niteowl7710
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Posts posted by niteowl7710
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4 hours ago, Dave Ambrose said:
We need to keep a couple of things in mind. The model car market is very fragmented. Kits that sell well in the US don't generally sell in either Europe or Japan.
I think you'd find most of the European folks here would offer up body parts of which they have two of to get an easy and reliable supply of America subject matter car kits.
The same goes for Japan, which has an entire subculture devoted to American cars, the problem there is while they can get the kits they're hideously expensive with the export costs and the currency weakness against the USD. Same thing for Australia where you can generally find American kits, but they cost 2-3x what they cost here for the same reasons.
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59 minutes ago, ChrisBcritter said:
Wonder if we'll see the Eleanor '71/'73 Mustang in 2026?
I suspect we'll have to wait until either the 1st of the Year - although they didn't actually do that in 2025 for the first time in quite a established tradition, or until Spielwarenmesse at the end if January to get the Revell 2026 main new kit/major modification reissue news.
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On 11/17/2025 at 10:08 PM, HomerS said:
Recent toy show acquisition It look like the Tamiya Jeep inside, but there is no engine?
It's the SuperSnap (SnapTite) version of the Lindberg 1/20 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was a simplified promo version of the glue kit. Those were dealer promotional giveaway items.
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On 11/16/2025 at 4:51 PM, iamsuperdan said:
EV makes sense to me for urban use. Vegas PD vehicles would never leave the city, so a 300-400 mile range would be plenty.
Minor point of order, now granted these trucks are supposedly "Special Use", but the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is the resulting agency from the merger of the Las Vegas City Police and Clark County Sheriff's Office back in 1972. It's actually headed by the County Sheriff (rather than a Police Chief) and is responsible for all unincorporated areas of Clark County (8k+ square miles) in addition to the City of Las Vegas.
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9 hours ago, PintoKING said:
I do not recall the Camaro Berlinetta in 1/25 scale. Is it a new kit, or maybe just decals for the "nostrils"? (the 3 vents between the headlights)
The decal sheets for the kits are right below each of the box art placards and there isn't a decal for those "scoops". Makes me wonder if there wasn't a Berlinetta nose tooled up in the 1982 into 1983 kit and in the end they ended up leaving it a Z/28 and the 1/16 became the Berlinetta. The entire nose piece is separate on the 1982/83 kit so it would have been a quick easy piece to tack onto a blank spot on the tool at the time. I wonder what happened to the factory parts when they made the kit into a "Street Machine" in the mid-80s. I almost think the kit would sell better as a 2n1 since no kit of a 1/25 82/83 Berlinetta exists, but then again the Berlinetta ran it's own specific rim those yeats and now you get into having to make parts...😜
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2 hours ago, mikemodeler said:
The El Jefe is the Captain Hook with a different bed as near as I can tell. It will be nice to have the Mojave Mule, built that one as a teenager, would like to build it again.
El Jefe is this 1980 Snaptite kit...
I don't believe it's related to the tow truck as it was a one and done release that year and never seen again. Much like the series of 1981 Ford Trucks that resurfaced as that weird short bed "Dually" reissue.
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7 hours ago, Dpate said:
Not to long got an email from them explaining they'll be shutting down the website around Q3 2026. That's sad to hear as they are stapple when it comes to the online hobby market. I'm sure they're keeping the doors open at there location, but there just closing down the website. They didn't specifically say why there shutting down the website, but I'm sure it's probably something to do with money....maybe.
The family that owns Stevens Int'l, MegaHobby & AAA Hobbies (wholesaler, online retailer, and brick & mortar shop) are retiring. They've been at it for more than 40 yrs, nothing nefarious or money related. Surprising someone hasn't tried to acquire it, but then they've never been particularly price friendly either - and I don't doubt that wouldn't extend to what they'd want to buy out the business.
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Announced a few days ago - per Fujimi's X (aka Twitter). Expected release is "2026".
The 1/24 scale "SUBARU WRX STI" (VAB type) joins the inch-up series, which requires gluing, painting, and assembly!
This is the first completely new mold item for the inch-up series since 2017, marking the first all-new mold in about 9 years.
The highly anticipated first release is… The special edition "EJ20 Final Edition," of which 555 units were limited-release sold in 2019.
It recreates the car's distinctive features, such as the gold 19-inch wheels and the rear bumper with the air outlet grille.
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Yeah I am seeing ads plowing through a wide variety of the forum right in the middle of topics. There used to be a way to close them and report them back to AdSense as being placed wrong - but the ads this week don't seem to have that feature.
