Airbus A380 British Airways Airbus A380 Thai Airways Airbus A380 Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340-300 Finnair Boeing 737-800 Ryanair "Bye Bye Baby" Boeing 737-800 TUIfly "Haribair" Boeing 737-800 TUIfly "DB one" Boeing 737-800 TUIfly "DB two" Boeing 747-400 Thai Airawys "Retro" Boeing 747-400 Qantas "Wallabies" Boeing 777-200 Malaysian
Too avoid any misunderstandings here are the facts we have so far:
1) All old moulds (the old Schabak moulds plus the new Schuco moulds like the A380,787 or 747) are still in the closed factory in China. This includes also the diecast cars and not only the planes. But nobody really knows where they exactly are. One mould for a 747 for example consists of 4-5 different pieces. And these pieces are spread all around in this closed factory and you can trust me nobody really cares about this issue there. Schuco is willing to get all moulds back but the chance is very very small in my opinion.
2) Due to this problem Schuco produced five new moulds in a new factory in China. This includes the 777-200, 747-400, 737-800, A380 and the A340-300. The 747-400 and the A380 moulds are already finished and the first models are on the way to Europe! No chance to see any changes here. All other models are only samples and there is a small chance to see some improvements but I have my doubts.
3) The wheels are not made out of plastic!
4) Many pictures you have seen on the Schuco website are "Computer animations" and no real models. Examples are the Haribair or DB One/Two Boeing 737 aircrafts.
5) The official reason for the drastic rise in prices are the high license fees they have to pay to Boeing/Airbus and the different airlines. For the TUIFly models Schuco have to pay a license fee to Boeing, TUI and Haribo/Deutsche Bahn.
6) Schabak is only a very very tiny part of the big Samba Dickie Group. We can't compare this company with the "old" Schabak anymore which was owned by Wolfgang Stolpe who had always an ear for the collector. Schuco doesn't really care about us!! They just want to sell there models in the Duty Free shops all over the world and wanna make money. Thats all... The US market is uninteresting for them because its dominated by the bigger scales 1:400 and 1:200. The Americans like it big if you know what I am talking about
