Here’s my take on the situation (warning, wall of text below):
I think all manufacturers suffer from this problem, though to varying degrees; this isn’t just NG who suffers from over-criticizing by collectors. As Irish said there are people who don’t nitpick one brand for whatever reason, but will do it with all others; I’ve seen this happen with NG, too. One manufacturer can have a huge problem on their model (GJ most frequently), and everyone jumps onto it, but in the past I’ve seen NG make similar mistakes and yet nobody, if barely anyone, speaks of it. I remember when they did the Southwest Maryland One a couple years back which had elongated cockpit windows, and only a few from what I saw spoke of it when it first came out. It’s gotten better as of now, as there seems to be more fairness on the part of collectors.
As for NG specifically, I think as to why they get nitpicked so much is because they’ve set themselves this high standard back when they started in circa 2018, and I think they did great starting out, through the next few years or so. It’s just now they’re starting to slip in a few places, and people are noticing it. Despite my own preferences, I’m not very fond of the nitpicking either if you want my honest opinion; having to bring out graphics with lines and stuff seems excessive to me. Usually you aren’t gonna notice the issues you’re pointing out with these graphics from more than a foot away from the model.
No manufacturer nor model is perfect. Achieving perfection at this scale is improbable, if not nearly impossible. Granted we’ve seen what NG can do with what’s at their disposal, but from my perspective, every now and again you almost have to expect an imperfection on a model. Obviously some manufacturers have them more often than others, like GJ for instance.
On another note, release choices, in my opinion, from NG aren’t as great as what they used to be. Nowadays, they’re heavily Chinese-influenced; this makes sense on the surface though as they are based in China. It’s just like Gemini Jets and them doing a bunch of US releases; it makes sense because they’re based in the United States. Not very often does either brand heavily delve into other markets, albeit with few exceptions. I will say that rating releases can be a bit subjective, as it can easily be influenced by one’s preferences and/or interests.
@Irish I know you said my preferences with GJ, and that’s true. I feel like at some point it’d be appropriate for me to talk about that more in-depth elsewhere; talking about our collecting preferences by manufacturer, era, region, etc, would be a great topic somewhere on this forum. It may also help quell disputes about our own preferences.
Overall, I highly agree that there’s a lot of wanted and unwanted criticism directed at NG.
