt themselves in the long term.

Edited January 27, 2011 by ra7c7er

[scummy]

G,day , i can remember years ago both MCM & SA magazines used to get someone from the three main model companys and shoot questions at them , and they would tell their stories .

Edited January 27, 2011 by scummy

[Pete J.]

Tamiya has a forum that is monitored and operated by Tamiya USA at Tamiyamodelers.com. The corporate people will respond if they feel the thread need the corporate touch. Only trouble is that the forum requires that you go through an approval process.

Edited January 28, 2011 by Pete J.

[Chuck Most]

Years ago, Ertl had a 1-800-number where you could contact someone with your concerns, but that went away around the time Ertl became Racing Champions or RC2 or whatever the company that ran AMT into the ground was called. It's still on some of the reissue kit instruction sheets, but I've never called it and doubt it still works. I'm guessing with the modeling hobby the way it is, they can't afford to have a 'help desk' like they used to.

Revell still has a number you can call, and John at Round 2 has answered every e-mail I've sent his way (granted, I've only sent two e-mails, but that's pretty refreshing after the cold-shoulder treatment RC2 gave its customers).

[charlie8575]

Although I've not had cause to contact Revell, aside from a request for a replacement part (which was attended to quickly,) I've contacted both AMT and Lindberg, and found their responsiveness to be quite good, and thorough.

Charlie Larkin

[ra7c7er]

Although I've not had cause to contact Revell, aside from a request for a replacement part (which was attended to quickly,) I've contacted both AMT and Lindberg, and found their responsiveness to be quite good, and thorough.

Charlie Larkin

Revell's parts program is really nice. Granted there online requesting needs a lot of help. I received a part that never said shipped and it didn't say shipped till two weeks later under a different tracking number than what I received. Oddly I never got the second package.

---

Revell's people are really nice when I worked at a hobby shop in St. Louis. I called them for a slot car problem. On there Ferrari 250GTO kit the positive and negative wires were put in backwards and if you built it following the instructions it would go backwards. Which is funny but makes a pretty crappy racer. I called them about the problem and in less than a week they called back telling me how they corrected the issue. They put supplemental instruction sheets on how to flip the wires in the boxes. They even sent me a new car in the box with the new instruction sheet. The only thing that would have made it better was if they put "thanks to Robert" on the instruction sheet, lol.

[MikeMc]

I just had a fit issue with a current Revell kit. I filled out the on line parts order, got the parts 5 days later.I then figured out the problem was caused by a different part..Sent a follow up on that and got a reply thru a production engineer..and haven't heard back yet..but it has been only a couple of days...