Mark

At least one of us thought that there should have been a kit. I built this in 1978. Body, trunk, fender/frame unit, windshield (no glass, didn't think ahead on how to install it cleanly), radiator scratched from sheet plastic. My mom headed up the custodians/cleaning personnel at Fisher-Price Toys' home office in East Aurora, NY. She got passes to bring home things the design staff were tossing, as long as nothing gave away any future product plans. Among that stuff was a couple of partial sheets of styrene. I couldn't get the stuff locally back then, and thought that was a real score. All of these parts were made from that styrene. Fenders were bent with a heat gun. The rounded cowl corners were cut from some long-forgotten kit part. Mine is an Amesbury Special. I couldn't figure out how to do the cowl on the Royal Mail body. Front suspension is MPC Ford Pinto. Engine/transmission/rear end are AMT '55 Corvette. Seat is cut down from an MPC Dodge van piece. Wheels are the Jackman white spokes from an AMT Ford van. Those were a fad on street rods for about fifteen minutes back then. Paint is Dodge pickup light gray, airbrushed on. Left over from a Lionel train restoration I painted for my brother, who would have the train colors matched with automotive paint. The train restoration paints weren't very good. The original mockup was dark metallic green, with '63 Corvette knockoff wheels and the front suspension from an AMT '65 Nova funny car. I don't know why I changed it, nor why I used those Chevy pickup taillights! Built from a couple of basic dimensions and a single photo in a Petersen Publishing Chevrolet book. I keep thinking I'll come back and do a better one...

I've got the Bearcats kit. "From the hit TV show!" Someone brought a built one to the club meeting a few years ago, along with the DVD "set" containing the entire series. As I recall, one disc...six episodes...

The BB isn't something you can look at strictly in the "car" category. The movie/TV items dwarf many car kits. Round 2 has tooled brand new Space: 1999 items. I can't say I ever saw the show, or even know it could be seen where I live. I only remember seeing the original kits in MPC catalogs. New items from a TV show over forty years old, that to my knowledge hasn't set the world on fire in reruns? That right there says a lot. As for curbside, that makes perfect sense. How often was the car's hood ever shown open on the show?

No.

"Logistics"...someone is routing the items so as to keep every truck or plane full, or nearly so. They don't look closely enough to see that they manage to accomplish that by keeping some items in transport longer than necessary. Every load is a full load, that's what counts.

Starting the tracking when the label is created is probably just the most pragmatic way of doing it. It isn't the PO's, or eBay's, fault that some people seem to take advantage of that by creating labels as soon as they know where to ship the item.

You might want to search out the recent Rodders' Journal which included an article on Project X. More info can't hurt. Pontiac rear end would have been '57 or so through early Sixties. AMT '62 Catalina unit would work. The Olds/Pontiac rear end swap needed rear wheels with a non-stock offset to fit really wide tires. The swap was so popular that a couple of aftermarket wheel companies catalogued wheels for it. The Pontiac probably got switched out for a Ford 9" in the Eighties, when putting those in everything became the rage.

They aren't making this because it's an Imperial. They're making it because it's the Green Hornet Black Beauty, which by accident of circumstance just happens to be an Imperial. It won't likely be compromised by any ability to build a stock version.

The TV/movie guys outnumber the car guys...that's the market this is aimed at.

The military tire could be done in hard resin. I was looking at doing a similar tire myself a few years ago. I'd look at commercially available resin military tires in other scales. Most leave the feed tags and other extraneous resin in place to save time, leaving removal to the buyer. Looking at a few of those should give you a good idea of how they are doing it. If several casters are doing things in one particular way, that should point the way for you.

If you are starting out, don't experiment right off the bat. Get all your materials for both molds and castings from one source, that way you will know they are compatible. For how to design the mold itself, you will want to examine tires cast by others in order to get ideas. Most of the hard resin tires I have seen, have at least a bit of material in the center that needs to be trimmed out. Putting something in the center (not a wheel, just a filler piece) would make the mold fill more quickly and easily. Most cast tires I have looked at have a feed tag (entry point for the resin) somewhere on the perimeter of the tire. The feed tag isn't huge but needs to be big enough that you can get enough resin (hard or soft) into the mold before it begins curing. The tag is clipped off and the area smoothed over after the resin cured. That military tire is an ideal piece to learn on, as it has no detail in the area where you would put the feed tag. I have cast thousands of parts but never got to soft tires. I do know that I would make the mold one piece and slit it open only enough to get the original tire out. I'd make the mold with the tire standing vertically, feed tag on the bottom to hold the tire in place while the mold material cures.

