Hasegawa (model company)

The nihongo|Hasegawa Corporation|株式会社ハセガワ|Kabushiki Gaisha Hasegawa is a company that manufactures plastic model kits of a variety of vehicles, including model aircraft, model cars, model ships, model armor, model space craft and Science Fiction kits. Based in Shizuoka, Japan, Hasegawa competes against its neighbor, Tamiya, though it does not have as large a line of products.

Primarily using polystyrene, Hasegawa kits are typically regarded as very accurate, but without quite the ease-of-assembly that Tamiya kits offer, though of very high standard nonetheless. Currently, Hasegawa kits are imported into North America by Dragon Models Limited. Hasegawa also imports Revell kits into Japan and sells them under its own brand label, and Revell frequently re-boxes Hasegawa kits for the European and North American markets.

Hasegawa kits come with instructions that specify the use of Gunze Sangyo products, most notably paints. This is in contrast to Tamiya, who specifies the use of its in-house brands.

Hasegawa will frequently re-box earlier kits with new decals, sometimes produced by Cartograf (an Italian decal maker), for a considerably higher price than that of the original kit.

History

In 1941 the Hasegawa factory opened as a manufacturer of wooden teaching materials, such as a woodwork models. It entered into the plastic model field in 1961, with its first plastic model "glider" airplane models. In the following June, 1962, the "1/450 battleship Yamato" was released after high development costs and became a success with about 150,000 units sold in the same year, and continuing success in the following years. The profitable line of 1/90 F-104 Starfighter and 1/70 P-51 Mustang model kits became the turning point which prompted Hasegawa to turn away from woodwork models and to plastic models completely.

Product Lines

1/12 Scale Automobiles

Hasegawa produced kits of at least two cars in this large scale: the Nissan 300ZX and the Mazda RX-7.

1/24 Scale Automobiles

Hasegawa has found success in producing kits of subjects that were somewhat ignored by the larger model manufacturers. The quality of these kits can vary from very simple construction with few details, to those with very high fidelity, rivaling Tamiya or Revell's best efforts. Many kits include photo-etched parts, and some have been released as "Super Detail" versions, featuring additional photo-etched and white metal parts.

Hasegawa's automotive selection is made up of several categories, including:

Collection Disk featuring Mitsubishi Galants and Lancers, Subaru Legacys and Impreza WRXs, Honda Civics

Collection Rally featuring a wide selection of rally cars, spanning from the 1970s, such as the Lancia Stratos and Lancia 037 Rally, to modern World Rally Championship competitors, like the Subaru Impreza and Ford Focus.

Collection Speed features various touring car race cars that competed in the Japanese Touring Car Championship in the mid-1990s, including Honda Civics, Toyota Corollas and BMW 3-Series in various liveries.

Historic Car featuring sports cars from the 1970s and older, including the Toyota 2000GT and Celica 1600GT, various versions of the Nissan Fairlady 240Z and Bluebird 510 (the latter in four-door sedan form, unusual for a plastic model car, as it was the most widely exported version of the 1:1), the Lamborghini Miura, as well as various kits of the Volkswagen Beetle and Microbus.

Historic Racing featuring winning cars from their respective events. Many of these are race versions of cars available in the Historic Car line. Examples include Toyota 2000GT "1967 Fuji 24 Hour Race Winner," Nissan Bluebird 1600 SSS "1970 Safari Rally Winner" and Datsun Fairlady 240Z "1971 Safari Rally Winner."

Military Vehicle featuring versions of the Willys MB Jeep and the Volkswagen Kübelwagen.

Racing Car features various Group C race cars, including versions of the Jaguar XJR-8LM, the Porsche 962, the Sauber Mercedes C9 and the Toyota 88C.

World Famous Car featuring various versions of the Jaguar XJ-S V12, the Ferrari 328 and 348 and the Porsche 944 and 968.

1/32 Scale Aircraft

Considered among the best in this scale as well, these kits depict mainly WWII fighter aircraft, with a few modern jets and a few oddities such as the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch military liaison plane. Notably, the Mitsubishi Zero A6M5 model was created under the supervision of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the actual craft.

1/48 Scale Aircraft

Hasegawa was a latecomer to the field of 1/48 scale aircraft, and its efforts may be seen as a response to Tamiya's strong presence through the 1970's and '80s.

It was regarded as the producer of the most accurate line of F-16 Falcon model kits, both single and dual seater, for almost 20 years. However, Tamiya's recent release of an all-new-tool 1/48 F-16 has surpassed the Hasegawa offering in terms of accuracy, but the Tamiya variant can only be built as a single-seat kit. The Hasegawa variants come in both single- and two-seat versions, and can include both the NSI (small-mouth) intake and P&W engine, as well as the MCID (big-mouth) intake and GE engine, depending on the boxing of the kit. [http://www.habu2.net/vipers/viperkits/48/hase48.0.html] .

1/72 Scale Aircraft

This has traditionally been Hasegawa's main product line, and that which the company is best known for. It consists almost entirely of World War II and modern military aircraft, primarily fighter and attack aircraft, with some larger bombers and multi-engined examples. At times the line has included kits manufactured by Frog and Monogram, as well as other minor specialty brands.

The quality of the kits is exceptional and often cover variants nobody else in modelmaking covers, such as the rare last wartime version of the Mitsubishi Zero, the A6M8. The kit includes resin cowl, propeller, bomb, and other parts (by Jaguar of the U.S.) to modify the older Hasegawa Zero Model 52 kit into this version.

Hasegawa also manufactures the first version of the Zero , the very first prototype, the A6M1.

1/72 Scale Armor

Also called the "Minibox" series, this features military vehicles (mostly WWII, with a few modern) designed to be compatible with the 1/72 aircraft.

1/150 Scale Trolleys

Hasegawa sells ready-to-run model trolleys under the Modemo brand in 1:150 scale, of both Japanese and American prototypes.

1/200 Scale Aircraft

This line consists of modern jet airliners. today this scale, 1/200, is a common scale for diecast and kit built jet airliners.

1/350 Scale Ships

1/700 Scale Waterline Ships

cience Fiction Kits

Currently this consists of aircraft from the Macross and Ultraman television series.

External links

*ja [http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/J-index.htm Official site]
*en [http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/e-w/E-index.htm English section of official site]