Talk:Airfix

Links to Airfix Forums
I would like to have the links to the Airfix forums added back. The links are


 * The Airfix Collecting Forum
 * The Airfix Tribute Forum
 * The Exfix Forum
 * The Unofficial Airfix Modellers Forum

The links were deleted by NatureBoyMD on 21:47, 20 September 2007 with the reason External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided. I put the links back on 00:43, 24 September 2007 with the reason "They are used by modelers to help build and collect Airfix kits and contain much news and information about Airfix and their kits. Wikipedia says links to forums should normally be avoided, not that they have to be avoided."

The links were deleted by Statsone with the reason (to me) "Wikipedia is not a link farm. The links could easily be found by searching the internet." I strongly disagree with this. There are only four links, which is certainly far from an excessive list. It is true, if someone searches for "Airfix forum" they will find the forums. However, not everyone is aware that the Airfix forums exist. Having the links there provides a place where people looking for information on Airfix can get more detailed information. For example, the Airfix Tribute Forum has a listing and history of every Airfix kit ever issued.

Airfix itself used to have their own forum, with many thousands of members. When this forum was closed, many modellers lost their main source of information and news about Airfix kits, as the Airfix website was not updated very often. It did not occur to many of these modellers that independent Airfix forums started. We often get reports that the only reason they found the forums was due to the links in Wikipedia. Thus, I kindly ask that I can put the links back, without them having to be removed again. I believe having the links there makes the Airfix entry in Wikipedia that much more useful.

Steven Pietrobon 00:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to agree with NatureBoy. Two of these forums come up right at the top of a simple google search, and the others can probably be easily located from there. So I don't see the need for these links. Gatoclass 05:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Information is more important than a list of link. -- Statsone  13:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, somebody agrees with me.  CROWDUDE  has restored the links.


 * Gatoclass, many people don't know that the Airfix forums exists, and therefore don't perform a search. This has been shown by people only finding the forums through the links in Wikipedia. Doing a search just for Airfix does not give the forums, although it does give the Airfix website, so by your logic we should also delete the link for the Airfix website!


 * Statsone, the links provide the reader with a source of information on Airfix (like the complete list and history of Airfix kits) that Wikipedia does not provide. Removing the links removes information. By your logic all links should be deleted!


 * I can understand your desire to delete unnecessary links, but I believe these links are very useful to people seeking more information about Airfix and their kits. Could you please reconsider and allow the links to stay.


 * Steven Pietrobon 00:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * How many links do you need? Wikipedia ia an enclyclopedia.  It is not a link farm nor is it the only one around.  I am sure the links left will contain lists of links to other sites.  Please add to the article and do not concentrate on the links.  It is a very minor parts of the article. -- Statsone  04:33, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I am asking only that four links be added. I believe this is far from making the Airfix page a link farm. User  CROWDUDE  agrees with me in this, as he is the one who restored the links yesterday. I have checked the four links that are left, only one of them Airfix 1/32 scale figures has a link (in German) to only one of the forums The Airfix Collecting Forum, so your assumption is incorrect. I have also made many additions and corrections to the Airfix article (before I joined Wikipedia). I don't see why you are so against these four links when they are so useful for people looking for information. Could you please reconsider and allow me to restore the links. Steven Pietrobon 02:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Is in not a question of me allowing the links. It is links to be avoided and based on Consensus.  Nor who is first. For a short article, seems too many.  Eliminate the ones that come up in google near the top.  On second thought, the msn group should go, and then see what fits.  It is not the end of the world as to what goes in.  Just trying to balance the article. -- Statsone  04:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, consensus has not been reached as I still strongly disagree with you. Note that forums are links _normally_ to be avoided, not that they have to be avoided. The Airfix forums are not just social networking sites, they provide detailed information about Airfix and their kits that is beyond the scope of Wikipedia. The Airfix article is nearly 150 lines long. I hardly think that eight or ten external links is overbalancing the article with links. There are many shorter articles in Wiki that have five or more external links. If we do as you suggest and eliminate links that come near the top in a Google search, then the first to go is the Airfix Official Site (which is in the list of links)! None of the Airfix forums come up in the first 50 hits, so by your logic we should put them in! I think your argument of using Google to decide which links go in and which do not is flawed. As per the Wikipedia guidelines, the links that should go in are the ones editors judge as providing further information about Airfix that are beyond the scope of the article. Steven Pietrobon 01:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

80s Decline.
There's not enough opinionated unsubstantiated waffle about Airfix's decline in the early 80s. Here's some more. The flood and ebb of kids' fads are not to be understood by adults. A mere insult at school. e.g. "you Airfix w*nker", could start a world-wide crash in its popularity.

Being an old AW myself, I'd say that the quality of the product was the main reason for the decline. They'd been using the same dies from the beginning, and the die repair work was showing up in the styrene mouldings. The Wellington III was by far the worst. Arch rival Revell was not so frugal with their die cutters wages. The artwork of Roy Cross had a lot to do with Airfix's rise in the 60s. They were usually realistic war scenes, done with considerable flair and skill. When Palitoy moved in, many of the war scenes were replaced by photographs of the finished model. This was to pacify the ravings of the politically correct lobbyists, who didn't want little boys to become militarized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.90.203 (talk) 06:38, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * As someone who also used to make Airfix kits I would suggest that the decline in quality was but one factor in the company's decline. There was increased competition from the mid-70s on, from the Japanese manufacturers, such as Hasegawa (also Tamiya, and to a lesser extent Fujimi, Nichimo, Bandai and others), who got the toolmaking and detailing on their kits down to a fine art, Hasegawa 's 1:72 scale aeroplanes being jewel-like compared to Airfix and Frog's offerings - I remember building a Hasegawa Grumman Panther and the wing and tail surface trailing edges were so thin and to-scale as to be almost translucent. Tamiya's 1:72 scale aeroplanes were also superb, although at the time lacking in Western types, being mostly of Japanese aircraft. In comparison, by the time of their newer releases in around 1980 you could see the cost-cutting that had gone into an Airifx kit. The 1:24 scale were still pretty good but nevertheless you could see the simplification of detail in a single complex part, that Hasegawa would have typically produced in two or three parts. One guesses that the businessmen had taken over by then, and despite the best wills of the tool and die makers and the technical people, they (i.e., the management) had driven the quality downwards. Which is silly really, as with the increased competition, they really should have done the reverse. Such is the perverse logic of the managerial-Briton.


