by ModelMonkey » Wed Jul 08, 2026 8:10 am
Concur with ModelFunShipyard and Jodie Peeler.
Products for Essex-class ships are very challenging and costly to produce. For the most part, it is very difficult to make an Essex-class SCB product work financially.
Here's the "why".
Ship differences. No two Essex-class ships have the same features. Other than some weapons and other fittings, the Essex-class ships are all simply too different to create a generic set of products for them. This means that each product produced will only match one ship as it appeared at one time. To make a project like that work financially for the vendor, there has to be a large enough market just for that specific ship as the ship appeared at that one time. Our sales data for our Essex-class products gathered over more than 10 years confirms that no such market exists, unfortunately.
The market. For reasons not fully understood, the market for Essex-class SCB ship aftermarket products is much smaller than one would expect. Part of that is simply that Cold War subjects don't have the interest that World War Two subjects do. But more specifically, Essex-class customers (or potential customers) tend to be only former crewmembers or family members of former crewmembers, or those who otherwise have some emotional connection to a specific ship during a specific event. That's about it. What that customer wants is a product that is accurate for their ship and only their ship at the time they or their loved one served on it. No other ship or time works for them. If we don't have a product for "their" ship configured precisely for the time they were aboard, they do not buy.
The financials. For this reason, insufficient market demand, every Essex-class SCB product we offer has been produced at a loss. All of them. Most of the SCB islands we offer have sold fewer than 3. That's not a typo. Three. There are islands we offer that haven't sold any. Not one sale. Given that each island represents hundreds of hours of research and design time, those losses are just not sustainable. This is why we have stopped offering new islands. We have had to move on to other products with better sales potential in order to stay in business.
Geometric complexity. Any product that would attach to the side of the hull such as a sponson or hurricane bow would need to be designed to match the compound curvature of a specific kit's hull. That means that the product would only fit one commercially available plastic kit in one scale, limiting the market. And to do it right, we'd need the kit manufacturer's CAD file for their hull in order to have the hull geometry from which to design the mating surface of the part we were making. Or, we would need effective scanning technology that works on small-scale models. That, unfortunately again for both options, is not realistic.
Available reference materials. To design an island, for example (or any other significant feature like a sponson), of a specific ship at a specific time, we need to have sufficient, authoritative reference material of the island as it appeared at that specific time. That would include any dimensioned 2D drawings to establish overall size and the dimensions of specific features, and photos of all sides of the island with the photos taken as close to the the same day as possible in order to confirm details. For most ships, those kinds of references simply don't exist. That limits the islands that we can produce.
Development cost. Some products, like an island, require considerable research and design effort to produce, easily measured in the hundreds of hours. Ask yourself, "what do I get paid for hundreds of hours of work?". That's what it costs to design the product in terms of time. Research materials may have to be purchased. That adds to the cost as well. There has to be a significantly large market demand to pay for those costs. As the Mercury 7 famously said, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers". Similarly, nearly daily, I will get a request from a modeler asking for a complex product for which there is no market. The request is for a unique product only applicable to his one ship model. And the product is to be researched and designed at our cost. The typical request looks something like this:
"Hey, Monkey, how about a USS Valley Forge island, 1959? Sent from my iPhone."
We regrettably must decline those requests as impractical and unaffordable.
Rapidly and frequently changing ship appearance. The Essex-class ships' appearance changed conspicuously over time. And no two ships changed the same way toward the same configuration. Many of those changes occurred nearly yearly. This makes research very challenging. We have to balance which ship configuration year we want to focus on with what the market may want with the available references we have access to. Often times, we can't achieve that balance.
3D-printing technology limitations. Some products, such as a hull or a flight deck, are just not possible to produce well with the technology we now have available to us. The "build space" within affordable 3D-printers remains relatively small. A 1/700 scale hull or flight deck won't fit inside. That means we would have to offer that product cut into parts complicating the design and the effort needed by the modeler to fuse the parts and smooth seams. Generally, large, flat objects like a flight deck, would be subject to warping. There are some design tricks to minimize warping, but a flight deck would be a real challenge to print. So, even if a large format printer could be had, other technical issues like warping would have to be addressed through an iterative and expensive test print process.
All of these problems also affect products for ships like the Forrestals and is why we have stopped working on those as well. Without sufficient sales to sustain further Essex-class and Forrestal-class products, we abandoned working on islands for the Midways, too. We just can't afford the losses, unfortunately.
Concur with ModelFunShipyard and Jodie Peeler.
