niteowl7710

It's a Kawasaki KH400 A-3/A-4, reissue with a different molded in color fuel tank. Was a modified new kit back in 2019 off a new tool KH400 A-7 tooled up in 2018.

Yep it always has in the factory stock boxings.

October Releases...the real ones not the imaginary wishful thinking ones that come in the videos a month earlier than actuality are... MPC - '69 Cuda Polar Lights - Gold Plated Batmobile AMT - Fruehauf '40 Exterior Post Van Trailer Fruehauf Tanker Gulf "Livery" 1/16 1955 BelAir H/T 1964 Dodge 330 (ex-Lindberg) Green Lantern "Black Beauty" (New Tool)

Depending on how the construction of the interior and rear hatch area go, not only do the doors open, but it would also appear there's a perfectly good stock DMC lurking in there. The literature displayed with it says - Over 200 Pieces for Easy of Paint (gotta love machine translation)...meaning none of the movie schtick is molded to the body or integrated into the interior pieces. It'll just be a matter of whether or not you can build the interior and rear hatch structurally without putting all the stuff on there.

The Surf Wagon MSRP was the same $45 price. Which proves a point I've always said around here, the MSRP is meaningless, nobody is paying that price. You paid about half the MSRP, and now it's at Ollie's for $9 soooo...

From last weekend's model show... This month's SJR kit...

The current AMT kit is the MPC kit in lineage, but the original AMT body/kit is currently inside the Warren Tope race car. Don't know how well that sold the last time around (paging Justin), but again I don't see them necessarily permanently killing off one model for another.

I wasn't expecting full detail on a SnapTite kit per se, plus I've seen earlier box art stuff that showed that engine plate for the bottom. I guess I can't really gripe about the hole in the roof from a "Starter Snap Kit" aspect, but I would have rather had it be a panel line in the roof I could quickly fill rather than a whole missing panel that has to be fit and then leveled and then filled. Life's too short to fight with stuff that doesn't inspire me out of the gate.

Gotta say I'm rather nonplussed about that roof being cut open like that. Plus great googlie-moogilie that plastic is swirltastic. Maybe they'll see fit to at some point release a non-bond DB5, otherwise I think I might have to pass on this one.

The short answer is no, having licensing to produce a diecast doesn't not automatically grant you the ability to produce a plastic model kit, or even a different scale diecast. Furthermore having a "master" license from one of the Big 3 - the big expensive proposition that gets you through the door to produce your first item from their catalog and allowing you to put the "Ford Approved" holograph on the box doesn't grant you automatic license to create anything else from a given manufacturer without paying additional licensing and getting an entirely separate top to bottom approval of the project. In this sense a "project" can be the entire series of kits expected from a given tool. The example would be Revell making the '71-73 Mustang kit series, you'd approach Ford for licensing approval for the Boss 351, Mach 1, and theoretical Gone in 60 Seconds and '73 Mustang as one singular project before cutting the tooling. In the current environment the maximum length of a "Master" license is 3 years at which point you have to renew it and of course pay for another term. Of the Big 3 GM is the only one that maintains their own in-house licensing, Stellantis uses IMG, and Ford uses an 3rd Party firm in the UK. There is an overall "ease" in being an established customer of a licensor they get to know your staff and your products and in some cases the approvals are more of a going through the motions, and making sure all the tradedress on the box art is correct and whatnot, but you're still paying an individual licensing charge on each item.

4. If you "slice off the top" you are either permanently and forever damaging the tool in a way that they can never release a regular Mustang again, or we're back to the throwing a huge bucket of money at a body tool because you're going to need at least the top half of the mold, and perhaps new sides (I'm not familiar enough with the 1:1s to know if there needs to be different side trim and/or body shapes involved. 1/2/3 - Revell under Quantum still has a U.S. arm and plans to service the U.S. market. The '71 Mustang was a kit that was measured and designed here. It's is first a foremost a Revell USA release that happens to have a RevellAG boxing of it as well. Based on the fact that Quantum owns everything now they can go ahead an utilize the resources of this new kit to release the 007 kit. I couldn't swear to it, but I believe the Bond License that Quantum has is for Europe (with Round2 having the U.S./North American one). None of the upcoming 007 kits have an "U.S. Rebox" pending and the only way they'll come is in the Euro Boxing. Lastly it's a business case to do a '71-73 Mustang because the MPC kit is an unholy wreck of a model, even with the "fixed" front end. This goes back to an earlier point from another thread. Military Modelers don't ask these questions. They expect new kits of EVERYTHING all the time. A 15 year old kit is demanding a more modern re-do in that world. The MPC kit 52 years old at this point, and anyone who's been around the hobby for more than an hour knows what they're getting in that box. The new Revell 71 is state of the art, and something that's been needed for...well 50 years ever since the MPC became a 71 then a 72, then a 73...then sorta a 71 again, then sorta a 73...never had a right engine for any of the later year reissues etc etc. It's not much of a competiton to me, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we aren't buried in an avalanche of eBay sales of people trying to unload that MPC kit out of their collections now that it's been supplanted by the new Revell offering.

Actually I believe there's been a "regular" (aka no movie tie-in) reissue of the 70 Chevelle in the meantime as well. *double checks* - Yeah in 2019, the Reacher kit was 2014.

