They are/were:
My looking at the different sprues
My looking at the instruction sheets
My communicating with Mr. Chin and, subsequently with Tracy White
My receiving literally hundreds of emails (from modelers from all over the world over the past several years) from modelers telling me that they would rather have a smaller kit of a PT rather than the two huge Italeri kits.
Now, to Sam, change my review because several people have said this kit was a copy of or based on the Italeri kit, implying that Italeri came up with the idea first, ...
let me restate something which Mr. Chin told me in an email:
Mr. Chin of Merit told me, in an email, something that I was not aware of ... Merit was actually developing a 1:35 kit of an Elco 80-footer at the same time Italeri was, and this what he said:
"Actually, before the 1/48 PT Boats came to the being, we had worked on 1 1/35 Elco 80ft early type in 2010. Since Italeri came out with their 1/35 Elco 80, we shelved the project for a couple of years and then decided to bring it back out in 1/48 so we will not interfere with Italeri's business. These days, with the shrinking market, it is important that same item do not have more than one manufactured kit in the market."
I'd like to also to put something into perspective here as well ... two modelers, one of whom was my friend, the late Alex Johnson and the other one is a gentleman named Wayne Traxel, who I consider as a friend and who's far-more well versed in these things than I, told me that, before the Italeri PT-596 kit, there was a 1:35 kit of a late war Elco from a company named Viking ...
I can't have and voice an opinion on a because I'm not a modeler? Hmmmm, I'll bear in mind ...
