Dave Metzner

Harry, I'm not overworked. My office is 25 feet from my bedroom and I work pretty much on my own schedule. My personal experience is that most of the people I know in this business really do like what they do for a living. Yes the industry today does not resemble the AMT or Johan of 40 or 50 years ago, or the Revell of 15 years ago for that matter. For that matter the industry today is substantially different from 1997 when I started doing this kind of work at Playing Mantis, Yes it's a shrinking demographic - and a much more demanding customer base. The days of running 50 thousand kits in one run are long gone! Along with the days of 15 year old kids riding their bikes to the local hobby store every saturday morning to pick up a kit for a buck and a quarter. Factories are 15 hours away and most of the folks who make everything associated with these kits speak no English and have never seen a real 1960's American automobile. Factories in China have shed alot of their own internal staff and now subcontract work that was in house two or three years ago which can and often does complicate matters on this side of the world! Some manufacturers still have deadlines to finish and deliver kits imposed on them by customer store planogram stocking schedules. Some in the industry have lost very experienced people with many,many years in the plastic kit production business lately.. I'll be first to tell you that there are not many (if any) people in this country today that could step into Roger Harney's shoes! There are so many factors involved that kit buyers will never see.

I'd like to have complete control of everything that happens - half way around the world in a factory WHERE EVERYBODY SPEAKS CHINESE AND NOBODY HAS EVER SEEN A '61 PONTIAC - I DON"T neither does Revell or Round 2! We can't afford a three year development cycle such as the Ford Pick-up trucks have had, neither can Revell or Round 2! Bitch about it as much as you want, but there will be mistakes, compromises and errors made, or there will be no new kits - that's life in 2014. I'm confident that some of you will find details that you don't like on our new kits that will be on shelves in 2015 and, inspite of everything that I've tried to explain here, will be asking how in 2015 anybody could produce a new kit with these "GROSS ERRORS" Now, I have work to do , so I'm done!

Some of you just can't seem to understand the situation - I keep seeing that somebody "was paid to get it right". Yep, that's right -the problem, that you don't or won't understand, is that "somebody" was probably paid to get several projects right all at the same time.. NOT JUST the chrome trim on the wheel arches of that one kit you're complaining about today. The days of large project development groups for model kits are LONG GONE! Now everybody is trying to do more with less and less, all in an effort to produce new kits and still make some profit. The days of walking out of your office and down the hall to the prototyping shop or the tooling shop to look at a prototype or a tool are history, that trip is now 15 hour by air! When you depend on a partner on the other side of the world for your production there are untold numbers of things that can and do go wrong - from something so simple as a part number engraved wrong, to waking up one morning to find that your partner, in China, has gone out of business and that all your tooling and partially finished projects are locked up in his factory! The reasons for flaws in kits do not boil down to "somebody was paid to get it "right" and didn't do his job! "If they couldn't get it right they shouldn't have that job" is an easy arguement to make while you stand on the outside. It doesn't set very well with some of us who are on the inside in this business and know better.

Yep, I'm still a kit addict myself - still buying and stashing kits MUCH faster than I can build them I'm sure that there are more than 1000 kits in my work shop (big airplane and resin figures kits are my big real weakness) - someday my widow will probably be stuck trying to figure out what to do with this big pile of plastic and resin..

