Brett Barrow

*cough*Panamera*cough*

I suspect they bought Tower just for the name/domain and their customer database. I feel pretty confident that by the fall Tower will just redirect to Horizon's retail site and maybe they'll just end up rebranding the Horizon site as the new Tower Hobbies. But Horizon wholesale has made clear to the rest of the industry that they will not be handling the plastic lines going forward and since Tower was 100% just stuff GP handled I suspect the new Tower (if it continues at all) will just be stuff that Horizon handles. I never got the impression plastics was a big part of Tower's business anyway.

Horizon has no desire to do anything with plastic models. They've made it clear that their purchase only related to the R/C parts of the company. I can tell you because I work next door to them that Stevens has been in like Christmas-levels of busy since the whole thing started and they've added a bunch of new employees to handle the increased workload. It's probably only going to get busier as this whole thing shakes out. GP was huge and with Horizon not handling plastics that leaves Stevens as the top plastics distributor now. I feel like if the new Revell wants to keep US sales at the level they're at they'll need some sort of US warehouse/central distribution. I don't think the independent distributors could handle it right now.

I'd just like to add that so far we have no idea whether they will keep any kind of US presence, a warehouse or distribution center or anything or if everything will just come out of Germany. I'll pass along anything I hear.

A few weeks back I had someone try to return an AMT kit because it only had 3 of some extra unused wheels. When they called and said the kit was missing parts I asked what was the part number and they said "I don't know it's a different set of wheels not mentioned in the instructions" then I had to explain they were for a different version of the tooling. "I know but I want to use them on a different model" I sent a parts request into Round 2 for them anyway, never did hear back if they sent one out. Here it's probably just a matter of some of the parts being on a part of the runner that was previously blocked off (one of the things Round2 has done since taking over the AMT and MPC brands is open up all the parts of runners that were previously blocked off in order to build a complete inventory of what parts tooling was still usable) and the other parts being located on an insert that gets installed for the other versions and would probably swap out for parts that are needed in this particular version.

Press release: “Revell GmbH starts strengthened into future with new owner Revell GmbH (Germany) announces today that in a court hearing which took place on 13 April 2018 at the US court having jurisdiction in Delaware the sale of Revell GmbH has been confirmed in favor of a company of the international investment group Quantum Capital Partners (QCP) with its company seat in Munich (Germany) as sole shareholder. The sale happened in the course of Hobbico, Inc.‘s restructuring process under Chapter 11. Bünde, 16 April 2018 For Revell GmbH, which so far belonged to a company of the Hobbico, Inc. group in Champaign (USA) initiating a restructuring process under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code at the turn of the year and announcing its plans to sell the group of companies, a lasting solution in terms of change of ownership emerged throughout this proceedings on 13 April 2018. New sole shareholder of Revell GmbH will be a company from the international investment group Quantum Capital Partners (QCP) in Munich. The operating business will not at all be impaired by this. German investor as new Revell owner The sale also includes key assets for the North America business, such as trademarks as well as the extensive tool bank being so important for the plastic model building segment. With the change of ownership Revell experiences a strengthening, as this involves an extension of the sales market and an even wider range of products. Worldwide business operated from Bünde The previous management in Bünde under the control of Stefan Krings will in future operate the worldwide business including North America. „Revell is very happy to have Quantum Capital Partners as strong partner, who will assist the company to reach its further international growth. At this point I like to also thank all trade and business partners for the confidence they have placed in us in the past weeks of interim period”, is the comment from Stefan Krings on this news. Steffen Görig, representative of QCP further explains: “Revell is a well-known and well- established company and it has shown impressively in the past how to found its position as successful toy brand. We will build on this strength and will further develop the Revell brand with its unique position as provider of model kits and toy manufacturer. We look forward to assist Stefan Krings and his team in that achievement and to realize the full growth potential of Revell.”

I get paid to write website descriptions, yes. It's part of my job. I have a lot of other work to do on a given day, I might have 50 new products to get up some days plus handle customer issues, take phone orders, take product photos when the manufacture doesn't provide them, tackle any website functionality issue that pop up, etc. . I can't spend an hour researching and writing a detailed description for ever product when most of my competition doesn't even write descriptions at all. If Round 2 provides that information to us then I'll likely just use what they provide. The quicker I get a product up the quicker I can start selling them. That's what I get paid to do, get products up and sellable as quickly as possible. If someone asks about a product in particular I'll look it up and find out for them but as I said, I've never seen that more detailed descriptions lead to increased sales. Ocassionally I'll do an unboxing video or more detailed product shots for some items but I have to weight the amount of time it takes to produce all that vs how many more sales it would lead to. And I have other work to attend to during the day as well. Most consumers are well educated about the products these days, often better than I am. We have 30,000 products and I have to know a little bit about all of them someone whose hobby is collecting 1960's Fords or whatever is going to know a lot more about them than I do.

And speaking as someone who writes product descriptions for websites, I'd much rather not say anything than be wrong. I've never seen a correlation between wordy descriptions and increased sales. I'm not going to waste time writing War and Peace if it's not going to have an impact on how many we'll sell.

Round 2's website isn't really set up for consumer use. Try AutoWorldStore.com - it's their consumer retail site.

Moebius has just been sold, but it’s not supposed to affect anything they currently have in the pipeline. They’re going to release the details over the weekend. They just posted about it on their Facebook page. It happened a couple weeks back but since they kept it under wraps I didn’t want to say anything until they did. Edit: it’s Pegasus Hobbies, I didn’t see in their original post that they had announced who was buying them.

