JC Wings has a huge mould back catalogue thanks to it being formed from the brands Blue Box and Jet-X, plus making a lot of new moulds over the past 16 or so years, plus acquiring the BigBird / Witty Wings / Apollo mould catalogue as well. Some of these old moulds are excellent and some are a lot less so. One that definitely falls into the latter category is the Airbus A300, but that hasn’t stopped Gemini Jets from finding the old casting, dusting it off, upgrading it a little and releasing a new Emirates version on it.
History of the Mould
This mould was originally released in 2006 under the Blue Box brand, but was also used under the Jet-X brand after the two were merged together. Their A300 mould was used only for a short period, between 2006 and 2009, and has been generally thought of as pretty awful. In fact, even though it transferred to JC Wings ownership, when that brand appeared and incorporated the old Jet-X, they have never used it.
Historic issues with the mould included:
- A pointy nose and very square cockpit region
- A massive and unsightly seam around the wing region.
- Very short undercarriage providing very poor engine ground clearance
GJ Updating Old Moulds
Emirates A300
Given Gemini’s history of reusing old moulds, the shape of the artwork and the fact they didn’t advertise it as a new mould the January 2024 announcement of an Emirates A300 strongly pointed to the re-emergence of the old Blue Box A300. The only thing that went against this was just how poor the original mould was.
Thanks to Daniel Richardson, who provided the below images, we can now see what the final product is like. It certainly confirms that the release is reusing the Blue Box mould, but also shows Gemini have attempted to update it, not entirely successfully!
Clearly new tyres have been fitted and aerials added. I’d argue the undercarriage itself is the same and the tyres have just been enlarged to give better ground clearance. Unfortunately the tyres are now too large.
To be fair the print quality looks good and the aerials are ok as well. It is hard however, to avoid the fact the wing seam is so large and gappy. The Aeroclassics A300 has a substantial wingseam as well, but it is far superior to this one. The decent cockpit printing hides some of the shape issues at the nose quite well.
It has also been pointed out that the wingtip fences are way too large for an A300-600 and more properly look like those from an A310. I guess that is just a feature of the original mould, as are the poorly shaped engine pylons.
The end result of this model is that Gemini are able to produce an EK A300 for their important partner Emirates. The model has turned out about as well as can be expected considering the mould it is using. It makes an interesting comparison with the recent Gemini 767-400s, which themselves use a mould that looks like it has been developed cheaply from the original Gemini 767-300. These models are no doubt cost-effective but make a stark contrast to other brands that are producing superbly high-quality all new moulds in 400 scale.
