Old Starfleet Wars demographics & distributor info

Between the eras of Superior Models and Monday Knight Productions, a business called Game Masters was selling the Starfleet Wars and MAATAC lines of models and rules.  While that company's website is dead, the Internet Wayback Machine allows us to conjure up its ghost to tell us secrets of the past.

Here's the Game Masters web page aimed at retailers that this distributor had back in the day.  I find the info on gamer demographics interesting:

The typical Starfleet Wars customer is a white male between ages 35 and 45, works in a technical field, earns an above-average income, and owns a computer.  The customer will first acquire all ships within one of the five Starfleet Wars empires, then acquire a second or third empire's fleet.  The median first-time Starfleet Wars order has been $133.  Over 79% of these orders included one galactic dreadnought-2 (GD2) or super galactic dreadnought (SGD).  Follow-on orders are common.  The Terran ships sell best, followed by the Carnivorans and Entomalians.

It's also notable that Game Masters sold the models in what it called "kitted" and "finished" form.  Kitted means it's your typical wargaming mini that needs basing and painting.  "Finished miniatures are polished and mounted on heavy sculptured bases ..."  For those of you wondering, there are still some of these "finished" Starfleet Wars models for sale by another company (along with 100mm figures of the five SfW species).

Also of interest on the old Game Masters website:

• Starfleet Wars introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers
• MAATAC introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers' land war tactics

Both those release schedules mention release dates that never happened.  Still, I'm playing one of those games at present, and the other is still for sale, so I'm happy.