Introducing Sofvi Color paints by Nagashima for sofubi (soft vinyl) garage kits December 25th, 2020
This year, V Color paints began disappearing, and their paint thinner has became Unobtainium. This was bad news for sofubi (soft vinyl) kit builders such as myself... or so I thought. This dilemma has been resolved. Now Irisawa is the plamo wholesale company here in Japan that has sold V Color paints under their name. Irisawa's website is still up, and their V Color paints page is here: http://www.irisawa.jp/irisawa/index.html I'm told that Irisawa has been purchased by Happinet, and it seemed that the V Color paint line was dropped. I have been worried about the fate of V Color paints, as I still have many sofubi kits yet to build. Well, here is the good news. Irisawa’s V-Color sofubi paint line was made by a company called Nagashima. They are now rebranded the paint line as Sofvi Color. Here is their website for their Sofvi Color line of paints: https://www.nagashima-manbou.co.jp/colorsample2.html
Unfortunately, Nagashima’s distribution is no longer sold by a modeling wholesaler now that Irisawa is out of the picture. So far, neither Hobby Search, Amiami, Yodobashi, Hobby Link Japan, nor many other online modeling retailers are stocking these. An online retailer called Monotaro has these for sale. Their website focuses on selling office supplies, furniture, screws, nails, and crap like that. Hopefully HLJ and other modeling retailers will start to stock these paints, because so far there aren't many other places to buy these paints, aside from Amazon. (I really do not like Amazon!)
As you can see, the new paint bottles are larger (and a bit more expensive). More volume is nice, but what I do not like are the metal lids. With plenty of experience with Testors paints, I am not a fan of metal lids!
Their thinner, however, comes in the identical glass bottle and plastic cap.
One last thing to mention is while the original colors remain (Orange Yellow, Monster Blue, Emerald Green, Ivory, Flesh A&B, etc.), they have added new colors like Violet, Bright Red, and Peppermint Green. So not only has Nagashima carried on the V-Color paint line as Sofvi Color, but they have added new colors. Neat!