Sticker Shock

[bRIBEGuy]

With a number of builds and restoration coming up, I figured I would save a few $$$ by pausing my search for NIB Tamiya sticker sheets, and turn to our good friends at MCI.  I have had good luck with them in years past, and when they ran a recent Canada Day sale, I pulled the trigger on 6 sets. 

Now, I know MCI doesn't keep inventory on hand, but I was super excited when I received a Monday shipping notification only 4 days later (which was actually the next business day, making it that much more impressive).  Canada Post tens to be reasonably expedient, so I was hopeful to have my stickers the same week. 

Well, the week finished up without stickers, so I checked the tracking info and......oh..... MCI still hadn't sent out the stickers.  Turn out the "Your Order is on the way" email they sent me actually just meant that s hipping label had been created.  Bummer. 

Bigger bummer is that at the end of the day, it took almost 3 weeks to arrive... and when they did, all 6 sets had been tightly rolled up and crammed in a tube.  


As I started to carefully unroll them, I was greeted with sheets that had also been creased before rolling, and a couple with the edges peeling up.


Looking at the face of the stickers, two of them have scratches/lines across the full sheets (hard to photograph)...



And most of the sheets have bad misprints and weird artifacts:





The spots that don't have print issues or damage, are badly pixelated or have "gaps" appearing as partial white lines between colors:



Out of the 6 different sheets I ordered, all 6 have issues.  

I reached out to Nathan, and to his credit he replied back very quickly, albeit with a pretty canned response just directing me to the "submit an issue" section of his website.  We'll see how it all plays out in the end, but at this moment I'm thinking I should just restart my search for NIB Tamiya stickers, or look at trying other repro's.

Has anyone ever ordered from rcstickers1999 on Ebay?

This is NOT meant as a "trash MCI" thread, just as a sad story of my latest experience

[Pylon80]

I ordered only once from MCI 2 years ago. Decals were great and shipped in a proper envelope with a hard protective cardboard inside. I guess they lowered their standard on your order Hopefully they will learn from it and make it up to you.

[Willy iine]

@bRIBEGuy Sorry to see.   That's a huge bummer.  Hope they figure out how to fix the order for you.  

 

[RichieRich]

I received a decal order from them a few weeks ago. They came in a flat envelope. Maybe they ship differently for domestic orders? I hope they are able to help you out.

[moffman]

I've ordered quite a few decal sheets from MCI and had them from Canada to the UK in just over a week and no issues with quality all package on stiff cardboard apart from one issue I ordered with bruiser decals a set of technituned/sport/gold motor decals and they weren't in the pack with the bruiser decals I contacted them they apologised and said they would send some........I'm still waiting that was 3 years ago

[alvinlwh]

Disregarding the tube packing which is just wrong for stickers, the print quality is really poor as well. The "1" and Lunchbox one are just unacceptable. 

[GeeWings]

There have been a few previous MCI threads even in the few months I’ve been a member here.
Glad to say there have been plenty of happy customers but enough unhappy ones that I think there is a significant quality issue.

In addition, why anyone would think to roll these to send is mystifying. Sorry and really hope you get this resolved.

[Kol__]

Yep, similar experience from the one and only time I've ordered with them, the print quality with regard to the jagged, pixelated edging which I believe are called artifacts is according to Nathan something to do with the printing procedure he uses, I think he was thermal as opposed to Tamiya's screen printing iirc, but I could be wrong.

I would order again for a basher, but never for a shelf queen or anything close to it. The quality of the material is good, as was the general finish, but the attention to detail (a trait many of us hobbyists share) is very lacking imo.

MCI's stickers I think are good for what they are, but expectations must not be too high. You can create custom designs and colour schemes, which is great to be able to do, just don't expect the highest of quality in regard to some areas.

All that said, I'm quite shocked to see what you have been sent @bRIBEGuy, their standards have obviously got even lower😢

[rich_f]

18 hours ago, GeeWings said:

In addition, why anyone would think to roll these to send is mystifying.

I would have thought that it is perfectly obvious to send in a roll considering the sticky vinyl sheet comes on a roll anyway.

19 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

Disregarding the tube packing which is just wrong for stickers,

As above, the vinyl comes on a roll of similar diameter. Not sure what the issue is, other than the inconvenience of having to unroll and flatten before cutting them out. 

Obviously it would have been preferable to have them delivered flat - I can only guess that he's busy and lacks the time to cut the sheets down into envelope-sized pieces and chooses to keep the sheets larger and send in tubes (where economically viable) to save time. 

[Kol__]

I see where you're coming from to a certain extent @rich_f, but it seems that the poor prep and packaging go beyond that to include creases before rolling and edges peeling up👎 I would imagine at least those issues could have been avoided by sending a flat sheet. Having bought RC stickers from a variety of vendors, I have never seen RC stickers sent rolled up in a tube, there must be a reason for that.

[GeeWings]

26 minutes ago, rich_f said:

I would have thought that it is perfectly obvious to send in a roll considering the sticky vinyl sheet comes on a roll anyway.

As above, the vinyl comes on a roll of similar diameter. Not sure what the issue is, other than the inconvenience of having to unroll and flatten before cutting them out. 

Obviously it would have been preferable to have them delivered flat - I can only guess that he's busy and lacks the time to cut the sheets down into envelope-sized pieces and chooses to keep the sheets larger and send in tubes (where economically viable) to save time. 

Rolling vinyl is one thing but once it’s been printed it’s going to be prone to creasing, bubbling and print rubbing. 

[alvinlwh]

48 minutes ago, rich_f said:

I would have thought that it is perfectly obvious to send in a roll considering the sticky vinyl sheet comes on a roll anyway.

