That was the going internet rumor over the last couple of days.  It had folks in the hobby shops buzzing and many Aerohistorians talking.  Hmm, it must be true, it’s on the internet, and it’s from a reliable source…  it’s from a friend of a friend of someone who knows a buddy of the guy that called Korea to see if they could get the molds out of hock that Accurate couldn’t pay for the last time and hence couldn’t sell them to Italeri (where the rest of their molds went).  It’s gotta be true!

Ok, let’s just for arguments sake say that there is a new AM.  So what?  Let’s say that they do have a P-40E in 48th scale in the works.  Ok, well that would be cool.  A new P-40E would always be a good thing.

My question is, who cares?  Do we not have a P-40E?  Yup, I think ARII/Otaki released a kit a while back and while it’s not up to industry standards, it still pretty much looks like a P-40E, doesn’t it?    Well yeah, but the cockpit isn’t very good and there are rivets and the pilot is molded in the wrong color and the plastic is just too soft.  Well, you’d best go down to your shelves right now and throw that piece of junk out, before it infects those other 300 boxes on your shelf.

The fact of the matter is modelers are never happy.  Immediately upon release of the P-40E, people will be waiting for the P-40B, which they just know will come and which should have been released first if they knew what the heck they were doing, before they the modeler will cut sprue.  Or they will need to collected 14 sets of decals to pick the one they want (spending $100 in decals but complaining about the $28 cost of the kit), wait for the photoetch (which they will only use four pieces of) and buy a $30 resin cockpit and a vac canopy that is too cloudy to use. 

 What happens next is something that we are all familiar with.  The kit that we just couldn’t wait for, that we just couldn’t live without that would be the one other kit that we would buy before we die, gets put on the “shelf of doom”, never to see the light of day again.  You know the shelf of doom, we pretty much all have one, the shelf with a few hundred other kits that we just couldn’t live without and bought.  The shelf with enough spent cash on it to finance a small third world country.  The shelf of other things that we just couldn’t live without, but we have forgot about.

 Does any of this sound familiar?  It should.  This happens at every club meeting and at every hobby shop.  It happens to all of us.

 So what’s my point in all this ranting and raving?  My point is, shut up and build.  Quit making excuses, quit waiting and quit whining about the “bad kit” or the kit that doesn’t quite fit right.  Just shut up and build something.  When you do, you’ll remember how much fun modeling can be again and you may even start to thin the shelf of doom!  Now go build something!

So to answer the question, is Accurate Miniatures alive?  I doubt it.  However the good news is you still have 10 of their kits on your shelf un-built.  See how easy all this works?  Now go build something!

By Dave Pluth