Back in February I conducted a little survey on the Armornut Forum. I feel I have a good relationship with the senior Mr. Tamiya and I think it could do some good to pass along poll results to him certainly can't hurt. Soon after I took in the votes, both Hen-Long and Tamiya announced they would be coming out with a Panzer IV. This had the effect of throwing off the survey I feel. I think we need to do a new survey regarding what kits we would like to see coming from Tamiya. I think when we remove the Panzer IV from the equation, enough guys would change their votes to make a difference. For that reason I think it's valid we do it over. This time I want to also open it up to the Forum here.

Here is how it turned out for the WW II tanks from February's survey. I asked: "Which tanks would you like to see Tamiya produce?" I asked for each person to pick three in order of importance to them and which, realistically stand a chance of being produced. Wth this new survey I will merely add up the total votes for each vehicle as I did for February's since there aren't enough total votes to break it out into 3 levels of priorities for each tank without it becoming watered down and distorted.

Despite my warnings to avoid the unlikely candidates, we did get enough votes to see a clear picture. It was a little messy, though, I had to make some judgement calls to be practical. For instance, the Panzer IV received so many votes I had to include it as the third runner-up. I had to clump together the M4's, M3 Grant/ Lee, Achilles, and Jackson with the general request for anything VVSS in order to simplify things. (I think we might have to have a discussion about which VVSS-type vehicle would be best to shoot for.)

Likewise there was a bit of a debate about the Cromwell versus the Comet and so the few who voted for a Comet had their votes counted with the Cromwell. Also a lone KV-85 vote was thrown in with all the JS II votes. I hope I didn't step on too many toes in order to make the results appear cohesive. As far as overall votes within these top four this is how it broke down:

VVSS TYPES: 36%
CROMWELL/COMET: 28%
KV-85/JS-II: 22%
PZ IV: 14%

These 4 categories comprised 73% of the total vote count with the rest 27% being onesies and twosies. Those latter votes were wasted, unfortunately.

Since I hadn't yet sent in the last survey to Mr. Shunsaku Tamiya (THE Mr. Tamiya) we can re-do this one and allow for the new Pz. IV. I'd like to see where those Pz. IV votes will go, so to speak, and maybe we will have less votes for generally obscure tanks which is the same as not voting at all. Therefore if you feel that you are a knowledgeable R/C tanker, please select your three candidate tanks in no particular order. You may e-mail me directly or respond here.

The first thing for me is to try to figure out is which Sherman to vote for!

Thanks, Rich Upton, C.O. S.F. Bay Area Tankers