Art Anderson

I am using the wheels and tires (wheels will see some modifications, I plan on machining my own brass hubs) from the Ertl Collectibles diecast 1903 Knox Waterless delivery truck. Those have very nice solid rubber tires, more typical of a delivery truck of those years than the pneumatics mounted on the Knox in that pic. In fact, it is the Ertl piece I have that has inspired this project, on which I have been noodling since I discovered the Ertl piece at the RC2-Racing Champions Outlet Store in Dyersville IA in July 2004. Art

Simple answer: With all the advances in computer technology (and more to come, for sure) no computer has yet reached the point of seeing a model in miniature, with the same pair of eyes that you and I do. It is very possible to make a model body shell, for example, perfectly correct by the numbers, but to our eyes, having seen the real thing in so many cases, it will not look right. That's because unlike any puter, you, me and the other guy too, are possessed of stereoscopic vision (our eyes are spaced about 3 inches or a little more apart, which gives us the ability to see both depth and perspective, which no camera lens can do, certainly no puter program that I know of can do either). The old fashioned milling pantographs used in years past do still exist, but more and more, processes such as Electric Discharge Milling (EDM), even CAM have major roles to play. However, the investment in high tech tooling and design systems are pretty much beyond the reach of all but the very largest model companies, so the old fashioned ways are still around. Art

Andy, While of course, CAD has it's applications, trust me, the best model car kits out there are still mastered using real human eyes and real human hands, for reasons I have noted many times, ad nauseum, here, on that Brand X magazine site, and on Spotlight Hobbies message board. In creating a model car kit, there is of course, science, but equally, if not more, importantly, to get a really good product, it takes real human artistry--and for that, there is as of yet, no substitute. Computers are still limited to the principle of GIGO, where the human eye, and the skilled hands of a sculptor still create the illusion of realism far better than any digital machine has yet been able to achieve, certainly when reducing something from 1:1 to 1:25 scale. Art

Andy, YOu are more or less right, new model car kit tooling, in terms relative to expected sales of a new kit, costs about the same today as it did 45-50 years ago. Where say, $100,000 for a new set of tools for a car kit in the 1960's could be expected to achieve sales numbers of upwards of half a million kits over a two year period (and that $100K would translate into megadollars today, with inflation being what it has been since then), in today's marketplace, that same $100,000 might generate a fourth that many sales of the resulting new kit, over a longer period of time. You are correct about the Galaxie Ltd '48 Chevy kits, the legendary Tom West (the guy behind the famed Aurora Racing Scenes, then the great MPC kits 1977-the end of MPC as a division of Kenner Toys) did the design work in CAD, the tools were cut in aluminum, in Korea. However, the CAD system in use didn't allow for much in the way of corrections, and there are some very visible accuracy problems particularly with the sedan delivery. There are those who think that Gary Schmidt did drop the ball, by not pitching those kits more heavily at hobby shops (many LHS found it virtually impossible to obtain even initial stocks of them, due to the very small operation dedicated to packing kits in boxes, getting them out in bulk to hobby shops--of that I do have personal knowledge). With the exception of Revell, who are now a subsidiary of Hobbico, no longer an independent free-standing company, the few other domestic operations are far too small to afford any sort of focus groups, serious and objective polling, in short they just do not have the luxury of any sort of sophisticated market research. So, they have to rely on gut instinct, and in that be very concerned about letting personal desires or preferences color their thinking. I still remember a market research poll (and polls are based on sampling the population in question, NOT a questionaire to each and every one involved in the market in question!!) that AMT Corporation did, in 1977. What was their result, as to the most requested kit??? A GARBAGE Truck, yeah, one of those gorgeous showpiece packer trucks that go up and down the streets and alleys before dawn, crews banging garbage cans on the lip of the intake of the packer body! So, with that in mind, AMT Corporation paid me $200 to do a scratchbuilt mockup of a GarWood packer truck, to be mounted on their Ford C-600 chassis (that kit had the possibility of multiple body versions), for the 1978 Hobby Industry Association Trade Show, the last one ever at the Sherman House Hotel in Chicago. Guess where I next (and last) saw that mockup? In the show window of Lagrange (IL) Hobby Shop, when I was there for their last annual July model car contest, in the summer of 1982. AMT's "experience" with that proposed kit was a resounding failure of hobby wholesalers and big box retailers to see the wisdom of preording a ton of the kits. Art