I read some of the threads here - not all - and not completely, because my time for such activities is limited, so I don't see every comment on every new kit. There seems to me to be a feeling among some members here, that we are somewhat careless and sloppy in the way we go about researching and developing kits. I guess that you could say I have an interest in making an effort to provide some explanation of how / why some new kits have flaws . I think that I can speak for all of us who try to put nice new kits on store shelves when I say that flaws in kits occur for many reasons none of which include intentionally sloppy research or a lack of caring about the quality of kits we work to produce. #1 As has been stated over and over, unless the subject is an all new car there are no factory drawings / factory clay models/ digital files to work with - In the "old"days" Johan and AMT had direct accesss to the factory design departments because they produced promos for the Big 3. Today a 1960's era car kit is an exercise in finding a good reference vehicle to photograph and measure (hopefully a factory stock perfectly preserved or restored example) - then getting photos of every possible detail with good dimensional reference in every photo so China can see exactly what the car looks like. Believe me when it come time to make a mock-up there are never enough photos - there are always details that can't be found in photos. To be truthful the best solution for me would be to have a perfectly restored example of my next kit sitting in my garage from start of research to finally approved kit in the box so that I could walk out and photograph or measure each little detail whenever there was a question from China As for the suggestion, often offered in these forums, that reference vehices can be simply scanned into a computer file, my answer is not yet - not for a cost that works for us - and even after a scan is done that still does not provide all the details needed to produce a kit. Even if I could simply scan the car into my computer, I'd still need photos of all the interior, probably photos of the engine bay and lots of details that will not show clearly on a scan. Errors are bound to creep in because the reference vehicle has non stock features - or because available photos are not perfect references or because the product developer didn't catch them. I can't speak for others but I share images of 3Ds, and mock-ups with several other experienced and trusted modelers and car guys as well as sending test shots to some of these same folks, in my best effort to catch errors that I did not see! ( I don't know for sure but I'd bet that Revell does the same thing) Even then I know thay errors will creep in! I try to educate myself on any specific vehicle we're doing - but I am not a walking encyclopedia of automotive details, and there is no chance that I will ever become one. #2 The days of working from hand built 1/10 scale models and cutting tools with pantograph machines are as far gone as the age of the steam locomotive. Today every detail if the finished model is produced in a computer 3D file before any physical parts are made. All tool mking is now done from digital files - no more tool makers going into a tool into a tool and revising it by hand if you need to fix something. (To make revisions to our 61 Pontiac we needed to first go back and revise everything in the 3D files and approve all that before they'll touch the tools) Which brings me to one of several reasons that we miss release dates. The tooling revison process takes time, LOTS OF TIME - when I find a problem - I tell China - they revise 3D files - 15 to 30 days later I get revised 3D files - I review the 3Ds if the files are right they make changes to tools - 30 to 45 days later they send me a test shot. which take about a week in transit. For me to build and review a test shot add another week or so - IF the 3Ds files were NOT right - add 15 to 30 more days. when I get done reviewing the test shot and something else needs to be fixed we can go right back to the revise 3D files step again! #3 Simple economics dictate that we can't delay a kit to tweak of every tiny detail. We do our best to get these details right - honestly, we do, and product release dates get pushed back because we're doing our damnedest to get them right! BUT at some point we need to decide whether it's more important to keep pouring time and added dollars into revising tools or putting a less than PERFECT kit on store shelves. Trust me, as an example, our factory doe not revise tools for free. I can't keep going back and fixing every tiny detail - if I do try to do that, then there won't be a Moebius Models any longer. #4 Styrene Plastic injected in steel tooling is an imperfect medium - steel tooling and injection molding can produce spectacularly complex shapes IF you have a big enough budget and plan on producing a big enough run of parts. That said, there are limits to our tooling budgets and production quantities, so from time to time there will be some compromises made in order to keep costs in line - sometimes there will be shapes that cannot be produced in a core, cavity and four slides typically used to make up a car body - that's just the nature of the beast #5 I see the comments regarding high price of kits these days - I hate to say it but our costs are rising steadily, as are the costs of every other manufacturer - wages in China are going up, old cheap technology is going the way of the Dodo bird, 3D file and CAD design are more costly now in China than a room full of guys making tooling models by hand was a few years ago.. the day of the 10 or 15 dollar kit is past - the days of running 15-20,000 kits every run are long gone. Now those of us who produce kits need to find ways to keep our lights on while running 10,000 or less of a given kit and paying higher tooling and development costs - that. my friend results in a more exensive product on the shelves. It cannot be helped - the days of running 50 thousand copies of any one kit are also long gone. #6 I keep seeing this question:Why can't you move back to the US? - The simple answer is that there is no one-stop shop for producers like Moebius or for that matter Revell in the US. In order to produce kits here I'd need a design operation to produce the 3D files for tooling - then a tooling shop to translate those drawings to tooling - then a production shop to shoot plastic in those tools - a printer to produce packaging and instructions - probably a decal printer because the guy who prints boxes can't print decals - then I need to bring everything together somewhere to put it all in a box for the custome to buy - Now it all happens in one place I deal with one guy who makes ONE profit from the transaction, not 6 different guys each of whom expects to profit fromthe their piece of the total project #7 We are a model kit company, not only a model car kit company, unlike Johan and AMT were, "back in the day". We produce a wide range of kits, not only car kits, so we are not specialized to only do cars - Johan started as 100% cars - AMT originated as 100% car models, while about 30% of the projects that I have going right now are car kits. (BTW Revell is also a multi line model kit company also with a wide range of kits, not only cars) #8 Company staff size and work loads. I can't speak for other domestic brands here - but our staff in the US is very small I do almost all product development for EVERY kit we produce NOT just car kits. Currently I have 20 projects in various stages of development, only 6 of which are cars/trucks. Even though our car kits are less than 1/3 of my project list thay are by far and away the most complex and time consuming projects that I have. I do my best to research each car project and I talk to several pretty good car modelers and a number of car guys on a very regular basis- I don't pretend to know every detail of each car project - I do my best, but I will be first to tell you that I can and do make mistakes - I'm sure that the same is true of the other guys at other kit producers who do the same job. We have a full time graphic design guy who produces almost every piece of packaging, decals art, instruction sheets, any magazine ads, all brochures and he does some special project product development - the Florida home office does everything else- licensor relations, purchasing, sales, customer service,warehousing,shipping etc.. All design, tooling, manufacturing, packaging etc is done by our partner in China. When I see comments here wondering why Moebius or Revell can't put out kits that are absolutely accurate at more affordable prices and on time according to announced release dates all I can think is that there a lack of understanding behind those comments. I'm sure I won't have changed any minds with my attempted explanation here. I'm sure that our upcomming kits will inspire the usual chorus of critical comments. It would, however, be nice to think that there might be a little better understanding for some of the reasons that these kits will have occaisonal flaws, and that we can't just jump right out there and fix them right away. Dave Metzner New Product Development Manger Moebius Models

