Testors is discontinuing the following brands of paint.... Floquil Pollyscale Pactra Including associated accesories and items branded with those names. No clue if the colors will be merged into the main lines or gone for good. This was in my e-mails from 3 different distributors this morning.
Yeah, I just noticed today that they're all gone from my LHS. Kind of annoying as their remaining selection of enamel paints is pretty lame (geared towards hot rods and military applications). -Mark
well that sucks... there's a ton of different paints out there, but i really enjoyed the polyscale line. Vallejo paints it is from now on i guess.
So what does that leave us for RR colors? Scalecoat and Badger right? And in my opinion, Badger is junk!
I have a copy of the e-mail sent to distirbutors and as you read through the "everything is bright and shiny" mumbo jombo, it sounds as if they are closing one of the production facilities and as a result, wouldn't be able to maintain all the lines at once. More corprate streamlining from some dumba ss pencil pusher.
Maybe Scalecoat will be compelled to expand their line and production now that they have a monopoly on non acrylic paint ? Randy
And now in the meantime, us RR modelers have lost a "HUGE" selction of quality paints as a result of some "bean counter." I am sick of Corp. America. But what can we do? I can see it now. The people that custom paint for a living, or even as a source of extra $$$$ are going to be able to raise prices about 25% as a result. I know a guy here in Seattle that if he gets wind of this he will do the same thing he did when Sunrise quit making detail parts. He went and hit every LHS in the area between Seattle and Portland and bought up practically EVERY diesel loco part almost overnight. As a result he was able to make accurate or "very close" to accurate models and charge a premium for them. I have a feeling he will do the same with the paints as soon as he gets wind of this. Better stock up now!
There is a good buisness model,, lets cancel a product line,,and at the same time,,make a whole bunch of people really really really mad at us. Got to love the way that the brain trusts think. Adios,,Wyatt
Wow, that's terrible news. Just terrible. I hope somebodyhas the gumption to buy the rights and formulas. My signature loco is Floquil Grimy Black with SP Lettering Gray body, need I say more?
man, this sucks for us, but Floquil's quality has been going down hill over the last few years, maybe they were really forced to either change their formula too much or perhaps, in this ready to run world, not enough of us paint our own any more.
It is getting to the point that if a company can’t get a product line into Wal-Mart they just give-up on it altogether. On the other hand; what percent of total sales for Testors did those product lines contribute too?
Lets hope this is NOT a result of the RTR world. Personally, I like having cars and cabooses and locos already decorated. However, I have seen an abundance of pre-assembled or as Walthers calls them "Built-Ups" structures and if Testors pulled the plug as a result of people not building models anymore, that means the days of us modelers that like to kitbash, and just put a building together are numbered. I sure hope I am wrong about this though. Ryan
OK, there's nothing on the web page and nothing on their Facebook page. Nothing on Trains.com except our Randy Stahl making the secondhand announcement.... Don't fire till you see the whites of their tinting vats, but sounds to me like when we do get a copy of that official announcement, time for a full-blown Facebook response fellow posters. You want social networking? The only 'acceptable' response is.... well, haven't figured that out yet. Even if you do want to fold in the product lines into something else, Floquil has been around for over 50 years and shooting it now is rather inexplicable. When they were petroleum-based, well, that was nasty stuff. But if you can't make the stuff, sell the line to somebody that can.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are closing out the name and will then bring the paint back out under a new name and then double the price.