From what I've seen of the rest of the box art it has a 429 in the engine bay, plus the hood and the wheels at least.

Fixing it for real would require a new body tooling and a new clear parts runner and that'd run over $70k (probably closer to $100k these days). In the end for all the kvetching that was done here when we nearly burnt this forum to the ground with the battle over how bad it looks being a scale 2" too low, neither the "general public" nor the the licensor actually cared. They sold out of both releases of the kit in relative short order of their arrival, so it's hard to justify spending that money to fix a problem that only a fraction of their customers actually cared about...I cared to the point I never bought one because I couldn't unsee it, but clearly someone else was happy to buy mine in the overall scheme of things.

The Sidewinder is still their banner picture on Facebook and that change (to the Sidewinder) was just made on the 14th of this month.

You sir are what we call a "GPI"...Goal Post Installer. You just move them around to wherever you see fit to try to make your argument instead of just planting them in the endzone and leaving them there. Now do you want to clone a JoHan kit or what? Because that Johan Caddy doesn't have a "fantasy race car" or a lowrider as part of the kit. So you want to clone a 60 yr old kit, and then add a whole slew of new parts to it that have never existed. If I might...ahahahhahaahahahahaha *wheeze* ahahahahahahahaha. Ask the folks at Round about how well making the 1970 Full Bumper Camaro went and that was just changing a nose insert and making a bumper to fit a tool that was half as old as any JoHan kit you might want to deal with...The only thing cloning a kit does is save time in the process of figuring out how to break the 1:1 item down into a model, because you are for all intents and purposes copying the original layout. Adding mock race parts and lowrider bits, sorry but it would be easier to start from scratch and design it all to fit from Day 1 rather than beating your face off interchange issues. Then you can create a real chassis for it, not have the front axle go through the engine block and make a full depth interior for it while you're at it. The 1963 Nova kit was produced exactly how the original one came back then; they didn't make a new engine and a new trailer out of whole cloth to make a 2nd version of it. Also these forums represent the "top" 3-5% of the hobby in terms of interest and "fandom". They are not an accurate representation of what would actually sell in a retail format. 90-95% of the models sold go via the casual "accidentally found it" Ollie's, Wal*Mart, Hobby Lobby crowd. I'm guessing while you could generate interest in a 64 Cadillac - perhaps even enough to move the 25-30k kits you'd have to sell to turn a profit off the tooling investment - but saying "CLONED FROM ORIGINAL JOHAN KIT!!" is going to make those people go - Huh? Who? Jo-What? Because while nostalgia sells kits for Round2 for sure, people who were actually teenagers when that kit was new are now in their 70s (my dad graduated HS that year and he's 76)...the nostalgia gravy train has a very finite future.

No the only 3D scanned Revell U.S. kits are the two new tool Foose kits - Eldorod and Custom Ford P/U and the '71 Mustang. The affordability of that tech had just started to come into the realm of possibility at the same time Hobbico imploded and the whole ship went down. Also I've seen you mention it on at least two threads now that an eBay price some how justifies the recreation of a model. That's not a viable reason to do something. People are willing to pay more for something that can't (or won't) likely be reproduced. That's true of any collectible industry, and reproduction of JoHan kits is about as likely as Topps deciding to run off another printing of Jordon Rookie Cards. Those JoHan kits were pretty much entirely funded by the Big 3 Promo work they were doing at the time, and in modern terms you would need to be able to get at LEAST 3 variants out of a new piece of tooling to justify the investment costs. There's not 3 versions of a 64 Cadillac, unless you want to pay upwards of $70 for a single issue release (like some of the European niche rally kit manufacturers charge).

I read this last night at work and had logged back in this morning to say nearly exactly THIS. I understand how nostalgia tickles certain people's wallets. But at the same time this irrational insistence that because it was done once it never needs to be addressed again is one of the biggest factors that have stunted the growth of car modeling. The other being decades of artificial price ceilings which killed who knows how many projects over time. The thing you hear from military builders who are dabbling in car modeling is - Why do you guys tolerate all this old junk for?

Aren't several of the JoHan Cadillacs box scale? (Eg their scaled to fit in the standard JoHan box rather than being actual 1/25 acale). What on earth is the point of 3D scanning and then plunking down something like $300k to reproduce that? Because at the end of the day 3D scanning an old kit can certainly shorten the R+D portion of development similarly to getting the raw CAD on a new car would. But that tooling steel and the processes of converting it into a model, paying for boxes, instructions, the small fortune for good decals, et al don't decrease one nickel over creating the model from scanning a 1:1 car and going from there (ala the recent Revell kits).

To be fair all of the MPC Annual kits became AMT kits "magically" ? after AMT/Ertl bought MPC in 1988.

There are several kits in that Modified Stocker Series and a bunch have been kicked out over the past 3 years. Although it looks like the Skylark hasn't been out since 2006ish.

I guess they figured there's enough of a market for the 2+2 given that it has never been kitted before. Be interesting to see what they make of this over the long term considering the "2+0" 300ZX is still in production at Tamiya.

Except we only have the 2 mods along with Dave and Gregg. Nobody is on and a couple of the forum sections have been re-buried in more spam.