OK, now I will be really blunt! You, and several others here have been very adamant at insisting that model companies produce what you want, tool them up with THEIR money, regardless of whether or not a market truly does exist for the products in question beyond the few thousand readers of model car magazines. Instead of carrying on what is rapidly becoming a very sophomoric argument, why not raise the money to form a model company, invest those funds in new tooling--doesn't matter, make a new pickup truck, or the legendary Pungs-Fynch Supercharged roadster--just do it! And, let us know how it all turns out, huh? If modelers had consistently voted for pickup truck kits with their hard-earned dollars, which it is quite apparent they have not over time (come to think of it, I have NEVER seen a model car kit manufacturer drop a kit, or abandon a line of kits because they sold too well!!), it seems to me that the election results are in. Sorry to be so forward, but seriously, this one has just about run its course. Art

Walmart actually dropped model kits, as a staple item in their stores, well before any of the current price increases. The Big Box retailers began reducing the space allotted for model kits years ago, and as late as 2004, Walmart was putting them in perhaps 25% of their stores only. It is fact, however, that Wally, just as with KMart before them, years before them, did sort of dictate the price point they'd accept, and they do that to this day, with just about everything they stock and sell. They are in the business of moving massive amounts of merchandise, not operating some sort or retail product museum, placing stuff on the shelves that they "hope" will sell--they are primarily interested in rapid turnover of merchandise only. Any comparison between nowadays, and say, the years 1955-1970 as regards model car kits, isn't very relevant. Model car kits in those years were much fewer and farther between, not very many kits saw reissues, AND the marketplace was quite a bit different as well--believe it or not, model car building was nearly a 'rite of passage" for most boys aged about 10-15 or so, and many of those kits sold in the hundreds of thousands of units per year. Companies like AMT, Revell, Monogram ran their injection molding machines nearly 24/7 as well. Face it, plastic model building was a huge fad for about 15yrs or so, before the days of organized sports on every streetcorner, before cable TV channels, before radio control cars, before electronic games, before video games, before personal computers, before just about every competing activity that exists today to capture kids' attention, and their pocket money. Big differences between "then and now". Art

OK, I will put it in more blunt language, having been privvy on occasion to the product planning side of things. Plastic Model kit companies don't do new tooling purely on speculation, and haven't in decades. Almost every new project is pitched to the principal customers the model company sells to (the big box retailers, hobby wholesalers) to gauge interest. Customer interest is figured based on pre-sold orders for the new model kit in question. If there are enough presells, the kit will get tooled, if not, then not. You and I, as consumers, model builders, may or may not see this process, most of the new kit announcements seen at trade shows such as iHobby in Chicago have already passed the presell test, which happens in private presentations to the buyers for the above named retail/wholesale pipeline, completely out of the view of the public. The "Go, No Go" decision to produce a new kit is based on numbers, generally about 60,000 units in the first year of sales, if they can't achieve that, model companies generally do not go forward with the project, the risks are just too large. Plastic model kit companies aren't megabillion dollar Fortune 500 companies, on the radar screen they are rather small in the scheme of things, so very few managers in product development are going to stick their necks out, risk say, $100,000 of their company's capital on a project that doesn't have a pretty high propensity for success, profitability. End of story. Art

Charlie, I am coming east to attend Classic Plastic, in fact I will be in New Bedford, at the Days Inn for the weekend (hooking up with Charles Rowley to do some sightseeing). Hope to see you at the show? Art

The knox automobile has some fame, given its air-cooled one cylinder engine, with the unusual form of air cooling --there are 550 individual cooling pegs in the cylinder of my model. leading to its nickname "Old Porcupine". However, relatively few Knox vehicles were produced (Knox was far better known for their 1-cylinger upright marine engines, watercooled, the legendary "one lungers" of at least two Hardy Boys Mysteries and a number of Hollywood films. Here's a pic of a real Knox truck, showing the basic frame layout, those weird looking springs. My Knox will be getting a semi-closed "canopy" truck body, with side curtains, however. Art

So, back to the Knox. Dunno if I ever showed any pic of the nearly completed engine, but here it is anyway. There are slightly more than 600 individual pieces in it so far: It took a few experiments before I got exactly the leaf springs needed. It would have been easy if they were just curved semi-eliptic, but these springs stretch from front axle to the rear axle, are fixed solidly to the frame in the middle, making them act as indivdual quarter-eliptic springs. What really complicated things though, is the S-curve at each end, that affected the first three leaves, as they had to lay as close and tight together as possible, as the two springs have to be as close to each other in dimension as they possibly can, given that the springs are far stronger than the angle iron (done in brass) frame, to avoid either having a wheel in the air, or twisting that frame at all. The basic metal frame, like the real one, is simple angle stock construction, which on the 1:1 was greatly reinforced by wooden beams which formed the sills of the all wood body. It's beginning to get to be fun, for sure! Art

