2023 - Diversity in 400 Scale |
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Diversity of releases is a hot topic in 400 scale almost everytime that a new release set comes out, because it is impossible to please everyone all the time. Personally I have been rather disappointed in release diversity this year myself from certain brands so let's crunch the numbers on this.
First off I must give a big thanks to Mark Bouma over at YV400 who has recently undertaken a similar exercise but with quite different results. After reading his piece, and having a moan, he stimulated me to try and do something similar to see if my results matched. Of course we're using a slightly different methodology and I have access to a much more detailed dataset than he does as well, since I have over the past few months been pulling together an Excel database of all 400 scale releases. For Mark's post on this topic see here:
First off I must give a big thanks to Mark Bouma over at YV400 who has recently undertaken a similar exercise but with quite different results. After reading his piece, and having a moan, he stimulated me to try and do something similar to see if my results matched. Of course we're using a slightly different methodology and I have access to a much more detailed dataset than he does as well, since I have over the past few months been pulling together an Excel database of all 400 scale releases. For Mark's post on this topic see here:
CATEGORIES
I will take 3 of the 4 categories Mark looked at and delve a little deeper. The category I won't look at is diversity of aircraft types since this is reliant as much on the mould catalogue available to the brand and how they cast the models as it is true diversity. I feel you end up basically scoring seniority rather than real diversity. For example JC Wings have far and away the largest mould catalogue in 400 scale since they have their own catalogue (which started around 2009), the entirety of Gemini's catalogue (starting from 1999) plus the BigBird 747s and all of the Blue Box, Jet-X, Witty Wings and Apollo mould catalogues acquired in various acquisitions. They should comfortably win any scoring of number of aircraft types produced in a year due to this.
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Above: JC Wings have got access to an unparallelled set of moulds and produce the release volumes to actually use them
The only brand that could really compete with them in this category is Aeroclassics but as they produce much smaller production runs they tend to produce castings in batches by aircraft type and then use them across a period. That is why when you look at Aeroclassics releases moulds appear, get used for 3 or 4 months and then disappear again, only to reappear a year or two later. The benefit of that is when Aeroclassics use a mould they really use it!
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Above: Aeroclassics have the moulds but their production volumes lend towards them batch producing the castings for use
Newer brands can't really compete because they simply don't have the available mould catalogues - although the growth of NG's mould catalogue over 5 and a bit years has been incredible.
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Above: NG Models increasingly does have the moulds but there's still a way to go to get the coverage JC or AC has
That leaves 3 categories to look at, which are:
- Diversity of Airlines produced
- Diversity of Geographical Regions
- Diversity of Retro to Modern Releases
AIRLINE DIVERSITY
METHOD: This one is quite simple. Take the entire year's production for each brand and count the number of different airlines / air forces then divide that number by the number of releases from each brand to get a score. Closest to 1 is the winner.
Aeroclassics - Yemenia 727-200
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Aviation400 - Azul A350-900
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There are a few takeaways from this set of data:
- Aeroclassics have always had great diversity of airlines and easily continue that in 2023
- The smaller brands like AV400 and Panda get higher scores partly because they make less models, but they are still quite diverse. Panda is helped here also by making a lot of models for third parties selecting market specific releases.
- Gemini Jets tend to have a core set of airlines but across their smallish number of releases they spread them well - better than they perhaps get credit for.
- The more models you make the less diverse the number of airlines get.
- Both NG Models and JC Wings make a lot of near duplicate releases where they modify a small aspect of the livery or just change the registration. This heavily impacts their airline diversity score.
- NG Models has been particularly derivative this year and their major increase in model output is largely driven by multiple similar models for the same airline / aircraft combination.
- JC Wings score would be worse if you spread this across multiple years because they sometimes spread similar releases across multiple years even when the models are made at the same time.
WINNER AIRLINE DIVERSITY: |
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GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY
METHOD: Take the entire year's production for each brand and count the number of airlines by region splitting them into the following regions:
AF: Continental Africa and offshore islands
AS: Asia not including the Middle East or Russia
EU: Europe including Russia and Turkey
ME: Middle East including Israel and Iran but not Turkey
OC: Oceania - mainly Australia and New Zealand but also the Pacific island nations like Tahiti and Fiji
NA: North America - Canada, USA and Mexico
SA: Latin America - Everything south of Mexico plus the Caribbean
MFR: Non-airline releases in manufacturer house colours
Once you have the raw numbers, where necessary, percentage splits can be used to create pie-charts illustrating the results a bit more clearly.
