Hello, this is just a comment from an old Vet. I totally appreciate the new interest in the Vietnam subjects and hope people will support them. My main gripe, which is totally personal is that it took 50 some years to happen. I continue to see every possible version of vehicles from a war that ended 80 years ago, but until lately Korea and Vietnam have been ignored pretty much. A lot of my Nam vet friends have passed without ever having a chance to see their machines built to show their kids and grand kids. Before you build another Tiger, consider building something your neighbors or there grand kids might relate to. Ok, done with my rant. Wayne
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Itās a curious thing indeed. Thereāve been a handful of figures and armour kits in the past, but nothing like whatās available now.
Strange, as pretty much all of the major aircraft types, used by both sides, have been available and have remained popular modelling subjects for a long time!
The same can be said for WW1. Aircraft galore since the early days of plastic kits, but itās only really since the centenary that weāve seen a range of figures, vehicles, guns and armour released.
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I would love to see a revival of some of the Vietnam aircraft. In my opinion they are some of the coolest. Some of the kits are a little long in the tooth though. Would love to see a new tool A-7 without the issues the two kits have. Would also love to see some more modern A-4 Skyhawks
As for vehicles definitely agree that until lately there has been a lack of interesting kits
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Oh I donāt know about ignored. Iāve been building Vietnam War subjects since at least the mid to late 70ās. Mostly aircraft in 1/72 back then, as that was what was available, plus the few armor kits that were available in 1/35 of that era during those years as well. Not to mention the classic Revell 1/32 Phantom, Huey, Cobra, and Loach kits.
Mind you, the kit selection and availability is much better now than then. But itās been around at least since when the war was actually going on.
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Correct, plus the M113, M48, LVTP-5 have been around a while. Also have the Ontos. Dragon had a run of figures a while back.
@namengr which equipment do you think was missing? Outside the Otter and large air boat most other equipment has had kits provided for awhile in many scales.
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The interest in the Vietnam War era in general seems to be cyclic, and Iām grateful it is at least that. What bugs me is how many people today know nothing of this conflict. It is a very important part of modern world, and US, history.
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Mid 70ās I built the Tamiya M113, Tamiya M42, Monogram M48 and Tamiya M551, all came with Vietnam markings. Plus the aforementioned 1/32 Revell jets and choppers. Even Aurora was in on the Vietnam era with their box art and markings on some of their 1/48 choppers.
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Itās a very interesting point. Even if one agrees with the premise that the Vietnam war was lost, well Germany lost WW2 but if anything that has clearly made the genre more attractive, not less. Or is it because āweā beat āem? Sounds like a history exam question, discuss.
With WW2 subjects weāre almost totally reliant these days on memoirs and records, whereas with Vietnam we still have a legion of Vets alive & kicking to contribute their personal experiences, many probably still not yet formally documented. Weāre privileged to read some of those in this very forum. And honour the sacrifice of so many young men who should be alive today.
Another random thought is that maybe we need to distinguish between the number of Vietnam-era kits on the market over the years, and how often they were actually built and displayed. I think the OP was talking more about the latter, and how long itās taken to become popular.
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i have seen a similar situation with World War One, which was totally eclipsed by World War Two and even now there very few figures, tanks etc that cover that era.
my main interest is the Vietnam war which is ironic as my country Scotland/UK was not involved in Vietnam but i have been modelling this subject since yhe 1980ās.
i am also eager to hear veterans experiences during their time in Vietnam and i have a large book collection of personal accounts. at the moment i am working my way through several MACV-SOG books. again i started reading these type of books back in the 1980ās so your generation is not as forgotten about as you might think.
kind regards
Klaus
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In this case for the consumer the West lost and communism won. Lots of strife in the US about the war and how we treated folks on all sides. The closest the US has come to a second civil war as far as contentious between citizens. The ebb and flow of the generations of CEOs of manufacturers and hobby retailers that drive products probably has a little to do with it. Still many things are still classified about what happened. In some ways the ethical questions are even greater than WW2 but people donāt want to know or talk about it.
The Korean War, from not truly being declared a war, to the on going stalemate of the conflict confuses people, itās not easy to understand the win/lose tally with nice bow. A lot of people look at as round 2/overtime of WW2 or the start of the problems we are dealing with today.
