Salute's Sunset?

 So, the Salute show seems to be getting some mediore press as you scan the electronic aether, this year.

Well, here’s my take…

Salute was always Spring.  We always said at Triples that if Salute was before Triples, the bring and buy would do less trade, and vice versa and that held true. The rumours were that people would get all in a tizzy if anything encroached on ‘their date’. 

I went to a lot of Salutes in the 90s, but once it moved from Kensington, and went stupidly large, I stopped, because that year it was impossible to see the show in a full day, so what in effect was the point? 

 We went home feeling cheated, and more than a little short-changed.

It’s too large and too expensive, and generates an elitism which - and I may be tarring myself here - is not de rigueur anymore. Those who want good looking reasonable large games are treated as celebrities or dinosaurs, but it’s now become out of reach to most - (who have grown up thinking that £1.75 is the standard for a figure, and who don’t have the depth of knowledge to know where to look for great figures at better prices. Warlords seem to embrace this new 'normal' to a point that I am surprised they are not a subsidiary of (insert name) Games.

And it’s not - like many shows - offering anything different, just more of it, in an ugly package that is too large to appreciate

In 2021, Warlords have decided to have the show at the end of the year to try and surf the wave of Covid freedom, grubbing for the hobbyist pound.
For years tfolks said that the ‘plus’ of that show is that it’s a one day show, and so the traders don’t have to stay overnight - although most do, and at an inflated cost, compared  to an outside of London show. 

In many cases it’s a two and a half day job for many traders and indeed visitors. So I reckon that they have reached the sunset of their empire, as you also surmise. Seeing posts by attendees of them sitting alone in a London bar the night before, makes you wonder what the fuck, made them go the day before. London is hardly difficult to commute across, first thing on a Saturday morning.

What I would spend just getting to, and into the show, with moderate refreshments, could get me a unit of painted 28mm figures - and a 30+ at that.

Perhaps, the sunset is upon the Salute empire. After all, equally good shows have been the victims of a similar fate in the last decade...