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niteowl7710

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Everything posted by niteowl7710

  1. Yeah but like any other retailer everyone is taking a minor hit and passing on a fraction of the actual tariff. Otherwise Round2 kits wouldn't have gone up $6, they would have gone up $18. The tariffs aren't new for retail, they've been ongoing since April. Even with the "pause" there was a baseline 10% for everyone. The big change is the end of the $800 de minimis exemption for everything from everywhere on 9/1. With self-importing there's no one to take the hit but you. The "sinister" part is the "simple flat fee" which for Counties with a Tariff Rate of less than 16% (Japan is 15%) is $80. $80 for a box regardless to the content value...to do the math for everyone it would otherwise require you to have a box with a total value (contents & shipping fees) of $540 to reach that $80 at the actual 15% tariff rate. If billing is done correctly, if you dared order something Chinese from HLJ, Plaza Japan, et al, you'd now get whacked with the 55% tax bill (or $200 flat fee). It has the potential to make most IPMS models along with Meng & Beemax/NuNu effectively impossible to self-import unless you wanna eat that.
  2. So far I haven't seen any word out of them, but the way this is currently shaping up to go down is (and this is factual, not political) is that the overseas vendor is being setup to collect the U.S. tariff pre-shipment and then remitting it to the U.S. For bigger companies this requires tweaking of their systems to determine points of origin and then set tax rates and so and so forth. This is already a requirement of many vendors in order to pre-collect the EU VAT. This is all (and I admit to a bit of editorializing here) a "scam" to float the current story that foreign governments are paying the tariffs and it won't affect you the consumer. But of course you the consumer are now going to pay that tariff - or hideously worse a flat fee that for Japanese products is $80 regardless as to the value of the parcel contents - anyways. It's akin to how income taxes work...if you're hit for 15% of every Plaza Japan order that's not so bad in pieces, until you figure out how much you paid over the year. If people had to pay their income taxes in a lump sum in April instead of 26 or 52 bite sized chunks there would be riots in the streets... The other option of course is to not buy things from overseas and patronize local businesses. That sounds great in theory, but many don't have a LHS, and the ones that do probably don't have one that stocks in the esoteric things you can only get from self-importation.
  3. Well what might be the last HLJ shipment for sometime, depending on how things shake out over the coming weeks. If you're not in-tune with international sales because those kits/items aren't your jam, know that more and more places - including large ones like Hannants in the UK are going to stop accepting U.S. orders at the end of this month with the end of de minimis. Great time to be alive...
  4. Pegasus Hobbies in Upland, California
  5. Like Tim said it's a **SERIES** of kits...from both Ford & Mercury. Think like a half dozen variants at least. Be patient, some people will be miserable just to be miserable, but this will tickle most everyone's boxes eventually.
  6. It's on the Distribution List for September, which depending on how late in the month it ends up being could trickle over into Early October. Model Roundup also seems to get their releases a week later than everyone else, including my LHS.
  7. These came in the mail while I was in VA for the Nats. Still catching up after all the shipping nonsense. HK can send envelopes with "documents", but still no parcels. Really figured 6 months later they would have figured that out, but *shrug* The Merc decals are direct replacements for the original Tamiya liveries. The two Porsches are for the NuNu 911 GTE with ZoomOn 2020 transkit (or the hopes that NuNu follows up the 2018 kit with the face-lift if I can't figure out how to get ZoomOn stuff here now that all de minimis is about to expire at the end of the month.
  8. Justin there's clearly a Revell US sized box with the Revuelto, it's not on the list right now per se, but there's a N/A rebox in the offing. Not sure how how much market the e-Tron would have in the U.S. since it's not the one from the Avengers and I can probably count on one hand how many of them I've seen in real life.
