niteowl7710

Boy there's a lot of this going in this thread...

The exception there - no matter how fattening - is that the company went out of business. Turned out to be temporary in the end, but it's not like someone dropped the Twinkie making machine off a forklift.

April releases.

Ya know that's always a possibility, but I would have figured a few press kits would have come over in advance if nothing else. It has been 8 years since the last time the kit was out, so an entire "decade" of retail buyers have no idea what's in this kit, plus some of the online review sites like Kitmaker Network didn't even exist 8 years ago.

She's a little peach...colored resin thing. I haven't cracked the bag to look closely, but it's noticeably smaller than the WWII soldier/driver that the kit also comes with...

I'm probably misremembering, but I seem to vaguely recall from a friend that builds a lot of trucks in our discussion of this reissue that the box art didn't match the kit contents. A case of the person doing the build used parts from an older kit because the new test shots weren't available when the model needed to be built.

Didn't Revell get ANY advanced copies of the '57 Black Widow and notice the wrong body side inserts were run? It wouldn't fix the problem with the existing kits, but at least they could have stopped them from shipping them over, distributing them, and then recalling them. Revell's got a limited budget as it is, fixing the 'Model A tool, and then having to re-run the B.W. with all of the various shipping costs/vendor credits involved with the recall has to be slurping up all the "petty cash" as it were. Hobbico is in no position to give Revell more cash as their too busy getting a rectal exam from the Department of Labor over failing to pay off their ESOP, and paying lawyers to fend off the patent infringement lawsuits from Traxxas.

Latest HLJ box and the USCP WRX Sedan Transkit.

Deep breaths, everything in the 1Q is late for whatever reason.

You THINK or you KNOW? The Suburban that was on Revell's website for a March release evaporated and now is showing up as June... Because at this point it wouldn't surprise me if they skipped the 2Q entirely, and went straight to the 3rd Quarter (probably announcing at NNL East) since most of the 1Q stuff has slid right out into April and May, and the 2Q starts in 12 days. They skipped the 4Q back in 2015, so it's not like it's not happened in the recent past.

Wheels need to be stripped anyways, the 1:1 wheels certainly aren't chrome by any stretch.

I just paid $88 to ship over my most recent HLJ order, which sounds outrageous until you realize that breaks down to $6.28/kit. The USPS can't touch that rate, but I also ship in bulk. Like the old retail ads used to say - How do well sell so low? VOLUUUUUUUME!

I was speaking of 1/24(5) civilian cars and trucks. Now if you want to have a separate discussion of why of those 20+ new from scratch tool kits only 4 of them were from the U.S. Big 3, and only 1 of the 13 for 2017 as well I will hedge it on cheap modelers, followed by cheap modelers, with a dash of xenophobia and a heaping side of living in the past. All of which amuses me considering Japan is a smaller country and is aging at a much more rapid rate than the U.S. and they can just ply the hobby with new tools galore. Also you'll notice while I put living in the past (eg everything sucks post-1972) on that list, that's not the same as the hobby being old. Living in the past is all about refusing to accept subject matter outside of a narrow scope of interest. It's why there's 20+ new tools out there in 2016, but I'm pretty sure if I don't actually make a list of them people here won't believe me because they're completely off the radar.

When you say we can't get 8-10 new tools per year because it can't be supported by the numbers, I presume you're talking about U.S. kit manufacturers, and not the hobby as a global market. Because when you start filtering in the European and Asian kit manufacturers we in fact get twice as many new tools as that per year. By my count there were 25 new tools (not counting significant modified reissues) in 2016, and we're at 13 new tools (which again doesn't figure in significantly modified tooling like the '66 Suburban) either released or announced in 2017 and it's only March. It might not be the largest hobby out there, but it's chugging along quite nicely - and how many new tools do you people really need?

