niteowl7710

Yeah well the Union isn't the problem - it's the Congress/Senate who decided they have to forward fund the pensions. It's not even a political thing since this has been going on for years. But hey if you think you can fire over a half million people and instantly replace them all go for it.

Gotta pay for that mandated 75yr advanced funding of the Union pensions somehow, yes that's right funding pensions for people who aren't even a glimmer in their parents eyes - Yay Gubbermint! If it weren't for that the USPS would turn a healthy profit every quarter rather than seeming to be on the brink of disaster all of the time.

The Terrano and HiLux Surf (4Runner) are in perpetual reissue it seems, and neither are hard to find or expensive. To Jon's point, the only thing missing are the U.S. Spec names - the LHD parts are still in the kits, as they're injected molded just like the rest of the model (not the resin conversion dashes that some SATCO kits came with), it just does not have the 4Runner & Pathfinder decals.

You have to figure the Internationals sold well, but not well ENOUGH. Because it would have only taken a minor tooling tweak to update the LoneStar to 2015+ specs, once DEF became mandatory (I don't believe Navistar will sell you one as a glider) the LoneStars lost all of that fancy side skirting and went to a much more conventional tank and steps arrangement because the DEF tank is mounted just behind the left front fender. When they lost the skirts, Navistar also made a deal with a number of different companies to sell "fleet" versions of them, so I'd think for the builder looking to replicate one of the Celadon, Smith Transport, SWIFT, PGT, et al fleet trucks an updated kit on a limited run (ala Japanese companies) would have sold.

Full detail, it was done in the late 80s as part of the Exotic Cars series

Maté is a victim of his own success. Gravity Colors is not his day job, and he has a baby to boot. When he had to bottle off a slew of paint to take to the Atlanta NNL it put the regular orders behind - of which there's' usually 70-80 every week. The paint comes over from BASF in quart containers and he has to mix it with the reducer and bottle it into the little bottles by hand. It's very labor intensive, and takes a while, but then again you're not gonna find a better more-perfectly color matched paint system out there. Best piece of advice is to be patient. If you put in a small order of something that happens to be in stock you might get your paint sooner than someone who orders 10 bottles of something that is all in back order status. I've talked to Maté a couple of times about better communications, but it gets to the point that he'd probably spend all his time answering emails and not shipping paint. When he ships your order you'll get a tracking number. No number, it hasn't shipped. I appreciate the frustration some people have, but it's not like this is a commercial operation. You want the best paint, you order from Gravity. You want paints tomorrow, God's speed with whatever you come up with...

It's the Monogram kit. Same as this one that got reissued here like 2 years ago.

Revell's parts replacement program is designed to replace parts, like the windshield, not the entire clear runner. I'm surprised nobody asked you for the UPC code after you made the request since they normally don't send out entire sections of kits like that without verifying you actually do own the kit and they can research backwards to why the entire runner was missing. As frustrating as I'm sure it is, the actual solution to this problem was to return it to where you bought it, so the vendor could dump it back to Hobbico for his credit. I know you stated he doesn't take returns, but that's a BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH policy and not someone I'd do business with in the first place.

I don't think that anyone is the "bad guy" per se, it's just a matter of economics. Revell flounders around in this belief that their prices have to stay around $20 - some might argue there's a basis in that from a quality standpoint, as well as the near constant belly aching of a loud obnoxious minority who whine whenever the MSRP goes up a buck or two. Plus I'm sure the aftermarket guys love selling sheet after sheet of supplemental decals. However the reality of course is that Round2 & Moebius both charge more for their products, to say nothing of Tamiya and none of those guys seem to sweat the licensing or price point as much. Beemax, Belkits, Ebbro are also well in excess of $30, but their more of a niche market and know their customers will pay more for what they're offering.

It would be an Oydessy. There's no engine available that even comes close to replicating the Volvo engine, so you'd have to scratch build that whole ball of wax. Beyond that as a curbside there's no engine bay, or even strut towers to work with so you'd be completely scratch building all of that as well.

Well thank the diety of your choice you don't have to buy one. Wasn't' the time to bemoan this waste of tooling dollars 11 1/2 months ago when they announced this kit? I guess if nothing else the take away from this forum is I always know exactly what kits people don't want to buy. Not sure why I need this information, or why the majority of people here need to scream it from the rooftops.

