niteowl7710

The family that owns Stevens Int'l, MegaHobby & AAA Hobbies (wholesaler, online retailer, and brick & mortar shop) are retiring. They've been at it for more than 40 yrs, nothing nefarious or money related. Surprising someone hasn't tried to acquire it, but then they've never been particularly price friendly either - and I don't doubt that wouldn't extend to what they'd want to buy out the business.

Announced a few days ago - per Fujimi's X (aka Twitter). Expected release is "2026". The 1/24 scale "SUBARU WRX STI" (VAB type) joins the inch-up series, which requires gluing, painting, and assembly! This is the first completely new mold item for the inch-up series since 2017, marking the first all-new mold in about 9 years. The highly anticipated first release is… The special edition "EJ20 Final Edition," of which 555 units were limited-release sold in 2019. It recreates the car's distinctive features, such as the gold 19-inch wheels and the rear bumper with the air outlet grille.

Yeah I am seeing ads plowing through a wide variety of the forum right in the middle of topics. There used to be a way to close them and report them back to AdSense as being placed wrong - but the ads this week don't seem to have that feature.

There have been some cease and desists sent out over the years to various resin companies. Both GM and Ford have done that, and since they have in-house legal counsel it doesn't cost them anything since they're already paying those lawyers anyways. What is Joe Blow in his garage going to do, fight it? On the basis of...I can't even imagine what basis. Wouldn't be so easy to do with a digital file being made by a guy in Eastern Europe, there's a tangle of laws there between the U.S and the EU. Plus, it's not a tangible asset, it's just a series of "pictures" in a computer until someone presses the "go" button on their Elegoo. Plus as so many people have found out, once something is on the internet, it's always out there. Even if you did cease and desist Andrey over any given car file, the car file is already owned by dozens, if not hundreds of people who can just send it to each other. They might have a better chance at going after the "Print for Fee" guys who are selling the full printed kits on eBay but even then, most of them are again in the EU other than Iceman.

There's usually a master licensing agreement that gives you the trade dress items (name, logos, et al), and then each individual item has to be given approval of its own. If memory serves me from hours and hours of listening to Salvinos JR folks discussing it at length only GM still has an in-house licensing department. Both Ford and Stellantis contract out through 3rd party services. Should also be noted as it was being discussed in another thread. Having licensing to do a diecast of (insert your scale here) doesn't automatically give one the right to reproduce it as a plastic kit. The licensor always has last right of rejection for any project at any time and this entire thing might come down to Round2 not wanting to pay Warner Bros. fee, or Stellantis having no current interest in seeing a '72 Roadrunner reproduced by another company - giving that exclusive right to SJR for their NASCAR items.

No it does not. Both 1964 kits have the same hood.

Fast Forward all these years later and a state of chaos with Ford (and later GM) took out Jack Cooper Transport which was the largest remaining union auto haulers a few months ago.

Any one in particular? Well the shlubs and the file designer aren't paying licensing to Stellantis...

Still catching up on overseas decals. More from S.K.

Glad they managed to figure out some way to get it done locally, must have been a logistical and cost pain in the rear to have "half" the tooling located halfway across the country when you can run the kits in house otherwise.

The Decalcas "kit" was supposed to be a poured resin multimedia piece (ala Alpha, PZY, Renaissance, etc) not an injected styrene kit. Like so many things it seems to have been killed off by the abrupt shut downs during Covid and seemingly didn't make financial sense to continue sinking money into developing it.

This right here. When Peter did his talk at IPMS Nationals a couple of years ago he said that the majority of the car tooling was staying in Illinois because there wasn't anywhere locally to get the chrome plating done. So if the kit needed that, it was going to stay in Chicagoland. Everything else was going to eventually wind up on Long Island - and if I remember the post referenced here correctly, it said this was the last truck load to be moved.

The best you could hope for there is something similar to what Salvinos JR has done where the tooling is done in China and then shipped to the U.S. for production. But then they'd have to find someone to run it on a contract basis here - all revolving around whether the facility in Michigan that holds all the Lindberg/Craft House kits can run something like that or not, or would want to...

Hehehe I couldn't resist poking the "I demand full detail Ford stuff" bear. Although a nice curbside would be something I'd buy, particularly if the cross parts were available for the Law Enforcement variant. I could go off on a separate tangent as it relates to a "Mach-E is a waste" relating to how large the Aoshima 1/32 SnapKit line actual is at this point three years into being, and that apart from an entire slew of cars is expanding across Light Commerical with police, EMS, Fire, Towing and soon refuse truck entries. Plus it's selling so well it's paying for a Ferrari license. Photos from the "Make n Take" from this year's show illustrates literally hundreds of kids participating and of course Shizouka Hobby Show (in the Spring) has an entire day devoted to School Age kids being the only ones allowed in the venue. We pay a lot of lip service to wanting young people to get into this hobby, but in practice nobody does anything about it...I've seen the Make n Takes lately...it's ancient stuff that Atlantis provides. Aww inspiring stuff...

There are a couple of decal sets they promised to do but never have done that are "Sold Out" as well. This item was never made, and it this point I'd doubt it ever will be.

...and the most popular Mustang in the U.S. by Ford's sales figures is the electric SUV...I can't wait for this forum to mobilize to get the dire injustice of there being no kit of that rectified post haste. 🤣😅

I think the frustrations here come when some of the fringe of the fringe appear to never be happy about anything that anyone is doing, and they immediately have 59 other commercially unviable suggestions/solutions to the "problem" as they see them. Like...that gets tiring to read thread after thread after thread after thread. Ergo the joke becomes - How do you bankrupt a model company? Put this forum in charge of it. I'm all for wishes and wants and safe spaces, but there is a tipping point that all the "free expression" turns into a constant din of negativity.

Planning the Mack for additional versions...🤪

That link just reloads this page, it doesn't go to your Fotki which is where I presume you wanted it to go.

Looks like it's ready to go. Glass and tires are the last things that get done and it's shot in color rather than the usually neutral gray (as seen in the Mustang and Lambo also on display in Japan).

Those were tooled up when Lesney owned AMT, so that tooling was probably done in the UK - or wherever Matchbox kits were tooled - and never left. Clearly all of that Lesney/Matchbox kit tooling still exists as the odd-scale airplanes have been reissued numerous times over the years.

I'm betting this and the 2CV Fourgonette are manufactured from the Ebbro molds. Heller doesn't have either in their existing portfolio and one of Ebbro's long standing "Coming Soon" kits at the time of their bankruptcy was a modified reissue of their 2CV in AZU spec trim.

The new Peugeot 205 GTI from Heller. This kit should be going on sale in Europe with the next few weeks.

Upcoming Belkits Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally Car. Belkits has said that the final tweaks are being made to the instructions and decals and they expect the kit to go into production next month and shipped out to Belkits before Christmas. So it should be available in Late December or Early January.