1/400 Review of 2015: Gemini Jets

Gemini Jets are one of the biggest and probably the most obvious 1:400 scale manufacturer in the market place, at least if you live in the USA. They produce mainly modern aircraft in the liveries of primarily the US and European majors. In this post I take a look at Gemini's output for 2015 to see what airlines and aircraft have been produced. I also take a look at the changes throughout the year to the moulds that Gemini uses.  In summary its been a good year for Gemini and there are some promising signs for the future too.

Using the DiMA database as a guide Gemini have released 97 1:400 scale models in the year 2015, which equates to about 8 a month. As a manufacturer their output has been very conservative within recent years and they have received some criticism from the collectorate for the rather boring selection of models they have released. I think this has been justified, though in fairness to them you can hardly blame them for filling corporate orders for airlines like Hawaiian, Emirates, Fed Ex, Delta, American etc. I assume it is good for their bank balance and the models seem to sell well. Below is a selection of some of these more standard releases from 2015 - generally well executed on decent moulds:

AIRLINES

Gemini 2015 releases by Airline

Given the company's reputation you might expect that their 2015 output would consist of an eternity of Emirates A380s and certainly their core customers remain strong in the line up. You can see in the list to the left the airlines Gemini favours. This year American and Delta have been very strong - the former no doubt helped by the newish livery (same for KLM). There has been less Hawaiian than usual - and only a couple of Emirates A380s :). Gemini also keeps its hand in for corporate orders in Japan whence the relatively high numbers for Ibex and Skymark.

However as you can see almost 1/3 of the Gemini output has actually been for non-core airlines. These have ranged from familiar modern carriers (like Air Canada and Vietnam Airlines) to some classics (Pan Am, Allegheny) to a sprinkling of military types (USAF, RAF and Kuwaiti Air Force). Below are some shots of some of the 'non-core' and Japanese market airlines made by Gemini in 2015:

AIRCRAFT

Gemini 2015 releases by Aircraft type

Gemini have released an impressive 40 aircraft types this year. This can be a good thing as the range of models is obviously greater, but can also be frustrating as they tend to introduce new moulds and then use them only rarely or almost not at all (quite unlike Aeroclassics and Phoenix).

Unsurprisingly Airbus and Boeing predominate the output with the A380, 737-800, 777 and 787 getting the most attention. Unusually there hasn't been a single A321 released in 2015.

What has been nice is that Gemini seems to have rediscovered several moulds they had apparently stopped using. Some of these are older moulds updated (A310, 747-100, 747SP, IL-62, VC10, ERJ-145) whilst some are moulds that are relatively new but had just seemingly been ignored (CV-580). This activity seems to link in with Gemini getting back in touch with some classic releases after effectively stopping making them in recent years. Hopefully this is a promising sign of a more adventurous style to come in 2016.

Below are some of the rediscovered moulds. Its nice that they have often been updated with aerials. The only real mis-step is the Antonov 124 - the mould for which is much inferior to the Herpa AN-124 which had already been made in this scheme anyway. Its fabulous to see the CV-580 again - despite its rather chunky undercarriage.

Gemini also updated another of its moulds in 2015 giving its 777s new legs. Gemini has several moulds with rather chunky undercarriage (like the 757) and the 777 was rather notorious for this also. The updated mould is still not as good as the Phoenix 777 but does appear to be an improvement over the older version. Here are a couple of the 2015 777s with the new undercarriage:

SWITCHING TO JC

As well as the modification of older moulds Gemini made quite a few changes to its available moulds this year. For some time now Gemini has had a strong relationship with JC Wings and this continued to get stronger in 2015 as Gemini transitioned over to several new JC Wings moulds. This was most noticeable with the 737NG. Personally I prefer the old Gemini mould and the Phoenix 737NG (see my 737NG mould review) however Gemini has gone all in on this new mould with 10 blended winglet releases and 2 with the split scimitar winglets. The latter looks better than the standard winglet version - as the nose appears less pointy. From what has been said about the Phoenix split scimitar version the Gemini/JC one appears better but that's not the case for the non-wingletted / blended wingletted version. Here are several of the new 2015 Gemini 737NG releases on the JC Wings mould:

Gemini also finally stopped using its old A320 mould in 2015 and switched to JC Wings superior mould. The last old A320 was the Philippines release and the subsequent British Airways release is on the new mould. So far the A319 continues to use the old mould as you can see below with the Spirit release:

Gemini is also I believe using the superb JC Wings A350 and has just apparently switched to the JC A330 also - though the one Delta release on the latter is afflicted by some odd wing flex not seen on the JC releases I own:

MD-80 ENIGMA

One mould I do find frustration with Gemini with is the MD-80. The initial release was a disaster and in fact in 2015 Gemini did revert to even using the old Phoenix mould for one of its 3 releases. Now the new mould appears largely fixed (though still not perfect) I don't understand why they barely use it. Hopefully the recent excellent Meridiana release means there will be plenty more MD-80s to come, though given Gemini's lack of focus on an aircraft type I expect this won't happen. Below are the three 2015 releases - note one of the Allegiants is on the old mould:

SUMMARY

Overall I think Gemini has had a pretty good 2015. Their models generally have a high standard of printing, detail and colour correctness. I don't rate many of their moulds as being the best, where there is competition, but they are almost universally acceptable. Their partnership with JC Wings appears to give them access to more moulds than they would have otherwise and often they are very good moulds (A320, A330, A350, EMB-190) though its a shame that they seem to have opted out of producing their own new moulds nowadays and not all the JC moulds are great (737NG).

Their range of aircraft types is excellent and I am pleased they are returning to releasing a few more classics. Despite this of the 60 new models I have purchased in 2015 only 3 are Gemini Jets, showing that for me at least they are not the go to manufacturer. This is not because of the quality of their models, which is in fact very high, but more because they produce very few classics and the only modern aircraft I collect are Russian and Chinese - two areas Gemini rarely touches.

Personally in 2016 I would like to see greater use of moulds for types they alone have (especially the MD-80 and CV-580) and better QA. Even though I only got 3 Geminis  - the Pan Am A310 literally fell apart out of the box and even now refuses to sit on its front gear.

For 2016 I feel that there will be a few more unusual aircraft dropped in now and then, but never infringing too heavily on their core business of producing corporate orders and fulfilling the need for relatively mass market mainstream airliners. Someone's got to do that and Gemini do it well.

All photos are courtesy of Waffle Collectibles. Check out Michael's huge range of models at excellent prices at http://www.wafflecollectibles.com/