niteowl7710

...and like I said they're eeking our a profit under bankruptcy duress and a lack of real saleable product line with the retool '69 Stang and fixed '29 Model A lingering out into 2Q. Fortunately the Honcho and 2nd Bronco kits blew out the door for them. Might they have taken in water both those prior 2 yrs, possibly. But I'd be willing to bet they chug out a few million in profit every year. Nothing that's going to set the world of fire, but enough to be self-sustaining. Hobbico hemorrhaged cash because it bought it's way to expansion, tried to be all hobbies to all people, took a bath in R/C drones. Plus got sued by Traxxas and botched the daylights out of their ESOP.

We won't lose Revell they've had gross revenues of close to $40 million over the past two years ('16 & '17). I'm far too lazy (and/or busy) to crunch the numbers to try to extrapolate how much would be net profit, but even a casual once over shows they're eeking one out even under the duress of the 1Q of 2018.

No this kit was never reissued, and RevellAG no longer has a Ferrari license.

The owe Futaba - $2,310,765.19

Alright Hobbico owes... Moebius - $63,150.73 Tamiya USA - $662,854.68 Testors - $302,115.91 Paache - $25,929.19 MRC (Model Rectifier) - $11,454.09 Iwata - $13,002.09 Hasegawa - $38,726.24 Bandai Gundam - $39,717.65 Badger - $13,311.91 A number of other smaller claims for less than $10k exist for stuff like Atlas Brushes, Xacto, Excel and stuff like that. Now there is no specific claim for Round2 being owed money, but Hobbico PAID them $254k and change in the past 90 days. One thing I found interesting is Hobbico owes $270 to a local donut shop...

I can tell you off the top of my head one of the biggest liabilities Revell itself has after the money it owes to China is the over $300k it owes RevellAG.

Be more specific. Not as a knock, but these filings are hundreds of pages long and there are only so many hours in the day when you work 12hr graveyards. What specific company(ies)? Also Hobbico as a whole or just Revell, because those are two different documents.

I dunno I was 15 when the Revell Caprice came out with that goofy "Electronic Lights & Sirens" thing and I was annoyed they wasted money on that and didn't put a real light bar in the kit - as opposed to the 2/3rds of a Federal Signal Streethawk that came as the static option.

No I said it was a real model in the sense it's not a SnapTite kit with flashy noises for children. I said the Gundam were accurately scaled replicas. I also wasn't questioning the value of the license (which IMHO is too high, but what do I know), but more to Revell's ability to gain any value FROM it. Paying out a boat load to Disney and then a small gondola to Fine Molds is a waste of money if they aren't turning a profit.

All of those things are also either real models or at least accurately scaled replicas (in the case of some Gundam that don't require paint or glue to assemble). The Star Wars kits that Revell has tooled up have all been kid's toys (a lot with lights & sounds)that are made-up scales - ya know cause 1/227 is so popular - to make things fit in a specific sized box. The models they released that were actually model kits are re-boxed Fine Molds kits which have the double whammy of being licensed TWICE.

I agree they're a bit of a mess themselves, but nothing like the debacle of the home office. One of the expenses I'd love to see a specific return value return is the nearly quarter of a million they owe Disney for the Star Wars licensing. When the strict non-importation rule got dropped and you could acquire Bandai kits again I can't believe that whole deal can be turning a profit making made-up scale kid's toys. That licensing is ridiculously overpriced when you consider the payment to GM for everything is a little over $20,000.

The A/Rs in the filing were less than 90 days. Actually the whole of Hobbico only has like $2,800 in over 90 day A/R. My guess is, particularly with the facing of a bankruptcy, Hobbico got pretty strict with lagging behind on invoices.

Revell's independent filing states assets of about 9.5 million with 2.2 mil in A/R incoming.

No all of them only come with the one MX-7000ish looking light bar.

Minimum Bid: A Bid must have a purchase price that includes a combination of cash and the assumption of postpetition liabilities and cure costs associated with the relevant Lot, and subject to any adjustments typical of similar transactions, that, in the Sellers’ reasonable business judgment (after consultation with the Consultation Parties), has a value equal to or greater than the following, subject to the terms of these Bidding Procedures: (a) For substantially all of the Acquired Assets: $38 million; (b) For the U.S. Assets Lot: $32 million; (c) For the Hobby Business Lot: $22 million; (d) For the Global Mass Market Lot: $16 million (e) For the Global Revell Lot: $10 million (f) For the Revell Germany Lot: $8 million (g) For the Estes-Cox Lot: $6 million

Managed to get my hands on the bankruptcy filing paperwork. Hobbico has $65,087,445.76 in assets - including buildings, inventory, AR, vehicles, etc. and $137,465,183.74 in liabilities. About 117 mil of which has banks looming over it and the rest is unsecured stuff like employee wages and the ESOP program.

There's a wide plethora of carbon fiber patterned decal sheets available from probably close to a dozen different decal & aftermarket vendors.

The 10:1 figure comes from the ranges stated in filing which was 10-50 million of assets vs 100-500 million in debts. Sure it's quite possible it's 48 mil assets and 101 mil in debts and not an exact 10:1 ratio, but it's still a mess.

There is NO suspension in that kit, it's effectively an unassembled promotional model with everything molded into a chassis tray. You seem to have a serious issue demanding things while at the same time having little knowledge of what actually already exists or what any given kit contains.

Except of course for the part where Hobbico isn't a multi-billion dollar company dealing with the UAW. There's no Hobbico "factory", they have a few hundred people working directly for them, mostly in warehousing/distribution and various office roles. Everything they sell is made somewhere else via contracted manufacturing. Hobbico got it's debt to asset ratio up the way they did by trying to expand via acquisition. The Traxxas lawsuits didn't help anything, but then again Traxxas is well known to be the "Thomas Edison" of patents - eg they sue everyone about anything they think they can - mostly to run other companies out of business. That isn't to say the upper management is ponies and rainbows, they clearly have dirt all over themselves for refusing to pay out the ESOP payments and getting themselves under Federal investigations over that.

Alrighty folks, here's the latest. Hobbico filed a motion today to sell itself and it's assets via auction in Chicago in two weeks. https://www.reuters.com/article/bankruptcy-hobbbico/bankrupt-hobby-products-maker-hobbico-expects-one-or-more-bidders-idUSL2N1QI07S

The '62 Catalina has custom parts that were tooled up in the 1990s so AMT/Ertl would have a second variant of the kit to sell to amortize the cost of a new kit. It's literally no connection to these "Glory Day" Parts Pack things you want so badly. I don't believe the Catalina was ever offered as a 2n1 with all of the parts in a single box until the most recent Round2 reissue as a matter of fact.

My question wasn't the financial viability of resin in a plastic kit, or resin over plastic pieces. It was WHY Jimmy Flintstone. Again not knocking the guy per se, but there are a lot of better casters out there making parts. I presume it's because Jimmy is slush casting with very little QC it makes his stuff cheap...and we all know cheapness sells to a certain market segment around these parts.

What is this obsession with Jimmy Flintstone? He's a nice enough guy in person, and some of his pieces are unique - to say the least. But it's not like his resin is setting any sort of quality or buildability standards with that slush cast stuff.

That "Parts Pack" is just a couple of chrome plated runners of parts recently tooled up for another kit, not something they just created specifically for release of the parts. Frankly considering the kit they were in calling them "1957 Fantasy" is a fantasy all on it's own.