Like Mark said the Toronados were JoHan tools, they are gonesky, recycled into a washer and dryer back in the 70s when the wheels came off that place. The MPC one might as well have suffered the same fate for all of the "conversion" work that was done to it back in the day. Nobody ever thought about tooling variations or reissues back when kits were a couple of bucks a piece and mostly a kid's toy. You have to look into the 90s before you see model kits engineered so that version b and version c don't destroy the version a tooling. Round2 would have to make entirely new kits as there isn't even a tooling insert left over to work from in 2017. There's nothing to "bring back".

The 4x4 '70 Ford oughta park in there before hand to keep the Ford Pickup fanatics busy...

I know that Dave had said they were going to address the missing turn signals and Pontiac scripts in future releases, I personally hadn't seen the NASCAR kit to know if it had been or not. I hoped it would be. On the other hand it was more of what a hot mess that box art is - nothing says buy the most expensive mass market kits sold by a U.S. manufacturer - like a big non fitting hood gap all over the box.

Oh BTW while everyone was in a tizzy trying to guess which Revell announcement doesn't exist, Moebius snuck the Catalina out. I think my favorite parts are there are clearly turn signals and a Pontiac script that exist on the box art "drawing" that clearly don't exist on the model (at least not that built test shot on the box - but there might be turn signal indentations I guess if you stare at it long enough) and check out that wicked mold line on the bumper - whoooo people on the Space Station want that sanded off...love the fact the ill-fitting hood was directly copied onto the box art "drawing" of the car too...

I wouldn't even consider the P/U to be news, that's been well known since NNL East back in April - albeit this being the first time development has been shown publicly.

But very nostalgic. A throw back to the days of getting a block of wood and having to whittle your own body. Chisel Not Included.

The old box kit is from 1995, the renewal box was done in 2007 - and is still an active kit in the Tamiya catalog. Nothing wrong with the original kit, that's the one I have - for the same cheaper reason - but the few decals in there are 22 years old. Not that replacements and P/E doesn't exist to replace them.

I'd also venture to say they have the concept of tooling engineering down pat, and believe in developing strong bonds with aftermarket (1:1) companies. They can whip out version after version of kits with tooling inserts and decal changes because of the way they design the body to be constructed. You see a lot of whining in places like this about kits with separate hoods, but no engines, but that separate hood allows them to quickly reconfigure the tooling to make another trim level, or year of manufacture by changing out the hood and front fascia for instance. If you look at the new Toyota ProBox/Succeed that is coming out in December for example there's just a form for the front end, and all of the front clip is separate. This will allow them to backdate the tooling to the previous generation of the vehicle by just tooling up the new front clip pieces since the rest of the body remains the same. Also with the various Tuner/VIP series that are done, anyone else notice those are BRANDED by the companies they're featuring? Vertex, Rojam, Mode Parfume, etc, etc, etc. Meanwhile the next version of the Revell Bronco isn't a BAJA Bronco because they can't either afford or be bothered to secure all the licensing to make an actual replica of the vehicle. I will give them props for the Foose branding, but then again aside from the two new kits - it just meant adding a few wheels and decals into existing product lines - which makes financial sense, but wasn't particularly inspiring either. It's not like the hobby market in Japan is getting any younger either... But when comparing the facts, in the past 12 months we've gotten 3 new tool kits out of Europe, 7 (and I think I'm being nice and giving them credit for the glue NASCAR kits, when they are at least based on the earlier SnapTite kits for the body shell) new tools out of the U.S., and 13 out of Japan. Those are strictly new tooling, if you start adding in modified reissues the U.S. goes to like 11 and Japan goes to over 20.

If you don't think they see Baby Boomers as effectively their only customers, you haven't paid any attention to Revell/Moebius/Round2's marketing and developing schemes for the past 15 years and the next 15 years into the future.

Those are both known as "Renewal Packaging". They're just freshened up box art to match the rest of the "black box" Ferrari kits that have the parts layout on the bottom, content wise they are the same. I'd go for the newer boxes just for stuff like fresher decals and whatnot.

If it were something from Revell, I'd be intrigued to see exactly what - since they already announced the 1Q stuff - so other than maybe showing the tooling to the updated '69 Mustang... I'm betting on Moebius, since both Dave and SteveG have both said they're going to be showing new prototypes, so that's the confirmed new tooling that will be there.

I'm intrigued as to whether there's gonna be an engine or not. None of the existing literature about the kit mentions one, and the price is a solid $10 less than the H1 & F-350.

I'm not sure you can outdo Hasegawa and that Isuzu Gemini...

Didn't Metzner say he was gonna have new stuff with him in Detroit like two weeks ago?