Shipping and Tariffs and P-36s (Oh my)
I’d mentioned in the August 1st Monkey Notes that I’d pre-ordered a 1/72 scale Arma Hobby P-36. As with so many modelers’ orders in the US from non-US companies, delivery has been delayed due to tariffs. But this ain’t a political post…
What I was impressed with is how nicely Arma Hobby took care of things. They let me know of the delay, their plans to resolve it, and then sent me an email with instructions. It was simple enough. I had to pay an additional $3 or so for the tariff, and that was it.
Sure, I could do the “old man ranting” about it routine. But I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t waste my energy on things out of my control. Getting the P-36 model is a luxury when you get down to it. Nothing says I must have it. They did offer to refund all my money if I chose to take that route. But if I’d have “rage quit” it would have really meant nothing. And I wanted that P-36, just to see what it was like.
Other companies are doing the same thing, or some form of it. So it’s all getting sorted, one way or the other.
But I thought Arma Hobby’s customer service was outstanding. And now I’ll get to see how their kits shake out.
What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate
The blog post and video I did a while back called “A Replacement For Pledge? Here It Is!” gets massive traffic. Well, massive for me. For Squidmar it’s probably just a quiet toot. 🤣But it does get the highest percentage of traffic on the site, even more than the home page. If I were running Google Ads I’d likely have earned 47¢ or 48¢. 49¢ even.
In a fairly recent Monkey Notes, I mentioned how I’d added a GAINT red notice at the top of the page saying it was not about using the product on floors, but rather on little plastic toys. I hoped that would slow down the comments and questions about its use on actual floors.
It appears I was wrong.
I continue to get comments, some of them quite angry, chastising me for promoting a product that doesn’t work on floors like Future/Pledge did. Others ask questions like “how can I strip it from my floors”, “How should I clean my mop”, or my personal favorite, “Does this product have UV protection when applied to floors in direct sunlight?”
🤦♂️
I resisted the urge to reply with non-helpful, somewhat destructive answers. Like for the stripping it from floors query… “I recommend strapping industrial size Brillo pads to your backside, coat the floor in brake fluid, and scooting around on your butt for 20-30 minutes until it is free of any shine.” Fourteen year old Jon is totally onboard with it, but old man Jon is just mumbling under his breath as the comment gets deleted.
But it would be fun.
It does make me ponder the fact that the folks who submit these comments likely drive, vote, and may even be involved in important decisions. (Apart from the decision to seek floor cleaning information from an old man’s plastic toy site.)
Hurrying To End The Basilisk Series
You may have noticed that the old Patreon 12-part series about the Basilisk has been showing up every Wednesday. Looking at the numbers, few want to see it. Heck, I don’t want to see it anymore. So I’m pushing it out the door quickly, with three videos this week, two next, and it’s over an done with.
And About That Fledermaus
I only have one more of the old Patreon “Exclusive” sets of videos that isn’t published, that being the twenty part Maschinen Krieger Fledermaus series. What in the wide world of sports was I thinking for that one?
If you were a former patron, you might recall the challenges I had with that one. I have decided to not do any public weekly re-releases of that series at this time. Frankly, I’m not sure what I’ll do with that series. I am considering drastically editing down the series into two or three parts, and just doing a voiceover. I think it might work to do so. Release it as “new-ish”. 😁
In the meantime, the Fledermaus playlist is publicly available if you’d like to suffer through it.
Kits In Progress
The Airacobra is DONE
I finally completed the Airacobra. To be more precise, I stopped doing anything else to it.
In several videos in the past, I’ve talked about how I don’t see completing a model as a single point in most cases, but rather a spectrum so to speak. There is a point that I enter “the zone” where I know at any point I can declare it done. It becomes more about deciding how much more (or less) I want to add.
Theoretically, you could continue on with a model ad infinitum. Eventually it may look like a large brick of mud, stains, and oil streaks, but nothing says you have to actually stop.
With this P-39, I realized “that’s enough to stop.” Sure, I could have done more. But there is value in declaring enough as well. It tells the story. Here’s a slightly weathered P-39, somewhere early in its service life.
I had fun, certainly. But I was ready to move on.
If you are interested in acquiring this kit, please let me know.
Hasegawa 1/35 Crusher Joe Galleon
And I moved on to continuing work on the Crusher Joe Galleon.
I’d finished the initial assembly, interior painting, and priming a while back. I’d been waffling over whether to paint the figures. The sculpts weren’t great, and they just didn’t grab me. But I also considered the fact that if/when this thing sells, it may be to a Crusher Joe fan, and the inclusion of the figures might be a Big Deal™.
So I did a video about painting them up… poorly. I mean, it was a rush job in a sense. I knew I was sacrificing quality for speed. The thing I hope will be helpful that people may pick up from the video is that if you use the basic method I describe, and actually apply it with care and a little more thought, it will work nicely.
The following video in this series will focus on airbrushing water based acrylics. It will be a bit of “clickbait” in a way. I mean, I will demonstrate how to airbrush water based acrylics, and that will be the focus. But at the same time I’ll get the base paint on in a manner that is less snooze inducing than “Painting The Galleon”.
I think “The FIVE Things You Need to KNOW About Airbrushing Acrylics That The PROS Don’t Want You To KNOW!!!” sounds much more traffic inducing. 🤣
Wave 1/20 Ma. K Seapig
This one is on a bit of a pause while I work on the Crusher Joe airbrush video. I have about 1/4 of it done. I am thinking about doing a video focused on the AK Interactive Gouaches product, as I’ve gotten more than a few questions about those.
If I do, maybe I can name it “The SEVEN Things You Need to KNOW About Using AK Interactive Gouaches That The PROS Don’t Want You To KNOW!!!”
I was joking about that title, but wouldn’t it be funny to name EVERYTHING that way for a while? Hopefully people would get that it was poking fun… or they might just complain that it didn’t make their floors look shiny.
🤔
New Stuff
Nothing New
I’ve not bought anything new! Not that I haven’t thought about it, but there’s always the money aspect of it. With prices going up all around, kits take a back seat to stuff like groceries and the light bill.
Plus, I’ve been waiting to see how this whole tariff thing would resolve itself. I’m glad to see that the various shipping companies came up with a way to let things be shipped. I’ve had conversations with manufacturers from outside the US, and quite of they say the US market is a huge chunk of their business. So I can imagine not being able to ship could be a “big deal”.
And certainly I’m trying to just focus on “build what you have”. I have enough kits. Most of them caught my eye in some way or the other, and that’s why I originally purchased them. If the shine seems to have worn off, I need to look at ways to “re-shine” them.
Happy day to you friends!
Jon
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