UH-Oh. Floquil and PollyS are going away

[altohorn25]

Nothin' left for me to do; I'm screwed.

Nate

[amato1969]

Uh oh indeed!  I'm going to have to mix and match Tamiya now.  Will be much more complicated, but at least my LHS stocks it.

  Frank

[Dave V]

If I weren't about to move across country, I'd be stocking up.  Still, might be time for me to see what I can reproduce using cheaper acrylics (which, BTW, seem to be more amenable to an airbrush than PollyClog PollyScale).

It was getting to be over five bucks for a thimble full of their paint anyway.  Screw 'em and their fat wife.

[Bob Bufkin]

I'm just happy that I have a large stock of DGLE, tuscan, engine black and others I need and will last for quite awhile.

[superturbine]

Today I Ordered a lifetimes supply of engine black... Grimmy black.... UP grey hound colors...and the various clear coats.

Seems like every time a company gets bought out the poduct lines get ruined   ie Walters/ Likelike.... tester/ Floquil.......and on and on..

[peteski]

Yea, we'll just wait for the next generation to do it... yeesh.  Must not drink the punch...

Nice turnaround!  Considering the amount of pollution generated the other sources, solvent-based hobby paints used by hobbyists are probably contributing about as much as a single drop of paint in a 55 gallon drum.  Government should take care of the large polluters before attacking the little fish. 

I also was a big fan of Accupaints in their day for painting rolling stock and locomotives, but I also like the flatness of Floquil paints. They are excellent for painting buildings and weathering.  I'm not a big fan of water based paints. I use them, but in very limited applications.

I hope that other companies like Scalecoat and Tru-Color stay in business.  But it will still be sad to see Floquil paints discontinued after all these years. But if PollyScale is also being discontinued, this seems to indicate that this business decision was not forced by government regulations. After all PollyScale is water based.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Seems like every time a company gets bought out the poduct lines get ruined   ie Walters/ Likelike.... tester/ Floquil.......and on and on..

Don't forget DPM.

And yep, this is exactly how the world goes. Everywhere. Good luck to all the tumblr users...

[C855B]

Pillory me if you will, but I do believe getting rid of Floquil, et al, was the end game when RPM bought the product lines. The objective was to shore-up Testors traditional LHS market dominance by disposing of as many competing racks of paint as they could. I think Skip's situation is ample illustration of this. They didn't care about the technical differences and end-user preferences, they just saw too much customer choice that wasn't their product.

Big players in niche markets do this all the time. The specialty company I worked for 15 years ago was bought by a semi-related 800-pound gorilla. We had promises at the time that it would be business as usual, but our doors were closed nine months later. They bought us solely as the fastest path to get the accounts rather than offer a quality product that would compete on its merits.

[SkipGear]

Pillory me if you will, but I do believe getting rid of Floquil, et al, was the end game when RPM bought the product lines. The objective was to shore-up Testors traditional LHS market dominance by disposing of as many competing racks of paint as they could. I think Skip's situation is ample illustration of this. They didn't care about the technical differences and end-user preferences, they just saw too much customer choice that wasn't their product.

Big players in niche markets do this all the time. The specialty company I worked for 15 years ago was bought by a semi-related 800-pound gorilla. We had promises at the time that it would be business as usual, but our doors were closed nine months later. They bought us solely as the fastest path to get the accounts rather than offer a quality product that would compete on its merits.

Not so much with the Railroad paint but with the RC car paint, they had no competition. The RC car paint is not the same product as the other Model Master paints. They killed a line that was the single product in the market. They had market share by leaps and bound. The only other options are Parma Faskolor (airbrush only) and a relaitvely new company Spaztik which barely has any of the market as is. The Tamiya RC paints are just stupid because the rattle cans are Laquer but the airbrush paints are Acrylic, you just can't blend the two very well.

None of this makes sense. Pencil pushers who don't understand what they have.

[Hyperion]

Pillory me if you will, but I do believe getting rid of Floquil, et al, was the end game when RPM bought the product lines. The objective was to shore-up Testors traditional LHS market dominance by disposing of as many competing racks of paint as they could. I think Skip's situation is ample illustration of this. They didn't care about the technical differences and end-user preferences, they just saw too much customer choice that wasn't their product.

Man, that was one hell of a long-cooking plan of theirs.

People make it sound like RPM/Testors, aka 'the man', came along a few years ago and bought Floquil just to run them into the ground.

RPM bought Floquil FORTY YEARS AGO.  RPM bought Testors 30 years ago.  Yes -- that's right, Floquil was there FIRST, but it was still decades ago.  And the Floquil line was merged under the Testors management team some 15 years ago.

[SkipGear]

Testors Reply - Posted as a response to a friends complaint on their page....

Testors Many of you have expressed disappointment regarding our decision to exit Floquil and Polyscale. Decisions such as these are never easy. Trends in model railroading have changed over time. Creating product for weathering and scenery has been more of the focus as train cars have moved to pre-decorated. The good news is that the same great products for weathering and scenery can be found in Testor's CreateFX line that is available now. Please check your local hobby shop or www.testors.com for information regarding this product line.

We appreciate your passion for our business. We look forward to introducing you to this exciting new product line that is great for today's modeler as well as future generations.

[peteski]

Man, that was one hell of a long-cooking plan of theirs.

People make it sound like RPM/Testors, aka 'the man', came along a few years ago and bought Floquil just to run them into the ground.

RPM bought Floquil FORTY YEARS AGO.  RPM bought Testors 30 years ago.  Yes -- that's right, Floquil was there FIRST, but it was still decades ago.  And the Floquil line was merged under the Testors management team some 15 years ago.

Exactly!  That is why the thought of sacrificing Floquil and PollyScale to make Testors stronger doesn't make sense. Maybe RPM did this because the sales of Floquil and PollyScale slowed down so drastically  to make them not worthwhile to continue?  The prices of those hobby paints are also becoming ridiculously high.  Paying over $5 for 1 oz. of paint at a hobby shop is crazy!

[sizemore]

Instead of making cro-magnon posts about the how you will boycott their products, the demise of society, the fall of nations, the destruction of the world, and the collapse of the universe...why don't we ask what they are doing to fill the void to cash in on their so called new commitment?

Other than flaming them, no one has asked if the RR colors will be introduced into the Model Master Line, or if a comparison chart will be available with their current MM products. There probably exists quite an overlap of comparable colors. Yes some of us might be in left out in the cold with very specific colors, but all may not be lost.

We sound like a bunch of girls whose favorite nail polish just went the way of the DoDo. Oh-Em-Gee.

The S. 

[kalbert]

Same reason you can't buy a Ford Ranger. Somebody looked at the books and saw multiple products competing for the same segment. (Of course we all know they serve different and specific parts of the market, but they just see a lot full of pickups/rack full of paint) Something has to go, so the mid size truck/special paint that fills a niche is dumped in expectation that those niche customers would buy the flagship product if the niche product wasn't there. There's a fine line between products that fill an important niche, and redundancy, some companies are better than others at identifying what is what.

[SkipGear]

Our shop carries all of the Testors lines, side by side. The colors don't cross over. The Polly Scale is a different formulation paint than the Model Master Acrylic. Polly Scale has finer pigments and covers much better. I have tried MM before and it is junk compared to Polly Scale and comes in an even smaller bottle for the almost the same price.

I think is was purely cost driven. The lines killed were the better, probably more expensive to produce, product. The RC paints are much more volitile than the plastic model paints and have a flex agent added so the paint doesn't pop off of lexan bodies in a crash.