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Iāve been a Nam nut since '73?, I was about 15 years old I think, I built my first Tamiya model, an M41 Walker Bulldog and thought it was the coolest model Iād ever gotten my hands on. Iāve been hooked ever since and have studied the history of the conflict for some 44 years now. At the time my neighbors were a couple of young Nam vets, one fella had most of his left torso covered with burn scars from his tour (I think he was a Sheridan driver), Iāll never forget the day I showed him my new model build and he commented āoh yeah, I remember seeing some of those in countryā. I used to get miffed about the model makers continually making every version of Nazi armor imaginable (they were the bad guys werenāt they?) but I had to get over it, it occurred to me that the Axis countries were the ones making the majority of the plastic model kits so it stands to reason they would make their own stuff, just my opinion based purely on my own speculation mind you. Iām just glad that the industry is recognizing the market opportunity for Nam kits, ironically some of the best or most obscure Nam models are being made by a Vietnamese company, go figure 
Cajun 
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The computer revolution and video games were responsible for model building taking a dive in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990, then the subsequent resurgence of model building starting in the 1990s, really taking off in the 2000s. (CAD/CAM technology began driving down tooling costs in the 1990s.) An overall rise in world wealth over that period is another major contributing factor to what happened. World of Tanks deserves major credit for making tanks cool and attractive to a broad spectrum of male gamers. This not only fueled a gigantic resurgence of armor model building, it massively boosted armor preservation efforts. A number of very popular games, such as War Thunder, now compete in that area and continue to generate new interest in armor and armor modeling.
World War II stuff gets made into models because the great bulk of movies and video games are about World War II. That happened because World War II was immense, with a huge number of battles and machines involved. That latter point is the reason most video games focus on World War IIāthe variety of battles, vehicles, and terrain to model for players.
I am all for more and better models of Vietnam era subjects. When manufacturers compete, it drives prices down. That puts more models into the hands of more people.
Also, I am far more concerned by the proliferation of Gundam garbage among young people than another Tiger tank.
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You canāt beat the Vietnam era aircraft for all of great markings,a lot of them looked like NASCAR vehicles.The Phantoms,Skyhawks,Thuds,Migs were all great subjects that I enjoyed.
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Or, perhaps, it is all about sales.
Most manufacturers are in Asia and thus Vietnam and surrounding countries are much closer to home.
Plus WW2 had āthe Nazisā, the ultimate bad guys, devils incarnate, which we should not relate to. These are āforbidden fruitsā and thus desirable, sexy.
And so we all want to build those Tigers and Panthers, Panzers and halftracks, preferably with SS markings on them. And so these kits sell well. German tanks myths further boosted sales.
I still remember the complaints in te 80ās and 90ās about there not being enough Allied-kits, apart from the obligatory handfull of Shermans.
Other eras simply might not be all that interesting from an Asian/sales point of view and I think that the market for Vietnam-kits simply is not that attractive, limiting what is available.
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Like it or not this is a large and growing segment of the hobby of model building in general and we donāt do ourselves any favors when we dismiss it with that kind of language.
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Thereās a lot of talk in the figure painting community about how the hobby is changing with the emergence of fantasy, sci fi and yes Gundam. I donāt have a problem with it although some of my fellow modelers do. Many of the older modelers who did traditional figures are dying, or simply to old to paint at a high level and younger painters are not generally doing historical figures but the aforementioned sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Shows have had to create Gundam categories and try to get judges for them which is difficult if you know nothing about them. I sure donāt and had a difficult time judging except for one or two guys who had knowledge of the new category.
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The fantasy, sci-fi and Gundam categories were well represented by the way with numerous entries and they were over the moon when they placed or earned a medal lol. They did bring a lot of energy to the shows I attended.
The only issue I had with the Gundam categories were that some of them were simply taken out of the box and put on a base, with no painting or any kind of weathering. How do you judge something like that? There was no skill involved. But then again, there were others that were painted and weathered like armor or aircraft and were very nice. You could see the effort that went into them.
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Iāve wondered about this subject for a while (full disclosure, Iām a US Army Vietnam Veteran). Perhaps some of it can be attributed to the fact that WWII was huge, involved darn near every country in the world, Vietnam was largely an American event, played out on TV around the globe, but no ālocalā involvement in other countries. This is an international modeling site, so some readers can literally walk out their front door and see where the Panthers went one way and the Shermanās came another. To a modeler in Belgium, for example, Vietnam is sort of an abstract concept, whereas āThe Bulgeā happened in his/her town. The WWII Germans had a great variety of vehicles, uniforms and color schemes, in RVN, everything was OD. Those are just a couple of my thoughts, Iāve talked too much, Iām sure others have their take on the subject, and Iād like to hear them.
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I wholeheartedly agree with this observation, you canāt ignore the fact that ME109s came in a variety of colorful and even attractive camo schemes, even their armor was diverse in their paint schemes and their uniforms were colorful and had great eye appeal.
Cajun
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Sorry for taking this off topic; I do have several models from the Vietnam War along with a few figures and really should do one of them. Just trying to get the older projects that I started done.
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