To take a page from my life experience--for nearly 3 years I was in product development at Playing Mantis, developing new castings for Johnny Lightning 1/64 diecast miniature cars. OK, so where's the similarity to model car kits? Well, considering that JL cars had then, and still do have, a very active collector customer base, we used to get bombarded with requests, even downright demands, that we produce such and such "because everybody wants them". Well now, just who is "everybody" anyway? "I know I would buy one" (or two or a dozen), "all my buddies want this one!" are very nebulous statements, but we used to get letters by the dozen, written with claims such as these. However, the first one is personal, one person's opinion, the second one is a bit less personal, but just how many people does the average person know really well? (saw a statistic from the funeral industry several years back, that the average adult in the US knows perhaps 150 people, from all walks of life) Seriously though, "all my buddies" can mean anywhere from 2 or 3, to perhaps a dozen or so close model building friends, but certainly no large crowd. We did, of course, record such requests, put them in a database, just to give us a gauge as to where the interest might be for any particular subject, even though the numbers for any given subject were rather small, perhaps the highest interest generating around 50 so tops. More was gleaned from watching what collectors actually were doing, what models were selling and how fast (called the "sell through" rate). Subjects or types of subjects that generated consistently strong sell-throughs always did generate intense interest in playing off the numbers, they did generate new diecast subjects that fit into that category. Others, though, were great sales disappointments, even though there might have been intense market interest when we introduced the casting, we called those "peg warmers" (after all, blister cards hang on pegboard hooks in the stores). In short, deciding which new subjects to produce was as much a ###### shoot as a guarranteed winner a lot of the time. Let's take a look at model car kits: Both AMT and Revell put out some pretty nice (for their time) pickup kits in the early 1960's, AMT doing a series of Chevy's and Fords in their annual series of 3in1 kits, spun off, as with nearly all those annual model kits, from promotional model tooling--if the Detroit Big Three and AMC ordered up a promo, more than likely that model got released as a kit, after some modification of the tooling. Revell introduced their '56 Ford F-100 pickup as a regular model kit, not sprung from promotional model tooling, in the fall of 1962. But, those early pickup kits sorta laid a big egg--they weren't repeated for very long. AMT continued their Chevy pickup promo's through 1972, with a GMC dropped into the line for '72, and spun 3in1 tooling off of those--but I am here to tell you that those kits never set any sales records, as late as 1984, when I was stocking my soon-to-open hobby shop, I found cases of many of those kits gathering dust in one of Chicago's largest and most prestigious hobby wholesale warehouses. That's not the stuff that highly popular (when produced) model kits are made of, frankly. The same was true of MPC's Chevy, GMC, and Dodge pickups of the late 1970's--no matter how many ways they could modifiy that bank of tooling, sales dwindled. Revell, AMT, Monogram and MPC all did kits of the then-very-popular Mini Pickups (Isuzu/Chevy LUV, Toyota, Datsun/Nissan, Dodge D50, first generation Ford Rangers) but they really didn't fly off shelves either. When hobby wholesalers and mass retailers wind up with product that just gathers dust in the warehouse for months, if not years, they just aren't gonna be very receptive to being asked to buy more of them, even if all new, stunning tooling--"Once burned, twice shy" really does have meaning here. Monogram did an excellent pair of '92 Ford extended cab pickups in that year, they went nowhere very fast. AMT and Lindberg each did very nice kits of the mid-1990's Ford F150, but those didn't really take off into even stardom on the sales charts either. Years ago, AMT and Monogram did a lot of print advertising, in magazines like Hot Rod, Car Craft, Rod & Custom, Boy's Life and such--however, it wasn't many years before the magazine industry began to charge first an arm, then and arm and a leg, then one's first-born son for even a half page ad, and with all the catalog style ads from car oriented suppliers making up the bulk of pages in magazines, even a single full page ad for model cars would have generated little in the way of increased sales, while eating up an awful lot of money. It's that way across much of the model and hobby industry. Model car kit price points tend to limit advertising budgets as well--in the days of Wally World, KMart etc carrying a full aisle of model kits, those companies were very much in the driver's seat when the subject of MSRP would come up. If you wanted to gain a toehold in their stores, you played THEIR game, made your model kits to THEIR price, or, fuggedaboudit. Those price points didn't leave much room for any advertising outside of the modeling press. TV advertising? Even a bare bones, basic TV commercial can cost at least $100,000 to produce, and every time it's run, the actors involved, even if only voiceovers, get at least a small residual payment, on top of the wage they got paid to make the commercial in the first place--and TV airtime, even on cable, is expensive, the most expensive form of advertising there is. It's that way with the majority of items you see in any large retailer--only a relative handful of products see much in the way of advertising, the bucks just aren't there for any comprehensive ad campaign. Just a few of the problems that face not only model kit manufacturers, but other relatively small producers of consumer goods as well. Art