If you are really into these styles of rods, think about picking up a book or two on constructing a 1:1 version. Vern Tardel, Tex Smith, Pete & Jake's, and So-Cal Speed Shop all did books explaining chassis building, and with plenty of pictures of examples of their work. I'm never going to build a 1:1 rod, but it's nice to know where things go and how they work, so your model build is realistic in that a full size one would be functional. I went to a swap meet at the beginning of May...bought one book, and grabbed a Tex Smith book on "fat fender" rod construction off of a "free pile". Old Speedway, Bob Drake, and So-Cal catalogs are worth grabbing too...often free or nearly so.

Luc's English is way better than my Flemish. I only know the "good words" in Polish. Pierogi, golumbki, and so on... ...and I know only enough French to get slapped by women...

The reboxing of items like the race car hauler indicate that Round 2 thinks the market is ready to absorb a few thousand more of them. "I can find an earlier issue kit at a show", some might say. But there are those who don't know about or go to those shows, and the places where they buy kits don't have any of these on the shelves. Remember, back when these kits were first issued, they'd be out continuously for a few years straight, with maybe a change in box art or two over the run. So bringing it back relatively soon isn't a big deal.

Just get a Revell '62 rather than swap parts. The AMT kit is 1962 technology all the way, with some revisions a few years later. Those who know that and buy (another) one accept it as it is. Those who aren't so much into the historical aspect of things and simply want the more modern tooling will prefer the Revell kit.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that there are other people, let alone other countries...

The Atlantis slicks won't fit without radiusing the rear wheel openings. They also won't fit the wheels provided in the Chevy kit.

'64 and '65 Chevelle wagon and El Camino.

Even the X-Acto ones loosen up when you switch back and forth between sizes. If you have a couple of "favorite" smaller sizes (like for ignition wiring, or wire to pin parts together) you should consider having pin vises dedicated to those sizes. Even a cheap one will do, provided it is concentric (sometimes a big "if") and used with only one size drill.

Around here, the smokes are buried behind the counter. If there are massive amounts of cancer sticks being pilfered, they aren't being reported.

Not having to deal with cash isn't a bad thing, as long as customers still have a choice. They still do, in a roundabout way: if the place won't take cash, you can go somewhere else. I remember back in the olden days, you'd watch the local news and every day there was at least one gas station robbery. I can't remember the last time I heard or read anything about one in the area, even though many more dollars cross the counter between gas and cigarette sales. Nearly everyone uses a card nowadays, less temptation out there for a gas station stickup.

But if it were in Australia, it would be spiraling in the opposite direction...

I'd still like to see a variation with plating on the suspension parts tree, but not having it in this kit isn't a problem. The wheel pack does have ejector pin marks on the faces of all but the dragster spoke wheels, so not having plating means you can get right to cleaning those up. All but the spoke wheels would be magnesium in 1:1 anyway, so paint is in order. The frame in this kit is single round "tube", roughly the diameter of many parts trees. If you cut the frame between the notches for the radius rod tabs, it would be pretty easy to stretch the side rails. I'd use styrene tubing, and drill the cut ends and use a piece of music wire for strength. Lengthened, it might make a decent show rod chassis.

I'd expect that of a tank, in fact that was in the back of my mind as I had heard and read about "gallons per mile" in several Second World War programs and books. I'd expect it of this truck, too, but then again the guy who could afford to build it probably gets double cheese on his pizza...

Other than the body and glass, none of the parts from the custom sedan ever surfaced again after the double kit issues. Once the Willys was changed to include the pickup version, that was it. Some of the Gasser series (cartoon box art) Willys kits include the Ford, others include only the Willys but with the pickup version. The box art shows only the Willys coupe, nothing else is shown or mentioned.