Peter Jenkins Posted February 24, 2020 Share Posted February 24, 2020 The Sun ran an article on the recently advertised "Build a Spitfire" in a Hackette Partwork magazine. The price of the first edition of the mag is £1.99, the second £5.99 and thereafter for the remaining 118 issues £9.99. This makes a grand total of £1186.80 for a non flying 1/18 scale Spit! Even the Sun pointed out that you can buy an RC Spit for £399 while an Airfix 1/24 Spit costs £43.95. That's what you call a bit of a con unless the mag is worth the money in its own right. I expect some people might fall for it for a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Member Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 [This posting has been removed] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denis Watkins Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 As Doc says, these monthly build £1000 models have been going for years With F1 cars, ships, planes, buses, motorcycles etc The " take up " reported some time back in the Financial Times was 2% That is 2% of all the people who read about them or watched the ad on TV That is a lot of sales, but a mystery as to " why " to us modellers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Miller Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 WE all wondered why spend years collecting the DaAgostini Spitfire when a Top Flite kit cost far less and could be started on right away and finished before a tenth of the partworks have been sold. Mind you, one of our club members bought a complete DEaggostini spitfire for abot £70 and has nearly finished it. However I am pretty sure that they sold masses of the first issue with the prop and spinner!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kc Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 And of course if the last issue or any issue is not published or just not available for any reason the whole cost is wasted because it cannot be completed! The trouble is they rely on people not being able to do mental arithmatic nowadays! Younger people cannot do the calculations in their head so don't realise the full cost. I stood next to a man in the supermarket who was looking at the previous similar Spitfire 100 part issue and said something about what the total cost was yet he still went away buying the 1.99 first issue! You cannot help some people ........ There ought to be a law agianst the tiny small print on TV screens .... even on a 49 inch screen it was very difficult to read the real cost of this latest advert, and the cost disappeared very quickly too. You need to be a quick reader with good eyesight and the brains to remember the weekly cost and the number of issues to understand the total cost. Maybe this sort of thing should be a question on that latest Very Hard Quiz or Richard Osmans new quiz....... Edited By kc on 25/02/2020 09:09:36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Stephenson Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 Most people who start with one of these magazine builds never get to the end so there's a lot of incomplete models in the back of cupboards or in the trash. I think the publishers know this and scale down the number of copies published towards the end of the run. Then it starts all over again with another enticing build. Way to rip-off the impulse buying public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken anderson. Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 my brother built one of the German tanks, panzer or tiger from one of the mags......when completed it was impressive, but at a price. ken anderson...ne..1.price dept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken anderson. Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 ...oops Edited By ken anderson. on 25/02/2020 09:26:00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john davidson 1 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 A local Mens Shed is in our regional paper today, starting to build a model Lusitania which cost £600 some years ago.Picture shows a complete set of mags. As above more money than sense, the mags are not worth that!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Smith 14 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 There reviews look excellent https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.hachettepartworks.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Jenkins Posted February 25, 2020 Author Share Posted February 25, 2020 Wow, you don't often see a 90% bad rating i.e. 1 star on Trustpilot. Reading many of the comments, it would appear that quite a few would have given zero stars if that rating were available. So, 1.3/5 seems to be an overestimate for the rating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brokenenglish Posted February 26, 2020 Share Posted February 26, 2020 Once we all understand that debatable modelling projects are being used as a promotional gimmick to sell overpriced magazines for a long period, the problem goes away. You just have to see it for what it is (marketing hype) and not confuse it with real modelling projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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