Concur completely with Ron Smith.

When I see a ship model done with the full contents of one of the photo etch "upgrades" I notice how clunky and awkward the results are. Everything that Ron Smith mentioned is true. PE has become a rite of passage, not an enhancement. Now it is all about accomplishing the placement of small bits of brass, not making a small model as realistic as possible. I remember the extraordinary 1:700 ship models in a Tamiya publication printed right before PE changed the art of small ship model building (about 1983). What distinguished those small models in the publication was that everything was in scale. The life lines and stanchions did not look like fat ocean liner railings. You could not see the detail three feet away. Now that art art is gone. What counts is your buying power to purchase additions.

I remember chatting with an acquaintance as he prepared an airplane model for an IPMS contest. I knew the interior layout of the airplane he was building. As the writer J.G. Ballard, a former RAF fighter pilot observed about a model show, the model was more detailed than the real airplane. I asked the modeler about some of the pipes, and bits. He replied he had made them up."IPMS judges like busy cockpits" he explained.