Why Rapido Undecorated SW1200RS Are Crap

Disclaimer:

I generally stay away from controversial topics in my hobbies simply because they are meant to bring joy and happiness. They are safety valves from real life stress. However, some aspect of this hobby can be both frustrating and excruciating... Dealing with our own shortcomings is something... dealing with others shortcomings, when they boast all day long and you pay for it it something else entirely.

I take no joy in trash talking about a manufacturer, particularly when I'm generally satisfied by their RTR products, but at some point, truth must be told both as a cautionary tale but also for the manufacturer itself to improve its game in town.

The story:

Two years ago, I was dumb enough to pre-order 3 undecorated Rapido SW1200RS. My hobby dealer told me it would be a pain in the proverbial ass to assemble them and that if I wanted to back up from the project, he couldn't sell them to other modellers because most people hate doing actual modelling and prefer to stack dozens of expensive RTR models on a plywood sheet. Well... I should have taken his advice... he was so right! Lesson learned I guess!

Why was it a bad move? For a large array of seemingly trivial irritants that built up to a big pile of you know what... Back in the day, buying an undecorated version was a smart move. You saved some money, didn't have to waste time stripping paints and breaking details by accident. In short, you started on a clean slate...

Now enters Rapido's definition for "undecorated" kits... which means paying the SAME price as a decorated and fully assembled and tested unit, being left with no basic instruction except a low quality cryptic part diagram from the 1990s, a semi-decipherable part list where nothing has a meaningful part name and bags full of intricate details of which many are already missing direct from the factory or simply badly cast. When I say bad, I meant bad. Imagine having to deal with delrin parts devoid of pegs!

I simply don't care Rapido send me replacement parts without asking question... particularly when they sent me the wrong parts or not enough to cover my needs. Worst, I'm still finding defective or missing parts up to this day. And no, while I can replicate a few of them myself, including missing metal handrail, I'm not in the mood of doing Rapido's job when I actually paid them to do it.

I'm tired of trying to figure out how to assemble these models using poor reference pictures online... I'm tired of stumbling on insignificant road blocks at each time I complete a step.

Worst, I'm still trying to figure out with the undecorated version that requires LESS human resources to assemble are sold the same price as a fully RTR unit. Particularly when it is evident the dude in China didn't care about making sure all parts were in the box during the quality check procedure.

This is not serious at all and I must stress it is quite sad because the model is well engineered and beautiful...

So, in the end, I paid a lot for crap. With taxes, this is about a $1000 going down the drain because a manufacturer is too lazy to do minimal quality check at the factory...

I should just have bought a RTR unit, removed the lettering and repainted it... It would have taken a few days at worst, maybe a weekend at best.

By the way, I had the same experience with Rapido's undecorated meat reefers last year... Once again, a beautiful model and the worst experience trying to put it together. And I've heard an extremely talented modeller tell me he would have prefered to scratchbuild the car rather than assemble another Rapido undecorated kit.

I sincerely feel Rapido should simply pull out the plug and stop producing undecorated kits. Visibly, this isn't their cup of tea and they don't have enough volume to put care in quality check for these. Better focus on what they do right and let this foolish dream die.

Epilogue:

Now, where am I left with these half-built models? In the middle of nowhere. Many broken parts can't be easily replicated. God only knows if Rapido can send me more missing parts given the models have been out for a while and it already took several months to get a few of them.

I've lost about any remaining interest I had working on these models except for slamming them on the wall.