Sad yes they were excellent. I still have many of their sets.
Just heard from a friend of mine that Tommy’s War is closing down as well. He produced WW1 figures and excellent ones at that.
Archer has provided many excellent quality products, wish Woody the best with his new Cat-Farm project.
Perhaps someone will contact Woody and purchase the business line from him.
It had to be a fun company. One of the researchers did some very small 1/35 placards for a vehicle and someone managed to blow the image up to see what was written on it. It said something like, If you can read this you must have too much time on your hands!
sadly our hobby is a dying breed, kids nowadays dont care about historic models the way we did back in the day… even i myself have abandoned the hobby and converted to LEGO… yes, lego… i am a massive star-wars fan and i find lego amazingly calming and satisfying to build. of course i collect other star-wars things than lego, but building a lego star-wars set is always rewarding in its own way (and they tend to increase in value contrary to the models we used to build…)
Definitely, happy retirement for him and wishing the best!
I agree with Woody’s comment that the technology is just catching up so fast and may be phasing out a lot of things in our hobby. For someone like me, I will rarely buy aftermarket parts b/c I can simply CAD them and 3D print them. I can also easily print HD decals using a color laser printer. I am also thinking about buying a Cricut machine and a laser engraver/cutter, which will enable me to cut plastic sheets and balsa wood sheets neatly for diorama items and conversions. All these machines have become affordable and can do some incredibly complex shapes.
Of course the old school hobby will survive in my opinion but the industry is definitely changing.
Wow! Has it really been 33 years? I remember when Mr. Vondracek first came on the scene with Archers Fine Transfers. They were state of the art!
The best to Woody and his family (and the cats)
Hopefully someone with newer, “state of the art” technology will recognize this void and fill it.
Cheers,
C.
I hope he is transitioning to retirement or something else fun. I have been pleased with his product and delighted with his service over the years. I used his stuff for wargaming applications before I started getting serious about modeling recently. Wish him all the best!
While I ordered what I wanted, I certainly hope there will be another vendor that can provide as much detail in their product that Archer has over the years. Archer products will be hard shoes to fill! In just their American foundry markings, they have made all the difference for my builds just by adding better accuracy and giving that straight up spartan and sharpened technical look on builds. A salute to a long career…enjoy retirement!!
SAD, i wish I stocked up on more. good luck !