AF: Continental Africa and offshore islands
AS: Asia not including the Middle East or Russia
EU: Europe including Russia and Turkey
ME: Middle East including Israel and Iran but not Turkey
OC: Oceania - mainly Australia and New Zealand but also the Pacific island nations like Tahiti and Fiji
NA: North America - Canada, USA and Mexico
SA: Latin America - Everything south of Mexico plus the Caribbean
MFR: Non-airline releases in manufacturer house colours
Once you have the raw numbers, where necessary, percentage splits can be used to create pie-charts illustrating the results a bit more clearly.
Gemini Jets - Air Mauritius 747SP
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Aeroclassics - Compass A310
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Two points immediately stand out above:
1. Smaller brands like AV400 and Panda have a less meaningful spread of data due to the smaller datasets, but both are active in most regions.
2. Gemini Jets has a massive focus on North America, which is no surprise considering they are based in Las Vegas.
For the other 4 brands charts are needed.
1. Smaller brands like AV400 and Panda have a less meaningful spread of data due to the smaller datasets, but both are active in most regions.
2. Gemini Jets has a massive focus on North America, which is no surprise considering they are based in Las Vegas.
For the other 4 brands charts are needed.
The graphs illustrate that Aeroclassics has been surprisingly North American centric this year, which I suspect wouldn't be someting you'd see in earlier years as strongly. The other three are all very close together in relation to Europe and Asia. JC Wings arrangement with Gemini Jets means they produce less North American releases than you'd otherwise expect and most of the ones they do make are rather obscure.
Phoenix and NG Models are the closest together and most diverse geographically, but in slightly different ways. NG has been strong in South America (helped by all those Avianca A320s) while Phoenix has commendably been stronger in Africa and less commendably so in the Middle East. The 15% of North American releases from Phoenix is a major strategic shift for the brand. You could argue each are as diverse as the other I'd say.
JOINT WINNERS
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RATIO OF CLASSIC : MODERN RELEASES
METHOD: As with Mark's analysis the idea here is to see which brand is splitting their releases across time the most cleanly. Unlike Mark's analysis however I'm using merely a date cut-off and that date is the year 2000. If you could see that airline livery / aircraft combination pre-2000 it is classic and if you couldn't it is not. So just to be clear, an Air France A320-100 or a Northwest 'bowling shoe' A320 is classic and a DC-9 still flying today with an active airline isn't. The closest score to 50% (i.e 50:50) is the winner.
NG Models - Saudia Tristar
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Panda Models - Tibet Airlines A319neo
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This set of results hurts me. Considering the size of their release sets the number of pre-2000 releases made by both JC Wings and NG Models is awful. It is even worse when you look at them in detail and realise a good chunk of them were re-releases too! They are only beaten into last place by Aviation400, which barely has any moulds that are pre-2000 (there are a few A320/330/340 possibilities) and focuses on modern releases.
Panda Models does surprisingly well thanks to some excellent Tu-134s and 737-400s, although there have been far too few of the former this year. Gemini has shown a definite increase in retro aircraft in 2023 and made a selection of 727s and MD-80s along with the odd Il-62, F100 and an An-26. Given their relatively small number of releases and commercial focus it is a pleasant surprise that they have made as much classic material as they have.
The two stand outs however in 2023 that come closest to a 50:50 ratio are Aeroclassics and Phoenix, just at either end of the spectrum. Aeroclassics makes a lot more classics but is 22% away from parity while Phoenix is only 21% away with a 2023 that featured a surprising amount of pre-2000 aircraft. The only sad thing is that a good chunk of the Phoenix bunch have been awful 747-100/200s. Regardless, on pure numbers Phoenix take the win here, narrowly pipping Aeroclassics.
WINNER CLASSIC:MODERN RATIO (JUST): |
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CONCLUSION
So there we have it. For me the overall winner if you have to pick one is Phoenix when it comes to diversity, but Aeroclassics are very near them and I'm certain in previous years AC would be the obvious winner. Phoenix have been delving into a wider set of models due to competitive pressure from NG Models and their willingness to listen to new collector voices they are working with. Good on them. It is just a shame that so much of their mould catalogue is a little outdated, or at times downright awful.
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Above: The two most diverse brands in 400 scale by my stats
For most of the rest there is plenty of work that can be done to diversify their releases, although a brand like Aviation400 is obviously firmly set on modern releases. Whether this matters to you at all depends entirely on what you collect but I'd argue a diverse release set in the scale signifies a vibrant and healthy hobby so is good for everyone. For the two biggest brands they have plenty of options:
- For NG Models, as I wrote earlier in the year when looking at their output up to 2023, they have for me failed to live up to my hopes. I can only hope that their 'Let Classic Be Classic' theme will bear fruit in the new year and certainly a lot of the new moulds they have coming online are excellent opportunities to diversify their release sets.
- For JC Wings there is also a great opportunity in 2024 for them to diversify their releases in terms of airlines, and especially classics. From what I hear that maybe the direction they are heading so potentially there is a lot of excitement to come from them in 2024 also.