DOH! I'm gettin old and senile! I lose track of the callendar some times! Comet - hoped for release before end of 2015!

I just picked this kit up, seems to be pretty nice to me. I'm no Camaro expert but I have a good friend who is (he's restored several Camaros to award wining levels he's also a top notch model builder and a former injection tooling guy) I'll share it with him next time I visit him I'll be curious to get his take on it.

Club sedan some months after Coupe - not planning to have both arrive @ same time.

Dragonfly is on the boat - 65 Comet is on slow track for the moment waiting for 54 Hudson, 69 & 71 Ford pickups, to get on store shelves.. Hope to start tooling before too long -I'd like to think we'll have Comet on shelves before end of the year..

Plastic parts are approved - finally! after the 4th set of test shots!! Box art instruction sheets and decals are under way - 1st quarter 2015 is pretty well right..

54 Hudson coupe - packaging done - instruction sheet and decal sheet waiting licensor approval. Hope to start production in the next 10 days - 2 weeks.. Kits could be here in February

tooling revisions underway - waiting for date on second test shots now..

1st kit is a big block wedge, automatic..Satellite 2 door HT - street car. second test shots due to be in my hands around christmas..

we'll see about pictures after second test shot gets here

54 Hudsons - Black car is Hudson Hornet Club coupe - Hornet was top of the line in '54. Blue car is Hudson Hornet Special Club Sedan - Hornet Special is a step down from Hornet - less chrome than the Hornet - no wire wheels - Black car has more chrome trim than blue car - Blue car is long roof sedan - Black car is a coupe..

6 sets in that box

Here's a photo of the 65 Satellite test shot they arrived here on Monday.. So far I think it looks pretty good.

Photo????Bwahahahaha!!!

We are expecting 1st test shots of the plymouth by end of next week, I've seen photos of the test shot - the factory was having some issues with one tool not injecting quite completely and not ejecting parts cleanly so they were working on getting it dialed in. From photos the 1st test shot looks good.. I'll know a whole lot more when it's sitting here on my work table.. Release date?? I'd say late 1st quarter 2015... I'll know a whole lot more in a couple weeks after I've had the chance to put a 1st test shot together..