 * One other mistake was, as you suggest, to keep re-issueing kits from older moulds, many that had originated in the early 1960s. By 1980 no serious modeller was going to use them for anything other than conversions or as parts for scratch-building. For any youngster buying one of these older re-issues as a first model, the thought; "Well I won't be buying one of those again" may have lost Airfix many future customers. Although to be fair to Airfix, Revell and Frog both did this too, and Novo was still issuing kits from the original Frog 1960s moulds as late as 1977. I should also mention that Airfix had an excellent spares department at IIRC, Haldane Place, London, each kit coming with a leaflet for applying for replacement parts, should one be broken (either on purchase or perhaps through the purchasers carelessness or bad luck on assembly) and I always found their service superb. The same went for Dinky Toys BTW.


 * And the subjects chosen also had a lot to do with it, I don't know how long people had to wait for an Airfix V-bomber, but there certainly wasn't one available when I was still making them. And then there's the TSR.2 saga, a subject that would have sold in the tens-of-thousands, and what did Airfix do when they finally released one - sell it as a 'Limited Edition'. I have to applaud Airifx for some of their current releases such as the 1:24 Mosquito though, and wish them well.


 * Another reason for the decline was the advent of microcomputers and the subsequent PC, along with video games, this took a lot of the interest away from modelling, and it was also around this time (mid 80s) that for some reason the media decided that making scale models was something for 'anoraks' and was akin to train spotting. Quite why I don't know, but then again the media haven't been so hot since then either, having dumbed-down, so perhaps that was to be expected.


 * BTW, I wouldn't worry about being called "you Airfix w*nker" too much, as the one calling you it will have to be polite should you ever see him again, as he asks "Will that be medium or large fries with that sir?" One needs to be fairly literate and dexterous to build a kit that actually looks like it's supposed to, and unfortunately that's a task that's beyond many people - from memory of my own school days, many of the detractors simply having trouble managing to read and write.


 * Oh, the loss of the Roy Cross artwork was not entirely due to the EU and PC, it was because of sales abroad, where some of the countries had differing standards on what was deemed 'violent' and what was 'non-violent', e.g,. some countries didn't mind seeing a Wellington coned by searchlights over a blazing Berlin (the original box art for the Wellington IIRC), whereas some did. IIRC, it was the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden Denmark) who had strictest rules on this, and not, as one might have thought, Germany. The resulting 'toning down' meant that the same box art could be used for all countries. The same reason for the later simplified all-pictorial instruction sheets, the original English-only ones being much more informative usually with some history of the aircraft/subject type. It wasn't just Airfix that 'sanitised' the box art though, Revell did the same at around the same time - mid 1970s? - often taking the easier route and having a photo of the completed model. It was all to do with the change in the relationships between Britain and the US and their former enemies, i.e., Germany and to a lesser extent, Italy and Japan. The only 'PC-ness' on Germany's part was the removal of the Swastika from artwork and transfer sheets in kits for distribution there, as display of the 'hakenkreuz' in any form, except for educational purposes, is actually illegal for historical reasons that should be obvious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 18:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW, the Japanese kits such as those by Tamiya, Nichimo, Bandai, Hasegawa, etc., were distributed in the UK by Riko (Richard Kohnstam), who were based IIRC in Hemel Hempsted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2013 (UTC)


 * A video on YouTube showing some of Roy Cross' classic 60s' and 70's Airfix box art here: - I have to admit I remember almost all of them.


 * A video of the Airfix Toyfair 2014 stand showing lots of new-tooling models and what looks like a 1:24 scale Hawker Typhoon, here:

Very Dated Information
I noticed in the section that lists the products produced by Airfix, especially that of 'Figures', is heavily dated. The majority of these sets have not been produced for quite a while, i.e. the Arabs mentioned, and the description of the Combat Sets, of which only two are still being sold, is incorrect. However, as I don't quite trust my own knowledge, I have refrained from putting in possibly wrong information. 86.172.174.9 (talk) 08:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The "Model kit product ranges" section isn't intended to list only the current product range, but historical ones as well. Maybe this should be made clear in the article. Regards, Letdorf (talk) 10:49, 10 November 2012 (UTC).
 * Agree. Only the main or significant products should be listed in the article though; if a more comprehensive list is collated, it should be in a separate (but related) "list-type" article. Regards, DPdH (talk) 09:07, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Airfix Modelers Club
Should there be a paragraph about the club? I was a member, and they sent you a badge, coupons and a welcome letter from club president, Dick Emery.

For badge, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23885771@N03/4364181577/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gingerpig2000 (talk • contribs) 17:49, 29 March 2013 (UTC)


 * If verifiable information about the club can be used (and cited), it should be OK to add a small section about it. Regards, DPdH (talk) 09:04, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

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