AMT's car hauler is a design that began about 1940, 5 cars, and continued as the major haulaway design well into the 1960's, with a capacity of 25000 lbs cargo (5000lbs per car back then was pretty close to what say, a Lincoln or Cadillac weighed. Those trailers were themselves, fairly lightweight, not having any hydraulic lift systems in them. As for tractors, bear in mind that Ford Motor Company would specify that contract haulers carrying FOMOCO cars use Ford tractors, GM either Chevrolet or GMC, and Chrysler, of course, specified Dodges. Believe it or not, most of those tractors used basically the same engines as in passenger cars, save for GMC, which had engines based on 30's Buicks, later Pontiac V8's in the late 50's. Dodge trucks still used the same basic Chrysler flathead 6 through the 50's. Diesels didn't get much call until around 1960 or so, and then it took several years for trucking companies to make a complete switch. Art

Really though, this is nothing at all new! Pics of the rigs that were used to haul nuclear warheads brought here by the US Government in the 90's, then transported by truck from East Coast ports to Pantex just east of Amarillo TX were circulated in the popular press at the time. They looked ordinary, just like the Petes, KW's and Freightliners you would see ordinarily--it took more than a second look to notice the armored cabs, bulletproof glass and such. At the time, there was considerable controversy over shipping those things by highway, through major cities along the way. but that died down when more important news stories came about. Art

I still remember the rallying cry from 1803, which I first heard when I was an 11-yr old 6th grader, studying my first exposure to US History, the story of the campaign launched by President Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary Pirates in the southern Mediterrainian Sea (Gee, the same place that Quadaffi calls home!): "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!". To that end, US Marines landed in Tripoli (modern day Libya), marched across town with fixed bayonets, to the Bey's palace, woke that character up in the middle of the night, rescued the imprisoned crew of USS Philadelphia, and FORCED the end of state sponsored piracy in the Med--the first line of the Marine's hymn, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli!" With that action, a very young nation, these United States, accomplished something that the vaunted British Royal Navy dared not try, nor did Napoleon's French Navy, both countries having veritable wooden walls of naval ships--we having just 4 superb frigates (USS Constitution remains today, a reminder of that tough and valiant little fleet), forced an issue that would have international implications from that day forward to the present. That was the first instance when "Dial 1(800) USA" happened, and increasingly the rest of the developed world has come to expect that "911" is the toll free line to the Pentagon. And, almost universally, the US Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard have ultimately responded, as the forces of other nations (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal -- all once mighty powers in their own right or minds) have stood aside. Hey, we as a nation have made our mistakes, no question, we've gotten in to situations that we should probably not have, and yes, we've seen collateral damage done (innocent lives taken), but by and large, we've been in the right most of the time. Now, finally, it's Afganistan--I could care less about their poppy fields, that is another issue for another time. Same with Pakistan--but I fully expect to hear that Bin Laden has assumed room temperature, that his minions are scattered, scared to the runs, and literally "toothless old men, incapable of ever causing harm ever again". So, today, on this anniversary of the most dastardly attack on the USA, I will stop to remember, with tears, those brave men and women who stepped up in this fight, remember with tears the nearly 3000 innocent American citizens (and incidently, many citizens of other countries) who were wantonly murdered on 1/11/01, and renew my personal pledge to salute, and thank, any man or woman I see wearing the uniform of the US Military in this battle. Art

I fully expect to see the sun come up, either in clear skies or behind clouds, on 12/22/12, regardless of what that barely sane Nostro-whatshisname, or some supposed Mayan astrologer may have predicted. I had a lot of fun on 12/31/99 here, with all the talk about Y2K shutting everything down because puter systems had never been configured to account for such a massive change of date. I knew I had won, when I flipped on the TV, and discovered that it was 01/01/2000 in Sydney Australia, the lights were on, life was going on as usual, in the face of a myriad of dire predictions. Don't be swayed by what Discovery/History Channel drivels on about--that's Hollywood trying to define reality! Art