As above, the vinyl comes on a roll of similar diameter. Not sure what the issue is, other than the inconvenience of having to unroll and flatten before cutting them out. 

Obviously it would have been preferable to have them delivered flat - I can only guess that he's busy and lacks the time to cut the sheets down into envelope-sized pieces and chooses to keep the sheets larger and send in tubes (where economically viable) to save time. 

As @GeeWings said. Also evidenced by these pictures by OP.

On 7/22/2022 at 6:08 PM, bRIBEGuy said:

As I started to carefully unroll them, I was greeted with sheets that had also been creased before rolling, and a couple with the edges peeling up.

 

[Tamiyastef]

Ordered from MCI before (about 15 different sheets) and never had issues likes this. Last one was about two years ago. These ones are indeed (IMO) unacceptable!

[rich_f]

12 minutes ago, GeeWings said:

Rolling vinyl is one thing but once it’s been printed it’s going to be prone to creasing, bubbling and print rubbing. 

Items are sent rolled up in tubes to prevent creasing - not encourage it. It's difficult to crease something when it's inside a rigid tube. The creasing in the photo above almost certainly happened as a result of careless handling prior to sending, which could just as easily have happened if it were subsequently sent in flat envelopes.

Bubbling would only occur if the sheet was rolled much tighter than the roll it originally came on. Again that would only be as a result of carelessness on the part of the sender and not an intrinsic problem with sending things in a tube.

As for print rubbing, I don't understand how this would be any different to placing the cut-down sheets against each other in a flat envelope, except that in an envelope, they are less protected from outside forces than in a thick cardboard tube.

I fully agree that it is unusual to have them delivered in a tube, but that is the least of the problems with them, and maybe is more a reflection of the sender's lack of care and attention to detail.

I've ordered from MCI in the past and have opened the envelope to find multiple copies of certain parts of the sticker sheet because they obviously came out bad the first time and he re-printed them, realising that if he had sent only the result of the first print run, it wouldn't have been good enough for the customer.

So he used to care about his work, but it looks like his standards have slipped, as he hasn't included reprints of the misprinted stickers in the OP's order (those numbers are particularly bad, with large sections of black missing), has creased them during handling and has left the inconvenience of unrolling and flattening of the sheets to the buyer. 

[GeeWings]

Vinyl with uneven print (especially if there’s any heat in the process)  is prone to issues if flexed before fully set. 

[alvinlwh]

37 minutes ago, GeeWings said:

Vinyl with uneven print (especially if there’s any heat in the process)  is prone to issues if flexed before fully set. 

It will still be prone to issues even when set. Stickers is not a single sheet of a uniform solid material but a laminate made up of (briefly):

print design > carrier film > adhesive layer > backing sheet

The printed design itself can again be made up of various layers, depending on the print process. 

Now imagine bending various laminate materials, plywood, thick cardboard, etc... What happens? They come apart at the layers. 

That crease show in OP's picture is actually the sticker coming apart at the adhesive layer. 

[GeeWings]

Agreed! @alvinlwh

[bRIBEGuy]

On the plus side, my daughter really likes the cardboard tube they were delivered in...

[rich_f]

10 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

It will still be prone to issues even when set. Stickers is not a single sheet of a uniform solid material but a laminate made up of (briefly):

print design > carrier film > adhesive layer > backing sheet

The printed design itself can again be made up of various layers, depending on the print process. 

Now imagine bending various laminate materials, plywood, thick cardboard, etc... What happens? They come apart at the layers. 

That crease show in OP's picture is actually the sticker coming apart at the adhesive layer. 

This implies stickers should only be applied to perfectly flat surfaces, and anything else would cause delamination.

This is of course nonsense - vinyl stickers are not the same as plywood - they are designed to be stuck to the curved surfaces of rc car bodies, which can have curvatures with much smaller radii than that cardboard tube they were delivered in.

[WillyChang]

5 hours ago, rich_f said:

they are designed to be stuck to the curved surfaces of rc car bodies

meh, Oracal 651 is just general purpose media nothing too specialized for our hobby. Calanderised manufacture, I’ve found 641/651 quite thick (for RC) & seems to shrink a heap after time.

Oracal’s Cast vinyl comes thinner, stretches nicer, holds tight corners better, hasn’t shrunk as much over the years... but also much more expensive & harder to source. 

[wtcc5]

The quality of the orders I received is always different. From really good sheets and prints to ones with bad color, ragged edges, wrong graphics…

Your order is by far the worst quality I have seen so far from MCI.

So for me MCI stickers only are for restoring bodies (for example to replace scratched logos) or to do runner bodies. 

[Badcrumble]

It is a real shame the arrived like this, I'm sure it will get sorted in the long run (I've not heard of anyone being refused replacements) but very frustrating.

I ordered a set in the Canada Day same sale and they came flat with minimal issues and I've not had any problems with my previous orders over the last few years.

Keeping fingers crossed you get it sorted soon.

 

[acprc]

I no longer use them as I have been stung before with poor quality. During lockdown I taught myself to design/produce my own and now use a local printer to do just that. Cheaper and I can control the quality.

All of the decals on this were done by me 

 

[kontemax]

I personally drawn several sticker sheets for them (Madcap, Vanquish, Boomerang and maybe others) and I never had a problem with them.

Max

[Problemchild]

MCI have always been pretty spot on for me

You have to remember he’s a guy producing repro decals - when I had issues re the design of the terrascorcher decals, he modified his design and updated and sent me a new set.

never had them Delivered in a tube 

if you want Tamiya quality then you pay through the nose for new old Tamiya stock 

if there is a rere out then always buy the originals - eg lunchbox….. why buy repro They are $10 

We are v lucky to have MCI 

EBAY decals are the worst I’ve ever seen 

 

JJ