I almost have to wonder what would be cheaper at this point. Finding that vintage G-S kit or kit bashing the pickup. That kit is almost $50 direct from Japan, and that's kinda steep for a hood

It also depends on what you want out of the kit in terms of your 2CV model. The Tamiya and RevellAG kits build different cars. The Tamiya is a 1960s standard 2CV, the RevellAG is a 1982 2CV Charleston which was the top of the line model (as it were). This goes for the RevellAG Mini Cooper and VW Beetle, both build slightly different variations of the cars than the Tamiya kits of the same subject matter.

The Shizouka Hobby show in Japan regularly puts over 80k people through in three days, so SEGMENTS of our hobby do indeed draw crowds. Granted that's Hobby Show in general vs. Car Modeling in specific, but I doubt iHobby and it's predecessor put that amount of PUBLIC admission through the doors in Chicago even during the "glory days". Also model shows in Japan are a completely different animal in Japan than they are here. They tend to book out tables by clubs and just have displays with small vendor areas rather than it being a massive traveling kit museum masquerading as a Swap Meet with a competitive contest being run out the back.

Those Fujimi Enthusiast Series kits also come with engine stands and data plates so you can display the engine out of the car next to the (obviously now curbside) model.

Flip the flippin box over, there's a parts layout on the bottom of Round2 kits for the past 9 years now.

Of the 28, only 10 of them are the new Dirty Donnie reissue. AMT did that kit in 1993, then a checkboard box, then the RC2 era box...I know people love them for the parts, but there's certainly a glut of them available.

I don't want stuff that looks like kit chrome, because lets really face the fact that kit chrome doesn't look like real chrome in the first place. With the exception of maybe modern trailer queen show cars, REAL cars of the day didn't have thick lacquer shellacked chrome the way it's presented in model kits. I think we've all become a little "blind" if you will to this, because it's just what we've been conditioned to expect. I mean really how many small parts on chrome trees are in effect nothing but door handle shaped blobs because the plating is so thick it obliterates the details. Dechroming them, and then using one of these markers is a much more realistic effect. As for costs...the markers cost between $8-10 a piece, a sheet of BMF is $8, and Alclad is substantially more expensive once you work in the price for the base coat and the clear coat. I'd argue for most people these markers would last substantially longer than a sheet of BMF as well, especially for trying to foil small pieces like interior trim and grille surrounds. You don't buy cheap tools for your 1:1 car, why does everyone want nickel paint and $5 airbrushes?

Well when was the time the factory stock version of the Coronet was reissued? As I can track it, it's only been out twice (if you don't count the original 1970 version), the "retool" in 1993 that added in the modern B body chassis and drivetrain, and the Round2 reissue in 2008. The Pro Street is the one that's been repeatedly foisted upon us by every single owner of the AMT name. Again 9 years seems to me a reasonable time between reissues, especially when you consider how long that is in retail terms. There are only 5 of the factory stock version on eBay (compared to 28 of the Pro Street ones), and all but one are more than the MSRP of the reissue.

Round2 bought the whole thing lock, stock and two smoking toolings as it were because the Made in the USA nature of the Lindberg (and now branded AMT kits in the case of the Craft House era stuff) are being made up in Michigan - whereas J. Lloyd is/was in Iowa.

Clearly some tools that were presumed to not be run again...like the Datsun P/U, Ramcharger, and this 1/8 bike were never sent to China because nobody expected to run the tooling any time in the future. Gotta admit the Grim Reaper is a niche product at best, there aren't that many 1/8 scale bikes out there to put it with before Round2 ran off several of the old Hondas considering Japanese bikes are in 1/6 & 1/12 scales, and the Italians for some reason chose 1/9. I imagine the Ramcharger was a sales dog last time it was reissued with the boat, as it was an "expensive" kit relative to other kits at the time, and you kinda had to be in to bass fishing to want that boat. Nissan P/U...well furrin' things are evil duh! J. Lloyd probably couldn't afford to send their stuff to China considering they had to "burn down the warehouse" just to release the police version of the Charger 4 years after the fact.