Missing Humbrol Acrylics

[Ratch]

Evening all. My first post here. Looking forward to reading about everyone’s modelling exploits on the forum. I have a keen interest in historic British aviation, particularly of the Cold War era, and I have a growing pile of aircraft from that era waiting to be built. Currently in the latter stages of building Vulcan XM607 which I have been working on for over a year…I do everything incredibly slowly!

To start off, I have a question regarding Humbrol acrylics. I have personally found that I prefer working with these to the enamels for various reasons, but recently it seems to be getting increasingly difficult to get hold of the paints I need. For instance, I visited my local Hobby Craft store recently and found that there were no Humbrol acrylics available between 160 and 165. It wasn’t just that they didn’t have them in stock - there was not even a space for them on the stack. Luckily I managed to grab a couple of 163s that were left over in a discount box, but it’s quite alarming given that 163 is required for the camouflage schemes on the Vulcan and the recently released Phantom FGR2. Does anybody know what is happening with these paints at the moment?

[Ratch]

I have moved your post to the Humbrol Forum.

Hobbycraft aren't great stockists. Try to find a Local Model Store (LMS) or look on line. 160 has been in the range continually since 2013, 163, 164 & 165 since 2008 so you should be able to find some somewhere.

[peebeep]

There's a large number of Humbrol acrylics that are listed out of stock on the shop pages, including those mentioned by VForceMike. I'm wondering if this might be an effect of the paint factory fire from this time last year? There are also very few Humbrol acrylics in the Hannant's listings and given they supply the trade as wholesalers it might suggest there's a lot of the range that is currently not available. 

[VForceMike]

There's a large number of Humbrol acrylics that are listed out of stock on the shop pages, including those mentioned by VForceMike. I'm wondering if this might be an effect of the paint factory fire from this time last year? There are also very few Humbrol acrylics in the Hannant's listings and given they supply the trade as wholesalers it might suggest there's a lot of the range that is currently not available. 

Yes, it is a little worrying that paints required for current models are currently difficult to come by. The stack at Hobby Craft had the official Humbrol labelling strips and, as I mentioned in my first post, a number of paints don’t even have a space. 161, 162, 163 and 164 were all missing.

[Ratch]

Your shop must be using an old Point Of Sale. Mine has those spaces but all the paints get put in the wrong spaces so you really have to look for what you need. I don't know whether this is staff putting them in the wrong spaces in the rack or customers who pick up a pot and put it back at random.

[Kenneth ONeill]

I'd raise odds that CCTV would show that it's customers putting paint back in the wrong slots.