Nobody's shutting anything down until April at the earliest. Revell is owned by Hobbico, which also owns Tower Hobbies, Great Planes Distribution, Estes Rockets, Axial R/C, and a bunch of other brands. They've filed for Chapter 11 protection this week. It's been coming for a year or so. I have no doubt that Revell will make it out under new ownership but who knows how they'll be changed?

Revell is profitable, Hobbico as a whole is profitable. The Traxxas lawsuit probably hit them hard, Traxxas is king in R/C and Hobbico/Great Planes is the biggest distributor of R/C stuff. They're also under investigation buy the Labor Dept for improper ESOP/Profit Sharing payouts, there are several lawsuits pending related to that. This has been coming for a while Great Planes has been out of everything for months so I suspect any shops using GP as a main source have found an alternative. I don't work directly in distribution anymore but I'm literally on the other side of a wall from one of their competitors and I've noticed them picking up a lot of the slack from GP over the past couple months. I don't want anyone to think this is on Revell, or a sign of the times in the industry as a whole.

The sad part is that Rommel's Rod will outsell them all by a mile.

The Slingster slicks would make great Stock & Super Stock slicks if they weren't sized for a 16" wheel. :-( Gary's right, they played the Slingster too down the middle. If they made it an exact replica of the old ~20th scale Sizzler, you could at least chalk it up to being a copy. But since they tried to bring it more into 25th scale, they could have done a better job of proportioning the parts better or adding more modern detailling. Instead we just got a 20% smaller Sizzler. As I understand it, the preliminary 3D CAD data was created by a "civilian" outside Revell as a personal project to digitize the Sizzler. Dude, I've been in this business 16 years and I still don't get them.

It's definitely transformative enough to get around any copyright issues. That's a major reworking of that image, it's not just a trace. Our own Harry P. wrote a thread on here somewhere how to Photoshop over photos like this, it's a ton of work. I know Jairus Watson has done box art for Revell recently, maybe he knows more about the process and legal wranglings. I feel like Revell is big enough and been doing it long enough to know how to properly license images.

A lot of those 90's AMT-Ertl kits had nice carbs.

I don’t think it was as much a bait and switch as it was using builders’ previously built personal models for the box art instead of commissioning a new build with just box-stock parts, like Chuck K said. By that point the folks in charge of AMT brand were mostly from Learning Curve (makers of Thomas the Tank Engine) and didn’t know/care about stuff like that. One reason you saw so many third-party reissues from the likes of Model King and Stevens Int’l was they were sorta diverting that work off on folks that knew the Hobby better than they did. Edit: I shoulda read the 2nd page, Art and Steve explained it better than I could

Yeah, $15-18 reissues. $1.50 in 1960's dollars is like $15 today. Of course we'd be paying like $5 for a banana, a lot of US consumer goods are priced way below inflation. Japan hobby market is much larger, but like 95% Gundam/Sci-fi/Sexy figurines*. The US is larger in "traditional" non-sci-fi scale model segments, which is why Tamiya often releases aircraft and armor models to North America and Europe before they are available domestically. * I kid with that number, but it's probably not that far off from the truth. The president of Aoshima once told me that the domestic model kit market was Bandai way up top, then Tamiya, and then everyone else was just fighting for scraps. True, plus they really put a focus on improved decal sheets, and decal sheets are expensive, often a higher cost per kit than repopping the plastic parts. Same is true with tires. I don't know, but I'd probably be out of a job if they weren't... Gundam/Sci-fi and tabletop wargames like Warhammer or Flames of War. World of Tanks has helped drive a few to armor models. Car modeling isn't the modeling entry point that it used to be. The only people I ever see buying current F1 and exotics and contemporary American cars are middle-age dudes older than me (I'm 40). Any younger kids I see buying car models are almost always into muscle era up thru 80's. Probably anecdotal, though.

For one thing, it's $24.95 MSRP, new tools have been $26.95 or $28.95. I asked back when I first posted, it's modified tooling. "New engine and body modifications" were the words they used, IIRC. Remember this is the same company that claimed the Stacy David '32 was "all-new tooling"*, if this was all-new they would have said so and made a bigger deal about it. *I mean, technically it was, they just used some of the same masters.

Japan has very stringent price-control regulations. Basically, stuff isn't allowed to be increased more than inflation/cost of living increases. It only directly affects straight reissues, but new & modified reissues need to be priced somewhere in the ballpark of other stuff on the shelf so it kinda has an effect on them as well. If the US had the same regulations our kits would be in the $15-18 range. .

Yeah, that's one of the different sizes. T-108 is the big one.

i don't know why it works I just know it does. I struggled with Tamiya Acrylics, glosses orange peeling and flats gritting up for years, switched to MLT - boom, no more problems. It's like a different paint all together. Mr Levelling Thinner is liquid magic as far as I'm concerned.

My advice: ditch the X-20A and use Lacquer Thinner. Specifically Mr Levelling Thinner if you can get it. But Tamiya Lacquer Thinner is not too bad. And thin it more than 50/50.

Thanks, everybody! I'm still pretty new at this sort of modeling, but my years of building "normal" models have really helped. Plus there's s ton of good how-to videos and blog posts on these. Plain grey plastic. The base is smooth, I've added rocks and sand and painted it. Latest one, I think this is the first one where it really clicked. I'm really proud of this one

It's a new kit coming first from Revell Germany. Everybody's getting in on that Heller Ferguson $$$$ Tractors are the new hotness.