Looking back through what 2010 bought us it seemed to me at first that Tamiya really hasn’t produced much new of late. But when you really look that isn’t necessarily true. In the last 24 months or so they have given us ( in no real order ) the Sturmgeschutz III Ausf.B, Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf. A/B/C, the Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf.C Poland, a new Opel Blitz, the B1 Bis, The Renault UE, the Jagdtiger, the JSU-152, the Tilly, a new Matilda, the Citroen 11CV, and the new 3.7cm FlaK 37. And I’ve possibly missed a couple.
There certainly has also been a lot of re-releases and whilst I don’t really think straight re-releases like the M3A2 half-track and reboxings of Fine Moulds and Italeri Kits counts as “giving us something new” I do think some of the warmed over versions count, some more than others. By that I mean the re-release of the Soviet tank destroyers with a weathering set to me doesn’t really count as anything new as much as something like the Tiger I with eight figures added does. Even the Jagdtiger with added motorcycle is a bit of a stretch to call a new release, more of an improved version of a recent release.
And while not new kits in the truest sense I personally have appreciated some of the Western Desert themed make-overs like the Steyr 1500, Kubelwagen “Ramcke”, 8.8cm FlaK 36, and Sd.Kfz.232 8-RAD, especially where the latter includes new and improved parts as well as the new figures and decals. I don’t know if it’s because of the new theme or exactly what it is but these ones somehow seem like trying harder than the soviet tank destroyers with added crew set ( possibly as I think of those as “Orange Box” style, taking two existing kits and putting them in one box ).
You would probably be more correct in calling the simpler ones “added value” rather than “new”, while the better ones are more “updated”. The classic example of “added value” being the “Red Ball Express” version of the 2 1/2 Ton 6×6 cargo truck which seemed so much better value than the standard kit when you got the extra stowage and crew figures, and the “updated” example being the Sd.Kfz.232 8-Rad which gets a new sprue of parts to replace older mouldings, new crew and new decals.
Their latest release falls somewhere in the middle, the Finnish Sturmgeschutz III Ausf.G which uses the existing Sturmgeschutz III Ausf.G kit with a new spure added with the parts required to turn it into a Finnish version. So it isn’t really an “added value” kit, though it still uses an existing kit with an added sprue. It’s more a variation on a base kit, and I’d actually like to see Tamiya making more use of existing kits to turn out different versions the way they used to ( think Sd.Kfz.7 and M3A2 bases ).
So Tamiya has still been giving us plenty that is new, it may seem that they’ve taken their foot off the gas but I think they’ve actually given us quite a bit in the past 2-3 years. It’s more a case that over the last year or two companies like Dragon have seriously upped the tempo and seem to be releasing something new almost weekly. Even Bronco, Miniart, and to a lesser degree Masterbox, have seemed to be putting out an incredibly high rate of releases compared to what we were used to in years gone by.
If all this keeps up just image how many new kits there will be to list this time next year.
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