To continue with tonight’s entertainment, I gladly provide the following rambling thoughts…
The perception of who is copying who is largely influenced by who announces their products first... it is a fact that both NMA and Honor Bound announced they were doing Tunisian Tigers first... did K&C have theirs in the planning stages before either of them? Unlikely, but certainly possible....
It seems that if one claims K&C is really the market leader "upping the bar" over the competition, then the originality of the new releases should be part of the equation, even if the perception they are copying is entirely unfounded. Otherwise the question becomes: “who really is leading who here?”
Those in the 1/6th scale hobby have seen back-and-forth competition play out to eye-rolling effect, to the point where it has hindered the hobby. Every time a new competitor shows up on the scene, the market leader, Dragon Models, will frequently copy their creative new releases point for point. Because of this, many other interesting products that would otherwise have occupied Dragon's release schedule are shoved on the back burner because they are too paranoid about competitors to chart their own course. Once the challenger is squashed, and the threat of innovation in the hobby removed, the market leader returns to releasing the same-old, same-old. Thankfully Dragon now has serious competition in DiD to keep them on their toes.
I don’t know if anything like that is occurring here, yet. A tiger is hardly an innovative release anymore, no matter who announces theirs first or last. But I hope one manufacturer copying the other, "me-too" style, will not become a trend in this hobby in the future. The diversity of releases is what keeps it so interesting.
For one im glad he is producing the Desert tiger and the lrdg truck because his are BETTER than the competition. Lets not forget that he is doing a WWI line
I think all 3 tigers will have their merits. NMA’s desert tiger will have an advantage over K&C’s one in terms of price. Similarly, HB's Tunisian tiger has the potential to be superior to K&C's efforts in terms of quality and customizability, though not price. The K&C one represents a balance between the two with probably the best figures.
But another advantage of HB's version is that it will likely be far more “limited” than 1250.
Frankly I'm never one to get too excited over edition sizes because I collect for the pleasure of owning and displaying pieces, not selling them on ebay. However, if you're going to advertise your product as some kind of limited edition and charge a higher price accordingly, 1250 pieces seems a bit laughably high. Compare this to Figarti's new releases which truly are limited at 100 sets each. I'm not saying that is an advisable production number to follow (seems too low), but it's undeniably limited.
As for K&C's WW1 line, I have high hopes for this line, but so far I continue to be less than impressed. I wish K&C would get the guy who just sculpted their fantastic new Bulge Americans to take over this line and start injecting some much-needed dynamism and life into it. I think Britains retains the advantage in the WW1 field. Either way, this represents another me-too competition going on (not sure who’s leading and who’s following). Both manufacturers are concurrently doing very similar early war WW1 in incompatible scales when one or the other's resources might be better occupied with different subject matter.
