The thing is, that is a nice water tub and the brush cradle is a good idea - it is commonly found in art stores, so I think peeps have their panties bunched just for the sake of bunching them. The palette is cute, but you can find better in art stores. Also, its rather useless if you paint wet pallette. Personally, I use the plastic from blister packs for most of my mixing and a tupperware tub for wet palette stuff. And a lot of the time, I mix on the back of my thumbnail.
As for it being a “big GW money making scheme™”, I doubt it. These would be really cheap to mass produce and I’d wager that the water pot is licensed/bought from another manufacturer anyway.
They actually have one chap at GW who’s sole job is to create “cool & useful stuff you don’t need”. As an example, when I’m off for a game, I have a case for my rule books, dice, templates, etc. Very very useful, very cool, very unnecessary.
This stuff is useful, but you don’t need it to play GW games. It’s also not unduly expensive. They do a single small run, which sells out and they make a little money on it.
And its about 5 inches across!!! So, I saw the new water pots and palette today at my FLGS: holy cremola they are TINY!!! The palette is pretty much useless to me, but I may just buy a water pot, simply because I can keep brushes in it and it doesn’t take much room on my desk. I was expecting them to be a lot larger.
I use an old plastic cup that has an Easter Bunny on it. Still works good. The cup is an interesting idea, but will it come down to buying a new unit or a water cup.
mm its probably cheaper to actualy wash your brushes rather than buying a special pot to leave them to soak in making the wood rot. for my water I use an old tea cup which the handle fell off and for mixing I use washed out milk lids.