i can accept ugly stickers and colour combos on the hull because they can always be repainted and customized....but WHY is the standing rigging RED?
? I had the some complaint on the BlackBeard ship with YELLOW rigging! I tried to repaint the rigging black, but it doesn't take well to the paint, especially when the paint chips immediately once you attempt to have a clicky click his/her hand onto it (to climb).
(Technically, the beige rigging of the 3050 is inaccurate as well, but at least its earth colours matched the rest of the wooden-appearence of the ship's aesthetics. On real ships, the standing rigging and ratlines were coated with black tar, and should therefore be black. Older ships may have not used tar, so brown or beige ropes are still somewhat plausible...but RED ones or yellow ones are totally off!)
The only alternative to repainting this red rigging into black (with the propensity to chip off) is to remove it completely and replace with real string (which is a pain to do).
One of the reasons I loved the old ships is because they were more realistic. Appealing to younger kids with fisherpricey styling---that's what Playmobil 123 was for, wasn't it? grrrr.