You just never know what you are going to get!
IN the past two weeks I've got in three original CDC 1:48 Phantoms -- the Royal Navy Omega, RAF Firebirds, and Sundowners. These all came in the silver/blue boxes without the windows that markes them as "second generation" CDC releases.
The first two were
all water-slide sticker decals, which were in poor condition (on the Omega at least -- the Firebirds was okay, more or less). The Sundowner is entirely pad-printed and is simply gorgeous -- nabbed it for $40 on ebay -- and it doesn't have those over-size wingtip fuel tanks either,
My very first Armour model was a Robin Olds F-4, and it comes in the original Red/tan box -- it is 90% pad printed (just the Scat noseart is a sticker).
FM catches a lot of the flak for this disparity from one model to the next in the same livery, but this issue predates FM taking over the line (and I think FM has it under control now as all the FM models I've seen in the last 3-4 years appear to be all pad-printed graphics??) CDC did the same thing even with the 1:100 line -- some are all stickers, some are pad-printed. Bizarre!
Sure makes it fun opening the box -- "did I get ripped off, or the bargain of the week"? goes through my mind....
I'll have pics of the Sundowner later...