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1 hour ago, drksd4848 said:
Sorry... misunderstood what you meant by cottage industry... mostly because I often wonder where a company like Round 2 sits in terms of size, scope etc.
So as far as *that* cottage industry is concerned, it's likely not worth it for the auto companies to go after these guys with lawyers. What's the gain? How much money do they make? Probably not much.
There have been some cease and desists sent out over the years to various resin companies. Both GM and Ford have done that, and since they have in-house legal counsel it doesn't cost them anything since they're already paying those lawyers anyways. What is Joe Blow in his garage going to do, fight it? On the basis of...I can't even imagine what basis.
Wouldn't be so easy to do with a digital file being made by a guy in Eastern Europe, there's a tangle of laws there between the U.S and the EU. Plus, it's not a tangible asset, it's just a series of "pictures" in a computer until someone presses the "go" button on their Elegoo. Plus as so many people have found out, once something is on the internet, it's always out there. Even if you did cease and desist Andrey over any given car file, the car file is already owned by dozens, if not hundreds of people who can just send it to each other. They might have a better chance at going after the "Print for Fee" guys who are selling the full printed kits on eBay but even then, most of them are again in the EU other than Iceman.
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2 hours ago, drksd4848 said:
Uh.... yeah. True that. They *are* paying licensing for other
MoparStellantis stuff. Anyone know if that's a blanket agreement, or do you have to pay per car? As in, the 72 Duster has to have a separate deal, the Coronet has to have a separate deal, etc. The Road Runner would be a double wammy I guess, because you needMoparStellantis AND Warner Bros.There's usually a master licensing agreement that gives you the trade dress items (name, logos, et al), and then each individual item has to be given approval of its own. If memory serves me from hours and hours of listening to Salvinos JR folks discussing it at length only GM still has an in-house licensing department. Both Ford and Stellantis contract out through 3rd party services.
Should also be noted as it was being discussed in another thread. Having licensing to do a diecast of (insert your scale here) doesn't automatically give one the right to reproduce it as a plastic kit. The licensor always has last right of rejection for any project at any time and this entire thing might come down to Round2 not wanting to pay Warner Bros. fee, or Stellantis having no current interest in seeing a '72 Roadrunner reproduced by another company - giving that exclusive right to SJR for their NASCAR items.-
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6 hours ago, unclescott58 said:
Any word yet, will this model include a flat, non-scooped, “stock” hood or not? It makes a difference on whether I buy the kit or not. I love ‘64 Comets. I’m hoping I can build just a “regular” showroom stock Cyclone. No fancy “drag scoops” on the hood.
No it does not. Both 1964 kits have the same hood.
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12 hours ago, tim boyd said:
You guys are causing me to remember the nightmares of my first job at Ford. At the time E&L Transport was apparently in a state of chaos, as our poor dealers would call me every day asking where this or that car was. I was supposed to call E&L, find out, and get back to them. Sparing you the detail but it was a colossal mess. This was the summer of 1978, the Ford car/truck business was still booming (the second oil embargo was about 12 months in the future), and it was a wonder I didn't lose my job right there. WheW! TB
Fast Forward all these years later and a state of chaos with Ford (and later GM) took out Jack Cooper Transport which was the largest remaining union auto haulers a few months ago.
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18 hours ago, sak said:
If its any constelation, the subjects I would like to see will never see the light of day either.
Any one in particular?
17 hours ago, drksd4848 said:Yeah, I’ve seen those. They look pretty good. I guess you would have to have each individual piece 3-D printed. So any individual with a decent 3-D printer could make his own 1/25 scale model. Which makes me wonder, if a shlub with a good 3-D printer can take those plans and make his own, why couldn’t a company with more resources do it on a larger scale?
Well the shlubs and the file designer aren't paying licensing to Stellantis...
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Still catching up on overseas decals. More from S.K.
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4 hours ago, Dave Van said:
Atlantis is running the Pepsi Firebird F/C in NY and sending out the chrome tree to a vendor. You can see the videos on Instagram. So watching all his video it seem more like they did not have room in NY for all tooling.....but now they have more room locally. Just reading between Peter's videos. Thanks
Glad they managed to figure out some way to get it done locally, must have been a logistical and cost pain in the rear to have "half" the tooling located halfway across the country when you can run the kits in house otherwise.
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1 hour ago, Luc Janssens said:
Pure speculation on my part, but if DModels and Decalcas are one and the same company, then maybe the IXO diecast model it would be based on, needs too many changes to scale up to 1/24th scale, Also unlike the Sierra there are no OEM CAD files to fall back on.
Again pure speculation...
The Decalcas "kit" was supposed to be a poured resin multimedia piece (ala Alpha, PZY, Renaissance, etc) not an injected styrene kit.
