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In another thread (Corvair engine air duct) the discussion went about the ways AMT attempted to cut costs near its end in Michigan.

The American LaFrance fire trucks kits were a good example of the attempt to cut cost by eliminating the clear yellow and red trees and dechroming the kits.

They placed those parts on the chrome tree.

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They even shot the ladder in the Ladder Chief in white plastic,

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Chrome parts from original release and white plastic from mid 70's /80's releases.

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greg

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I've occasionally wondered how much money they could have possibly saved by retooling promos/kits into the Craftsman series and other reissues by having rear bumpers now integrating the taillights instead of separate red taillights ('65 Riviera), and chrome taillights instead of red ones ('60 Bonneville).  It's not as if these changes did not take some planning, test runs, and revisions.  What they did with many of the '70 models by issuing unassembled promos as kits seemed to make more sense.

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Losing the separate taillight lenses in the Craftsman series kits meant no tiny parts tree floating around in the box.  Remember too, the parts weren't bagged in those days.  One less step in manufacturing, one less molding machine tied up.  They started doing this with the regular kits in the Seventies, again to eliminate personnel.  They also tried plastic rod axles, those didn't work too well because they were the same gauge as the wire ones.

AMT wasn't alone in this.  Jo-Han got rid of wire axles (and metal screws) in the early Seventies, and substituted plastic ones.  Small additional amount of plastic, easily cut tooling to produce axles and chassis pins.  The USA Oldies kits also eliminated decals and (in all but a couple of kits) optional parts.

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On 12/9/2019 at 8:30 PM, Mark said:

AMT wasn't alone in this.  Jo-Han got rid of wire axles (and metal screws) in the early Seventies, and substituted plastic ones. .

Revell got in the cost savings, too, eliminating all chrome plating from kits in the late '70s/early '80s, too. The 1/16 Baja Fever Chevy 4x4 and Penny Pincher VW Beetle come to mind:

 

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As for the example of the color of the plastic the ladder from the fire truck is molded in, if the cheapest color plastic to mold it in would be pink, it wouldn't matter to me as it shouldn't most any modeler because mold lines would have to be removed and any other production flaws taken care of so even being molded in color is a mute point because after the prep work it would need painted anyway. 

I also feel the same way about chrome, at least when it comes to the mentioned firetruck kits and also big rig kits. Those kits would actually be 100% correct without any chrome, because while some of the things like the exhaust stacks, air breathers, and some of the other shiny stuff on rigs are chromed, most everything AMT and others chromed on their kits would not be chrome but in fact polished aluminum. Sure, when most of these kits first saw the light of day in the 70s and there wasn't the high tech things like Molotow pens, BMF, Metalizer paints, or Alclad where modelers had easy ways to properly shade the metal tones of the chrome parts it was have them chrome in the box or silver paint, but now I would rather see less chrome in a kit.

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13 minutes ago, mikemodeler said:

To add to Casey's comments, I believe they did the same thing with the recent release of the Jeep Honcho pickup truck- molded in color and no chrome.

Yes Mike, but unlike Casey's example of that Beetle which I have a couple of other issues also based on that issue in his picture that do have chrome parts, I believe the other releases of the Honcho kits also never had chrome in them also. That is because if I remember correctly, the real truck had an aluminum grille that wasn't chromed and I think the same also applies to the bumpers. 

An example to add though more recently, which kind of ties into my comment above about chrome in big rig kits more about correctness instead of possible cost savings, is the newest reissue of the Revell Sprint car. Revell eliminated all the chrome from what was a kit that had a fair amount of unneeded chrome in it because what was chromed in that kit was usually aluminum. 

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As mentioned elsewhere, the Revell Jeep Honcho Pickup, has never had any chrome. I owned the first version of the kit once, and it had no chrome at all.

For my tastes (and mine ONLY), I prefer Chrome on parts. It is easier for me to strip un-needed chrome, than to try to 'plate' things that are not chrome. Just my preference, though.

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Guys, remember that this was back in the days when they were pumping out 100,000s of copies of kits, not the small runs they do today.  So if they could eliminate a step in the manufacturing process, it was a huge savings across that many units.  And yes, cost containment has always been a reality in business.

Also, don't go blaming Round 2 for this.  This was many AMT owners ago, and the guys doing the work were just doing their job at a toy company.  

 

 

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On ‎12‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 6:40 PM, Casey said:

Revell got in the cost savings, too, eliminating all chrome plating from kits in the late '70s/early '80s, too. The 1/16 Baja Fever Chevy 4x4 and Penny Pincher VW Beetle come to mind:

 

revebf.jpg.60502e8a564049c222f032c0404ab4d6.jpg

revepp.jpg.4b8429e013e774d2f6d062d5def3e8f2.jpg

I think that was part cost-savings, part current automotive trend. In the late 70's / early 80's, for a hot minute, it was "cool" to black out chrome trim on cars.

I think some of the factory stock VW's had blacked-out everything for a little bit, and the 1978 Aspen & Volare Super Coupes come to mind with blacked out bumpers & grilles as well.

Some 1:1 street machines (they weren't called "Muscle Cars" yet- they were just old Hot Rods at the time) were getting blacked out bumpers & grilles because it was cheaper and easier to spray bomb them black then to get them rechromed (or find nicer ones). Painting everything body color (the "monochrome" look) wasn't to arise for another several years, coincidentally when these cars started entering the "complete body re-do" part of their life cycles. 

I remember at the time (I was about 10 years old?) my Dad handing me a rattle can of flat black so that I could spray bomb the bumpers from a friend's pickup one afternoon. They had taken them off and laid them down in a parking lot on top of a piece of cardboard so that they could be painted. I think I did an OK job, but then again, I don't think either of them were very picky.   

 

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