For whatever it's worth - regarding fin spacing on 61 Pontiac 8 lug wheeels - the fins are not equally spaced - if you get a good straight on shot of the wheel and draw lines thru the wheel at centers of the 16 fins you get 16 wedges - the angles between the 16 lines @ the wheel center - alternates between 21 degrees and 24 degrees - so you have slightly wider spacing of the fins on either side of each lug. Amazing what you can figure out with a pencil, a ruler and a protractor! (8 x 21 degrees plus 8x24 degrees =360 degrees..) At least I know what to tell the factory now!

Sorry but that chrome trim that is molded on the front edge of the kit hood IS chrome trim ON the hood of the REAL CAR it is NOT part of the grille, and it's just to thin to make as separate parts ! So you'll just have to suck it up and foil it!

Thank you unclescott58, Daren Bastedo & Brett Barrow! Yes, Bob, the white body on the bottom in my photos is an AMT 62 Catalina - which happens to have the correct dimensions for the 1962 body and chassis. Guess that a bit of calm has been restored here for now.. Started working on revisions to the test shot today - mostly stuff like locator pins and holes that need to be revised - a couple of missing parts to be added - like the starter that somehow, got overlooked... Will try to get 8 Lugs fixed as well as details of C pillar and kick up in body line behind door opening.. Hope to have all the work done on this set of test shots in a couple more days. I plan to have all the notes off to the factory by Wednesday or Thursday.. Then we wait for the second test shot!

How much too long is the rear overhang??? Can we find more dissimilar photos to compare the test shot to? What would be enough evidence that the test shot is not terribly out of proportion? are there minor details to clean up - yes there are - is the roof too short - not according to my information regarding these cars - is the overhang too long - I can't seem to see it.. Do I have the test shot to measure - you bet, I do.. Is the length of the 61 the same as the 62 - 62 is 211.6 inches 61 is 210 - less the 2mm @ 1/25 difference - ( that 1.6 inches is in the front bumper of the 62 if you need to know) Is the wheelbase different between 1961 & 1962 NOPE no difference - I may not be a professional photographer, but I do know that focal length of lens, and angle of a photograph has a tremendous effect on the proportions of the object being photographed.. comparisons of real car photos against photos of models are rarely valid comparisons! The photo of our test shot has been taken with a fairly short lens - I'd guess somewhere between 55 and 70mm while the photos of the real cars were probably made with longer lenses - probably 110mm or longer - the short lens being a wider angle lens produces more distortion than the longer lens. Here are shots of two similar bodies shot at the same angle with the same lens - now tell me that the rear overhang is too long again. Now, let me fix what I can, and see what the finished product looks like in a few months! I'm done here, for now

To me, It comes across as judgements being made based on a single photo of the test shot judgements made without any consideration of camera angle or camera lens distortion. So it seems some are ready to pronounce it wrong from one not very good photo before they ever lay hands on it. I just got the test shot back , about 2 hours ago, I was told that the test shot was only out of the display case once for a few minutes during the I-Hobby Show.. I have, thus far seen only one photo of the test shot from the show - that being of it sitting in the display case from an angle that you'll never see of a real car. I've measured the real car - I've measured the test shot I've compared the test shot to lots of photos of real cars and I can't find any significant errors in dimensions on the test shot. So I must wonder how anyone who doesn't have this actiual chunk of plastic in hand can know that the body is so wrong. I'll keep looking at it and try to get some additional dimensional info to check but I can't find the problem now..If I can find a significant problem, I'll do my best to get it corrected - just saying the significant error in the body size, shape, proportion eludes me @ his time! As for the 8 lug wheels I can see the error and I will do my best to make revisions to correct that - but the notion that we'll just go back to a one piece wheel right away is not an attractive option.

Sorry, the measurement from back edge of windshield post to front edge of C pillar is correct within a tenth or two of a millimeter - the length of the roof panel itself appears to be correct. Photos here are the car we were able to photograph and measure. I'm having a very hard time finding that the proportions of our body are off. I can probably get the detail of the bottom of the C-pillar corrected. Not interested in going back to on piece wheel for the 8 lugs @ this time - I need to see if we can fix the pieces we already have.. As of today I have not had time to spend writing a review of the test shot for our factory - been too busy trying to get the Ford Pick-up trucks and 54 Hudson Hornets done as I have test shots for all those projects here now. I hope to be able to devote my undivided attention to the Pontiac test shots later this week..