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Justin Porter

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Everything posted by Justin Porter

  1. I don't at all disagree with the folks who are unhappy it's a Mustang. I still want a modern 1968-70 AMX. I'm baffled that the Austin-Healey 3000 has never been offered in plastic. I think that it's incredibly frustrating that your choices for 50's Cadillacs in plastic are limited to either the Monogram '59 or the Arii '57. I consider it bizarre that an ancient Revell kit remains the best option for a Ferrari 308GTB. But I know my shop will sell a bunch of these Mustangs. There is no good kit of this car, even if there are kits of this car and kits of other cars that have the same name as it.
  2. The bean counters have it right. Revell hasn't offered this subject. So they've never made a dime off of 1971-1973 Mustang kit sales. They will get this kit to market and it will not only be better detailed than the comparable Round 2 reissue of old MPC tooling, but it will also beat Round 2 on MSRP, meaning that they'll corner the market on what is a popular subject. Right now, from my distributors, I could order any one of THIRTY SIX different 1/35th scale Tiger I tank kits from EIGHT different manufacturers. In the rest of the modeling world, the more popular a subject is, the bigger the pie is that the modeling companies want a slice of. You see this with P-51D Mustangs and Tiger tanks and the Bismarck. It's actually a weird incongruity that auto kit manufacturers will simply let a competitor have 100% of the sales of a particular subject instead of, you know, COMPETING with each other by offering unique or superior products.
  3. What can I say? It's exciting news and should put to ease anyone who was worried that Revell wasn't going to handle American domestic cars anymore in new tooling since the latest tooling had been a Land Rover and a Jaguar.
  4. Revell USA has just posted pictures to their Facebook pictures of a 1971 Mustang undergoing Lidar scanning with the words "The start of a 100% new tool from Revell, beginning with 3D Scanning a '71 Boss 351 Mustang!" attached. Seems that the worry as to whether or not Revell was still going forward with new tool domestic subject kits can be put to rest.
  5. Firstly, thank you for offering your patronage were it geographically feasible! Every dollar in the till is one we didn't have before. As to the inventory question, in truth that's one of the things my Dad and I set to resolve that we disliked about some of the bygone local hobby shops previously. In many cases, they simply refused to stock anything that the owners felt were too niche or too expensive or that they personally didn't hold an interest in. Admittedly, our on-hand quantity (speaking to kits specifically) tends to be in the ones or twos of a kit, but that allows us to keep a greater variety on hand especially on the military side where there are so many countless manufacturers. Generally speaking, the only times where we hold things to an "as ordered only" item if at all possible is on very large kits like the Trumpeter 1/200th scale battleship kits or if there's an HKM 1/32nd scale 4 engine bomber that we don't currently have in stock. These are items that represent multiple hundreds of dollars in cost AND a large amount of shelf space. We try not to bring them in as speculative items very often. Although we usually have at least one out of the line of kits on hand in order to demonstrate that yes, we do handle that line and are aware of that product. And while I understand shops and their approaches to kit stocking varying from ours, supplies running thin is inexcusable. Lately it has been excruciating for us to wait on wholesalers to restock on high-demand colors of Tamiya 23ml jars (our biggest paint mover by far) and we absolutely hate having ANY outs on our paint wall.
  6. Haven't had that experience yet but I have spoken with builder who come in for supplies - paint and tools being my leading revenue streams by far compared to kit sales of any kind - who when prompted that I just brought in X new domestic release inform me "Yeah, sorry. Picked it up with my coupon at Hobby Lobby." As a little "peek behind the curtain", that Hobby Lobby settled on 40% off strikes me as no accident as that is the going rate of initial wholesale discount that most distributors (certainly my primary ones) offer to small shops. Effectively, Hobby Lobby coupons at a rate to where local shops have to sell at cost to match them and on volume items like domestic auto kits that's practically untenable. The route my shop has taken has been appealing to local "serious builders" by instead offering club discounts to both local and national organizations such as IPMS and NMRA. It works, plus it gives us an ear to the ground on upcoming product buzz, but I won't deny that Hobby Lobby's practices have a decidedly aimed feel.
  7. I'll say this much. Yes, Hobby Lobby eats into a chunk of my shop's "square box" domestic car kit sales. Their ability to fire sale kits with those 40% coupons does some genuine damage to the overall volume of our domestic car kit sales. But in doing so, that just means that domestic car kits have become a shrinking sector of my business with increased focus on military kits, Gundam, and imported car kit brands that Hobby Lobby has no interest in stocking. I don't fault Round 2 and Revell for allying with Hobby Lobby. It keeps them around and I do keep their products because even selling a percentage of their kits that my local Hobby Lobby does still represents a good amount of sales for me. However, I know what I have to do to justify my business to my customers, and that means a steady commitment to "Heh, can't get THAT at Hobby Lobby" to keep them coming through the door.
  8. So here's the first auto announcement after announcing the GM licensing deal.
  9. The Snoopy kits will likely sell well for their production run if they come in at a reasonable MSRP. For me, they're perfect sub-$20 impulse sale items to folks who are looking for something to pass the time. I'm expecting I'll probably sell a few to my regulars for a laugh and a few to my casual browsers who will think it's cute. As a retail product, I'm honestly excited for them even if I wouldn't build them myself.
