The Little World

So Why So Cheap?

How come a perfectly good Hasegawa jet is about half the price you’d expect to pay?

Perhaps I am looking a gift horse in the molars, but I do puzzle at some of the pricing in some of the shops. The Hasegawa S3A Lockheed Viking was under $40 in a rack of $60 to $90 kits. I snatched it as a Christmas present to me, amd have been engaged in the basic assembly all day.

It is all that one could want from Hasegawa in 1/72 scale – precision, detail, and fit. The decals look fine and the two choices of scheme cover a wide timespan for the aircraft.

Are some models just not desired by the community? We’ve had far too many Mustspitschmitts over the years from everyone…the efforts of the moulders could have been turned to a wider variety. But perhaps Hasegawa cast their net too wide with a plane that was sidelined by the end of the Cold War.

Not that it has not carried right on in other roles – I note that there are battle honours for it during the Gulf War both on land and sea. There’s even external ordnance included in the kit to let you depict this.

I shall not grumble – the later livery is a new one for my collection and I have the paint already.