kalbert

I thought everybody knew about Peter Framtpon's talking guitar!

Great news! That is a sweet looking bike. I've always liked the early DS stuff like that.

Cool! Looks like it's been setting in a grove out back for decades, begging for someone to rescue it.

Well... but what about Peter Frampton then?

Yes it's true, the model railroad guys are pretty bummed. PollyScale and Floquil were great paints, premixed in road specific colors. IMO Testors parent company is not seeing the big picture here, looking at all their model paints as competing with each other and taking sales away from the flagship brands of ModelMaster when in fact they serve very different and somewhat finicky customers. They are dumping those brand names, but no word for certain on if they are dumping the product lines too, though they are closing some facilities so dumping the entire line is very likely. Some of the Floquil products, like the paint pens and textured spray paint, are now in the new CreateFX line which seems to be the new label on the low end paint brushes, sand paper, square bottle Testors paints, and crummy never dry enamel spray cans. It would seem they are trying to change their "uncool" model paint image and go after the arts & crafts people, but the arts and crafts people don't want solvent based sticky enamels, they already have a wide variety of paints marketed to them. Kind of reminds me of the Ford Ranger. Ford thought people who bought Rangers would have bought F150's if Rangers hadn't been available, so they dumped the Ranger expecting to drive those sales to the flagship product. Now Tacoma sales are slightly up, and F150 sales are unchanged.

Yea I think that's the draw to them for sure. They were a smaller outfit doing odball stuff that wasn't mainstream Camaros and Mustangs. If you want to do a '70s Caddy your options are pretty much JoHan. If you want a '60s Mustang, take your pick. Multiple issues of multiple trim levels from multiple sources. There's only one way to get a '75 Cutlass.

IMO there's not enough organ nowadays

It's hard to imagine we still don't have anything in this area... Albeit I poses none of the skills or time necessary to do one myself, with all the other outstanding stuff out there and the popularity of light duty diesel over the past 10 or so years you'd think we would see examples of everything!

Whoa!!! This one's my favorite. Awesome scene!

Man I wish I had been able to get up there, looks like it would have been a good time!

The model railroad community is lamenting the loss of the Mobil decals more than we are over here. Those decals are just about the most popular signage for a gas station on a layout set in the most popular time and place to model.

The real bummer on the green one is it's paired with the equally or worse '56 F100 which I just did for the first and last time. If I do get my hands on the twin pack, I'll throw the F100 away and spare someone alot of trouble

Looking at my stash of kits, and my buying habits, there's something that stands out. Nearly all of them are MPC! There's a few AMT's (some of them have MPC roots), and a few Revell and Monogram, and a couple of Lindberg, by by far the majority are MPC kits from the '80s and '90s. I didn't seek out MPC on purpose, though most of them are pretty nice. What I really like is the subjects. I bought subjects that I like, and for the most part MPC happened to be the ones who did them. Anybody else notice one brand over others appearing more in your stash?

That street pickup gave me fits when I was a kid. What a piece of junk. Still.... I'd like to try my hand at another one, and if I ever see a green one...

+1 I agree!

Two crappy kits in one box is what that is! I did not know there was a yellow version of the Street Pickup too. Does it have similar decals as the black/red and green ones do?

Pictures? You can probably glue the seam, then use thin strips of styrene (or strips of a for sale sign) across the back of the joint to give it some strength.

We had a 1990 Indy Beretta convertible in the shop where I went to school. It was donated by GM for education, and I believe was destroyed just recently. Neat car, but it was a Beretta. My favorite on that list? the '77 Delta 88 driven by James Garner. Had a friend back in the day with a silver '79, we called her the "Silver Screamer", lot of good times in that car. We'd run 2 tanks of gas through it on Friday nights and never leave the city limits. And who doesn't like James Garner???

I don't think so, Microscale could spend years and thousands pursuing something like that for not much return. My guess is their contract probably expired, Mobile said new contracts have some terms that Microscale wasn't crazy about, looked at how many Mobile products they actually have in their catalog and how well they sell vs whatever the new agreement would be and said nah, just forget it then. For all we know Mobil cut a deal with someone else to sell their brand on decals and their contract has exclusive rights defined in it. Remember, to us they may be "just models" but to them it's business.

I believe the least eye gouging one to look at is "dually" and it is actually a word. According to Merriam-Webster it's the adverb form of dual, though calling something a dually would not be correct at all. "That is a dually truck" is not correct vs "That truck has rear tires mounted dually" or "That truck has dually mounted tires" are. Calling them a "dualie" follows same structure as with the fuel injection slang "fuelie", so in the wild world of slang vernacular that may be considered correct. It would never be duelly or deulie, it's not slang for dueling pistols or pirates. I do not know what a dooly is and reading the definition I'm still not sure but it's definitely not a dual rear wheel truck. Dooley doesn't seem to be anything at all according to the dictionary people. I believe for a while in the late 70's and 80's GM called those 3+3 things "Big Dooley" though.

No kidding!

I'd guess that either the people producing the 'fakes' A: have a license agreement and paid whatever outragous royalty or fee Mobile demanded that MicroScale figured was not worth the effort or B: are scofflaws or in regions where US laws have no significance making it difficult for Mobil to catch them. Rest assured they are surely trying. Additionally there's a big difference between "fakes" that are licensed reproductions with no real historical or collector value, and illegitimate "fakes" made without consent. I'd think anyone copying Mobile trade marks in a region where Mobil has legal protections for them would be shut down pretty quickly if they didn't have Mobil's consent.

Yea companies don't see this kind of stuff as free advertising or small potatoes fun 'n games. They see it as you generating revenue from their brand identity and public image, and don't want to get involved with perceived endorsement of the product/service you have created with their image. They simply can't afford to manage and monitor every single thing that has their logo on it, so instead they regulate who can print their logo and make it available to others. Just like UPS brown, CAT yellow, Coke red, Petty blue. Easier to regulate the paint production than to monitor what it's used for.

The finished product is Under Glass

A few more.....