Like so many things it seems to have been killed off by the abrupt shut downs during Covid and seemingly didn't make financial sense to continue sinking money into developing it.
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7 hours ago, Can-Con said:
Maybe not even any car kits at all??
This right here.
When Peter did his talk at IPMS Nationals a couple of years ago he said that the majority of the car tooling was staying in Illinois because there wasn't anywhere locally to get the chrome plating done. So if the kit needed that, it was going to stay in Chicagoland. Everything else was going to eventually wind up on Long Island - and if I remember the post referenced here correctly, it said this was the last truck load to be moved.
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On 10/21/2025 at 8:55 PM, Gary Chastain said:
I’ll take two please, curious about new Mack model truck pricing and if they will mold the Mack in the US.
The best you could hope for there is something similar to what Salvinos JR has done where the tooling is done in China and then shipped to the U.S. for production. But then they'd have to find someone to run it on a contract basis here - all revolving around whether the facility in Michigan that holds all the Lindberg/Craft House kits can run something like that or not, or would want to...
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1 hour ago, tim boyd said:
I trust you are saying this in jest, or at least partially so. I gotta say, good shot!
Hehehe I couldn't resist poking the "I demand full detail Ford stuff" bear.
Although a nice curbside would be something I'd buy, particularly if the cross parts were available for the Law Enforcement variant.
I could go off on a separate tangent as it relates to a "Mach-E is a waste" relating to how large the Aoshima 1/32 SnapKit line actual is at this point three years into being, and that apart from an entire slew of cars is expanding across Light Commerical with police, EMS, Fire, Towing and soon refuse truck entries. Plus it's selling so well it's paying for a Ferrari license. Photos from the "Make n Take" from this year's show illustrates literally hundreds of kids participating and of course Shizouka Hobby Show (in the Spring) has an entire day devoted to School Age kids being the only ones allowed in the venue.
We pay a lot of lip service to wanting young people to get into this hobby, but in practice nobody does anything about it...I've seen the Make n Takes lately...it's ancient stuff that Atlantis provides. Aww inspiring stuff...
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There are a couple of decal sets they promised to do but never have done that are "Sold Out" as well. This item was never made, and it this point I'd doubt it ever will be.
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...and the most popular Mustang in the U.S. by Ford's sales figures is the electric SUV...I can't wait for this forum to mobilize to get the dire injustice of there being no kit of that rectified post haste. 🤣😅
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3 hours ago, Mark C. said:
I think one area where we tend to get crossed up a lot here is that being a modelling discussion forum, a lot of people (myself included) feel like it’s a safe space to air our future kit subject wants and desires, no matter how “out there” they seem. Sometimes this causes friction among the members who feel more like this is a board meeting, and every idea presented must pass the scrutiny of the bean counters first. The difference is that in a board meeting, the idea wouldn’t be approved unless it satisfied the parties who make the decisions, whereas here we get to be labeled (amicably) as the “lunatic fringe”.
I actually love the conversation and the back and forth, as long as it isn’t taken too seriously. I think it goes off the rails a little when we do take things too seriously and the conversation starts to feel like “don’t say it anymore, because you’ll ruin everything”, as if we had that kind of power in the first place. FWIW.
Just my five cents on the matter…
I think the frustrations here come when some of the fringe of the fringe appear to never be happy about anything that anyone is doing, and they immediately have 59 other commercially unviable suggestions/solutions to the "problem" as they see them. Like...that gets tiring to read thread after thread after thread after thread. Ergo the joke becomes - How do you bankrupt a model company? Put this forum in charge of it.
I'm all for wishes and wants and safe spaces, but there is a tipping point that all the "free expression" turns into a constant din of negativity.
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1/12 Lancia Fulvia teaser from Italeri?
in Car Kit News & Reviews
Posted
So it'll shelf price around $65? That's the going rate for a new tool, "single use" rally kit these days. That's going to be $15 or more LESS than anyone is going to be able to import from Europe themselves given the cheapest one on eBay right now is just shy of $75 shipped and that doesn't take into account the 15% Dopey Old Man Tax (plus any other fees depending on how it's being shipped from Italy) that you'd owe when it gets here.
Why can't people just retire without it turning into a vast conspiracy? It seems like anything attached to this hobby where the proprietor doesn't die physically in the act of running their shop, casting resin, et al - then the person is failing at business, going broke, a fraud, et al. Given the demographics of this place, I presume most people were congratulated at a job well done and sent on their way with a plaque or something without everyone in the background being convinced they were skipping out before the embezzlement charges came down or something equally as salacious as some of the rumors I've heard about why Stevens is closing their doors.