niteowl7710

There was a docket entry today indicating there will be a hearing on the sale of the Global Revell Lot, Revell Germany Lot, and any other partial/remnant pieces on April 10th.

As far as I know those are the only two options out there for those generation 911s.

I got a couple of sets of wheels from Scale Productions last fall, got them in less than 2 weeks.

The Estes-Cox to Langfords (Estes Industries) and Hobbico R/C & Distribution to Horizon sales both closed today with approval of the court. The Revell lots "may be sold at a later date"...which posits what will happen to them until then.

And Gordonsville, VA...

Here are our kits for April, which include two kits not on the actual April release schedule - because right now there are no kits in the pending que at Auto World, - and this Oldsmobile that was released the 2nd week of March. Alllllriiiight...

So Mrs. Wilson has a few businesses she's associated with, including a Wilson/Faber LLC that's registered a couple of blocks up N. 56th St. But all of them involve her role as the Co-Owner (with a Phyllis Faber) and stylist at the Chatenbury Place Salon, Spa & Boutique, which a FB account associated with the same name and background information confirms. The location of the salon is the same as the registered address of Round 3. http://chatenburyplace.com/staff/ I'm not sure what she's in the market for out of Hobbico's asets, but a $10 million dollar model company doesn't seem likely.

The Estes lot is the only thing that seems to have a clean sale. As expected it was basically sold to itself, although the bid was raised from $6 to $7 Million on the day of the auction. The Horizon bid was made for the Hobbico R/C & Tower/Great Planes stuff but the Unsecured Creditors Committee immediately filed a legal diatribe over the appearance of impropriety over the gentleman who was involved with both the Horizon Board of Director and the law firm who represented Hobbico before the bankruptcy. The complaint lies in even if there was no insider knowledge, it gave the appearance of it and could have chilled bidding based on the "given" that Horizon would win. They further said in the complaint that the value of the bid was not sufficient. EDIT - I missed the docket filing where the court told the Unsecured Creditors Committee to go pound sand, and ordered the sale to Horizon. That makes sense as a little birdie who's got an ear inside Hobbico said they told everyone their last day was April 6th and to go apply for employment with Horizon.

In an "As the World Turns" moment, the creditors have filed a complaint with the court over the Horizon bid - namely that it be stripped of all protections and 3% breakup fee - over the fact that Horizon "accidentally" forgot to mention that one of their board of director members happens to also work for a consulting firm Horizon hired to assist with the purchase - and whoops he's ALSO a partner in the law firm representing Hobbico in the bankruptcy case. Talk about trying to serve two masters...

That's just another story cooked up by someone because Revell never explained publicly what happened to the tooling. Not that they could have, or that it was anyone's business in the customer end. Every story revolving around that Model A is easily debunked by looking at the larger picture. In the case of Ford getting the A canceled...alright. But that same punitive Ford licensing department allowed two Broncos, two Ford Fusion NASCAR kits, the reissue of the '64 Fairlane, modified reissue '76 Torino, and the Foose F100. The planning of the Grease '48 Ford, retooled '69 Mustang and Ford GT Le Mans racecar (which is not only a Ford, but sponsored by Ford). Not to mention the continued production and sales of all the existing Ford products. When RevellAG lost their Ferrari licensing they had to stop all sales of Ferrari products including existing inventories. So what did that poor Model A ever do to anyone to be delicensed, seized, destroyed, stolen, etc, SPECIFICALLY - and no effect on anything else Revell did subsequently...

Other than people playing the "Big Scary China Is Gonna Get Ya" game, none of the rest of this is hearsay, it's well documented facts in 393 pieces of court filings running into the tens of thousands of pages that anyone with access and a pdf viewer can read.

No that only relates to the current situation of Revell being sold to new ownership. They don't want their licensing to be transferred without creating a new deal with the new ownership, plus they want all the money Revell owes them since nobody at Hobbico has paid any bills since 2017.

Or people who were unhappy with the merger of Tower & Great Planes anyways, since Horizon was founded in 1985, the same year as the merger.

If you dig behind that generic statement that was in the paper it was specifically referencing trying to secure a "Stalking Horse" agreement for the purchase of Estes-Cox. Which seems to be being bid on by some formulation of the current employees as the agreement references "Estes Industries" which is the oldie time name of the company when it was founded before being sold a bunch of time and then buying Cox Airplanes (which got the name change to the current Estes-Cox) and was sold to Hobbico in 2010.

I've read the filing it's for the Hobbico name, Tower, Great Planes & the R/C companies. It does NOT include Revell. Nor Estes which is being sold for $6 million back to...Estes the original company, or some semblance thereof.

For $2,600 I'd deliver it to your house

About half of Revell's liabilities are related to their tooling in China. The bright side of that is all of their tooling is taking place in Hong Kong- which while slowly being less and less a "Special Administrative Region" - is still a lot less likely a place for a government seizure than anywhere on mainland China itself.

Today was the deadline to file objections to the Sale and/or Contract transfers relating to the sale. There was only one filing, from FoMoCo objecting to the automatic transfer of their licensing with any sale of Revell. They also objected to the amount Revell was stating the owed them - which Revell put at just over $69k. Ford said it's more like $118k and occurring late fees and licensing obligations ongoing. They did state that they would be willing to negotiate new licensing deals with whomever winds up with Revell post-sale. I also wonder if post-filing anyone at Revell put in motion the renewal of the Chip Foose licensing, because as stated in the paperwork that expires on 3/31/18. There are a few that expire at the end of May, and everything else is signed up for at least a year down the road, or auto-renews yearly.

It's just effectively an unassembled diecast car.

Why does that seem to be a good chunk more expensive than they were the first go round? I seem to recall paying "only" $42 for the original reefer trailer and thing had an MSRP of like $52.

Well sure there's a wide spectrum of dubious formerly motorized kits marauding around as models. I think Hasegawa might be the only ones who don't have one of those in their car lines, but the rest do, even Tamiya.

Cheaper doesn't necessarily mean easier unless you start talking about stuff like Fujimi's Easy Kits or their other SnapTite construction (like their R34). One of the main reason Fujimi kits are less expensive is they've reissued the wheels off of them. Aside from the most recent round about 18-24 months ago when they reissued all of the factory EVOs 3 through 9, they also have a LOT of variants - particularly in the V, VI, and VII. The more times you offer tweaked modified reissues the cheaper the cost associated with them becomes in terms of paying off the tooling costs. If you want to do a tooling that doesn't support multiple variations and you want to sell 5k copies, the per copy price is much higher (think Belkits or Ebbro and to some extent Tamiya) than it is for Fujimi to sell an EVO 7 that there are 6 versions of...30k kits is a lower per unit cost.

Pick something and build it

The only street EVO Tamiya makes is a 6 and it's got metal axles front and back. Nothing WRONG with the Fujimi kits, you gotta start somewhere. If you worry about what to build and never build anything, you'll never get the skills required to tackle serious projects.