  10. Looks great and makes sense that a fellow NE Ohioan would build Bobby Rahal's car so well.
  11. Looks great! That's easily one of my favorite Tamiya kits so it's always good to see one built.
  12. Count me among the buyers on the Kurtis Midget. It was such a lovely kit and it delivered nearly everything a vintage open wheel fan could want of the subject. At the same time, I'm not shocked either that it wasn't exactly a cash cow. More surprising, though, is that the "new tool" Funny Cars - the Hawaiian and the ChiTown Hustler - also seemed to sit on shelves much longer than anticipated. Though quite frankly the best selling Revell race car kit I've had in my shop since we opened has been the IMSA Ford GT.
  13. Looks absolutely gorgeous. You definitely sampled all of the best Ferrari stuff out there to get the build just right.
  14. Yeah, but if they close because of divorces or embezzling or a sudden invasion of lazer-wielding woodchucks, that isn't relevant to a discussion of as to why it's entirely reasonable for modelers to criticize bad models. You want to level the "we should be glad they made kits at all" line at those of us who do take accuracy into account when choosing which companies get our hard earned money, then OWN that statement instead of trying to mealy-mouth it.
  15. No. It's not. And no. CUSTOMERS have no duty to be grateful that their corporate overlords deigned to manufacture a product. Manufacturers produce products for the purpose of selling them. If those products do not suit the desires of their customers then the customers have no reason whatsoever to purchase them. The argument "But if we don't buy from them then they'll go away" is ridiculous. If a manufacturer cannot produce products that meet the expectations of its customers, why SHOULD it stay in business? We have seen more new companies in the past ten years move into the 1/24th scale automotive space than leave it and most of them have come in with fantastic products whether it's Belkits embracing vintage rally or Ebbro answering the prayers of vintage F1 builders or ICM giving us the first truly good stock Model T in decades. If there's a hole in the market that actually represents enough earnings potential SOMEONE else will definitely move into the space and start manufacturing. And one more thing, did you defend Trumpeter this vociferously when they fumbled through their initial attempts at 1/25th scale American classics or is this sort of "You have a moral duty to save these brands" nonsense reserved only for American brands from when boomers were kids?
  16. Large scale has built a lot of steam on the military side of the aisle in my shop. 1/32nd scale aircraft, 1/16th scale armor, and Trumpeter's line of 1/200th scale ships have all been steady movers for me over the past few years. On the auto side, though, I have a handful of folks who gobble up anything 1/12th scale F1 that I can get my hands on and a few guys who've been devouring the R2 reissues of the older 1/16th scale stuff. For the most part, price-point seems to come up most often as the issue that causes more casual builders to balk at bigger boxes in auto.
  17. I'm not entirely certain they've got it as wrong as the Hannants pictures would imply. The rear 3/4 view looks nearly dead on while the front 3/4 view looks like the car is missing 3 scale inches of wheelbase. I have to wonder if any amount of digital retouching combined with the photography angles are giving us some unintentionally misleading information.
  18. Credit where it's due. This "revival" retooling is definitely some good work. Yes, the chassis is still archaic at best but the body looks great and I suspect that I'll move the bulk of these to slot car drag racers anyways.
  19. Looks like it turned out really well. It can be pretty tough to wring great results out of that kit.
  20. One of my 2020 volume leaders in aircraft sales is the Trumpeter 1/32nd scale P-47D Thunderbolt bubbletop. My air guys all seem to agree it's a steal at nearly 70 bucks. Different sorts of folks. Different priorities.
  21. Sometimes you get a kit that just speaks to you. I had wanted to build one of these Monogram 1/24th scale Edmunds Supermodifieds for a long while and I got a great deal on one and couldn't put it down when I got it. The bulk of the painting is Vallejo, Alclad, and AK Real Color with Testors One Shot "Purplicious" over Stynelrez black primer as the body color. Number decals were spares from a Revell Offy Midget I had built some time ago.
  22. The fantastic thing about supers is their level of mechanical sophistication only improves year to year. Just this past weekend, Aric Iosue debuted his all-new Colloca chassis at Oswego.
  23. With the old version of the '69 Mustang, the problem is that the outer headlights are noticeably lower - I'd wager by a scale inch or so - than the inner grille mounted headlights, which on the actual car are in nearly a straight line across. The DMold resin set and the new '69 Boss 302 kit both correct this egregious error which had kept the 428 Cobra Jet kit out of circulation after being massacred in print.
  24. Tim Halfhill stopped in at the shop again to show off a finished build. This time he built the MPC Pinto Modified straight from the box using a combination of AK, Vallejo, and Tamiya paints.
  25. Basically, what you're looking at here is "Genesis" for what would become the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution family of rally-bred turbo sedans. In terms of Japanese performance cars, it carries a fair bit of historical importance for its place in starting the line that would culminate in the WRC winning turbo AWD Evos.
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