Products for Essex-class ships are very challenging and costly to produce. For the most part, it is very difficult to make an Essex-class SCB product work financially.
Here's the "why".
[b]Ship differences.[/b] No two Essex-class ships have the same features. Other than some weapons and other fittings, the Essex-class ships are all simply too different to create a generic set of products for them. This means that each product produced will only match one ship as it appeared at one time. To make a project like that work financially for the vendor, there has to be a large enough market just for that specific ship as the ship appeared at that one time. Our sales data for our Essex-class products gathered over more than 10 years confirms that no such market exists, unfortunately.
[b]The market.[/b] For reasons not fully understood, the market for Essex-class SCB ship aftermarket products is [i]much[/i] smaller than one would expect. Part of that is simply that Cold War subjects don't have the interest that World War Two subjects do. But more specifically, Essex-class customers (or potential customers) tend to be only former crewmembers or family members of former crewmembers, or those who otherwise have some emotional connection to a specific ship during a specific event. That's about it. What that customer wants is a product that is accurate for their ship and only their ship at the time they or their loved one served on it. No other ship or time works for them. If we don't have a product for "their" ship configured precisely for the time they were aboard, they do not buy.
[b]The financials.[/b] For this reason, insufficient market demand, every Essex-class SCB product we offer has been produced at a loss. All of them. Most of the SCB islands we offer have sold fewer than 3. That's not a typo. Three. There are islands we offer that haven't sold any. Not one sale. Given that each island represents hundreds of hours of research and design time, those losses are just not sustainable. This is why we have stopped offering new islands. We have had to move on to other products with better sales potential in order to stay in business.
[b]Geometric complexity.[/b] Any product that would attach to the side of the hull such as a sponson or hurricane bow would need to be designed to match the compound curvature of a specific kit's hull. That means that the product would only fit one commercially available plastic kit in one scale, limiting the market. And to do it right, we'd need the kit manufacturer's CAD file for their hull in order to have the hull geometry from which to design the mating surface of the part we were making. Or, we would need effective scanning technology that works on small-scale models. That, unfortunately again for both options, is not realistic.
[b]Available reference materials.[/b] To design an island, for example (or any other significant feature like a sponson), of a specific ship at a specific time, we need to have sufficient, authoritative reference material of the island as it appeared at that specific time. That would include any dimensioned 2D drawings to establish overall size and the dimensions of specific features, and photos of all sides of the island with the photos taken as close to the the same day as possible in order to confirm details. For most ships, those kinds of references simply don't exist. That limits the islands that we can produce.
[b]Development cost.[/b] Some products, like an island, require considerable research and design effort to produce, easily measured in the hundreds of hours. Ask yourself, "what do I get paid for hundreds of hours of work?". That's what it costs to design the product in terms of time. Research materials may have to be purchased. That adds to the cost as well. There has to be a significantly large market demand to pay for those costs. As the Mercury 7 famously said, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers". Similarly, nearly daily, I will get a request from a modeler asking for a complex product for which there is no market. The request is for a unique product only applicable to his one ship model. And the product is to be researched and designed at our cost. The typical request looks something like this:
"Hey, Monkey, how about a USS Valley Forge island, 1959? Sent from my iPhone."
We regrettably must decline those requests as impractical and unaffordable.
[b]Rapidly and frequently changing ship appearance.[/b] The Essex-class ships' appearance changed conspicuously over time. And no two ships changed the same way toward the same configuration. Many of those changes occurred nearly yearly. This makes research very challenging. We have to balance which ship configuration year we want to focus on with what the market may want with the available references we have access to. Often times, we can't achieve that balance.
[b]3D-printing technology limitations.[/b] Some products, such as a hull or a flight deck, are just not possible to produce well with the technology we now have available to us. The "build space" within affordable 3D-printers remains relatively small. A 1/700 scale hull or flight deck won't fit inside. That means we would have to offer that product cut into parts complicating the design and the effort needed by the modeler to fuse the parts and smooth seams. Generally, large, flat objects like a flight deck, would be subject to warping. There are some design tricks to minimize warping, but a flight deck would be a real challenge to print. So, even if a large format printer could be had, other technical issues like warping would have to be addressed through an iterative and expensive test print process.
All of these problems also affect products for ships like the Forrestals and is why we have stopped working on those as well. Without sufficient sales to sustain further Essex-class and Forrestal-class products, we abandoned working on islands for the Midways, too. We just can't afford the losses, unfortunately.