  9. Not a bad thing, just an expensive thing. Revell overpopulated the market with all of the '06-'10 Mustang variants and there's still not much of a second hand market for them 15 yrs later. Model companies love to park in historical sales data as proof of sales futures so slow Mustang sales back then (because of 6 nearly identical kits being sold all at once) mean new Mustangs will be duds too. We barely got a C7 Vette (other than the race car) and it took several years to finally get a C8 after Revell/Monogram released nearly yearly updated C5 & C6s up through 2009.
  10. I don't mean to overstate the obvious here, but it's a SnapTite kit. If there's badging it'll be on the decal sheet. The chrome "tree" is the small runner with the headlight backs and the side mirror faces. They might be able to do a full detail kit if they wanted to and had the CAD data for all of the car, but changing this into that would be so labor intensive they'd be better off creating another new tool.
  11. No there's only one set of mirrors, one set of mirror reflectors which are on the (will be) Chrome tree with the headlight buckets.
  12. There wasn't a lot of automotive at the Atlantis booth. The featured built models were the pair of AA Fuel Dragsters, which came out last year. Being shown for the "first" time is the old Revell 1955 Chevrolet. This is supposed to get run next month (Sept) and will come with all the stock and drag parts. I'm not familiar enough with the "classic" *cough* 55 tooling, but I think this might be the first time it's been entirely in this configuration since the 1964 boxing. Also being shown was the chrome and new glass runner for the 1/32 '56 Buick Custom
  13. The other new tool on offer is the Lamborghini Reveulto. This kit continues the recent trend of Revell Germany based tools coming "factory prepped" with both LHD & RHD.
  14. Next up the new tool Mustang. This kit is going to come with two sets of wheels and two trunk lids which facilitate for a spoiler or spoiler delete look. Also oddly enough two lower grill surrounds so you can add/delete the front plate mount.
  15. Greetings and salutations from Hampton, Virginia. Once again you've wasted another year and it's time for Nationals again. Revell & Atlantis are once again sharing the same table space area with Revell having some test shots of two new upcoming tools and a few odds and ends at Atlantis. First up at Revell previously announced items on the display boards.
  16. Uhh no we wouldn't. Other than the vaguely passable Jetsonic lightbar there isn't a single other thing about that kit that is even remotely close to the 1st Gen Taurus Police Car other than the fact it is a Taurus. The real Taurus Police Car was a base model Taurus L and didn't have a single SHO part anywhere near it. The model kit is the wrong interior, wrong drive train and wrong body trim/aero. It's also not at all accurate to the RoboCop movie cars either. The kit itself does build up into a nice SHO don't get me wrong, but the whole Police Car tie-in was a "zero dollar" attempt to amortize the tooling.
  17. Given that 3D printing got it's footing in the hobby doing small parts, there's probably several engines out there already that you could put into this offering. Although you'd be sawzalling the heck out of $150 worth of resin to use one. One piece body, one piece chassis...the need to create an engine bay. This is sounding like $300-400 now.
  18. Same ole, same ole...but i dont think that pickup topper, roof light rack, or center section push bar (both of the latter are different than the roll bar/KC lights and full brush guard that has come in all the other boxings) has come in any release since the original 1981 release of the "Dude" kit.
  19. Having not seen this in person I can't judge it individually. I can say that the price point it's at it's climbing a very steep hill of expectations and quality demands curbside or not. It's playing in the big boys toys end of the pool (Alpha, PZY, Fugu Garage, Red Wheels, etc) and I'm not seeing all the extras like decals, etch, etc that help justify those other company's prices.
  20. Don't need tests shots of the B/FX Comet or Ramp Truck, those kits are out on the streets.
  21. Original stock '65 Comet kit was released in 2016. Time flies, etc, etc...
  22. Two accent sheets for the Tamiya 911 GT3RS All the blue on this Audi R8 is blue chrome foil decals.
  23. That someone would be the young lady who as (at least at the time) in charge of GM's Licensing department.
  24. End of the year (4Q) on the presumption that tariffs don't go all sideways again.
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