niteowl7710

Nothing AMT/Ertl did prior to "the end" (being bought out by Racing Champions) was ever in CAD/CAM form, which means any modifications to Mueller-Era kits have to be done the same old fashioned way you would if you were modifying any other old piece of tooling. It can be done, but it involves a lot of fiddle-farting around making the new stuff fit the old kits as seen in the travails of the Full Bumper 70.5 Camaro and make the sedan pieces for the 67 Impala. Or going back further, making the new stock front end for the Gremlin.

I do have to appreciate your unilateral decisions of where I've been. Is this ability only scrying into the past, or do you also have the power of far sight to tell me where I'll be going in the future? My point about the three shows is that people attend them over and over and over again because they are the mass gatherings of their best friends that they most likely only see that *ONE* time each year. So sure there is a model contest taking place, and yes the work on the table is of excellent quality and quantity - thats how these individual shows become the "must attend" events in the first place. But to someone going to ACME for 20-25+ years it's a social gathering first and foremost because there are model contests all over the South if you just want to build a model and enter a contest.

This month's actual HLJ shipment (which is about 2 1/2 months of stuff - gotta love the Personal Warehouse storage)

This box has been sitting around for a few months unopened (since I knew what was in it), but cleaning up the basement this morning I finally emptied it out. BeeMaNuNu kits have grown to have that annoying "went out of stock so now it's made of unobtainable platinum pricing" thing that happens. So these 5 Audis along with the others purchased brings my stock of them level with the amount of aftermarket decals. It's always easier to sell them later than it is to buy them later...

No Steve said the tooling didn't cost $250k, but so far he's never argued against my supposition that his all-in cost from R&D to the end box on the shelf was that much. I happen to know first hand the "Master" License for Beemax to produce their first BMW product cost them €250k for JUST the license. Now they've amortized that across over a dozen kits spanning an M3, M6, M8, and three different 2000s era 320is - not counting individual licensing costs associated with each of those kits to the racing teams, sponsors, BMW, et al. Domestic Licenses don't cost that much, but they're not exactly "affordable" either, plus you're usually paying a per unit percentage royalty, and have to carry a high rate liability policy so in case little Timmy chokes to death on that new Jo-Han Oldie AMX steering wheel Stellantis won't get sued for it. Another thing to remember right before Round2 started down this blistering track of new tool new kits and 3D cloning a bunch of old kits they sold 49% of the company to an Investment Group. It's a lot easier to do things when you suddenly have millions of dollars of operating capital.

I'm almost positive that both the 57 300C and 71 Charger never carried their Custom/Street Machine parts in any kits that weren't branded that way specifically. Otherwise, they only built out factory stock like the original kit. There were 3 releases of the "Custom" 300C and that makes it around 18 years since the last time it was reissued with those parts. It's been about the same length of time since the Street Machine '71 Charger parts have seen the light of day too.

I love John, I've been buying from him since I was a teenager, and he runs my local hobby shop. I've probably spent more time with him in hobby related settings than nearly anyone else, so I will say he looks at model shows from purely a vendor prospective. So it makes me wonder if DAAM is getting more General Admission Floor Traffic, or people are more mentally focused on buying stuff in the vendor area than some other shows. It is pretty much the last show of the year North of I-40 until the Spring. John regularly sets up at 1:1 Autoramas, World of Wheels, et al rather than going to comparably distanced Model Shows because he sells more stuff at the 1:1 car events. Atlanta, NNL East, the old NNL in Toledo all seem like social functions that someone happens to be holding a model show during, rather than a MODEL CONTEST that attracts people to attend.

Revell's 2CV has over 120 parts, plus they tooled up the square headlights to match the movie car. Something that otherwise only exists in a sketchy old Heller kit. Plus like Matt said, 007 ain't cheap.

I know several people from the Cleveland area that make the pilgrimage up there, and when I lived in Cleveland I also once interviewed for a job (based in Ohio) in Detroit and never really though that much about driving up there and back in one half day. Seems like you never hear it mentioned around Pittsburgh...we aren't that much further away, but that might just be 25 years of driving for a living talking ?

And Round2 is the one giving them the information...because Steve is going to show the stuff over the weekend. There's no faster way to annoy your distributors than debut a product in public before they know about it. Monday morning they're going to get a flood of their downsteam customers - who are all hobby shops and other retail buyers - wanting to know about when/how to get the kit and their answer can't be - "What kit?"

It's a nice regional show for sure, but it's not really - at least within my spheres of influence - graduated to the point it's a "destination" show the way NNL was in Toledo. Or NNL East, NNL West, Acme, the former GSL, et al. Nobody has bragged to me they're taking vacation to go to Detroit...yet ?

At this point Round2 is showing products 3-5 times a year, they're never going to outright admit to something that would fall beyond the first half of next year right now.

Making it known to a limited number of modelers - DAAM isn't *that* big of a show, it's just convenient to get to for Steve/Round2 (and usually Moebius) - doesn't make something "official". It's official when it's got an item number and gets pushed out to Distributors as a future item. The number of people who sit around and check Steven's website is near 0 and even this forum represents maybe 3-5% of the hobby. When the 68 H/T is released there will be a bevy of stunned people who never knew it was coming. Look at any comment section to any Round2 video and people routinely ask for kits that AMT/MPC never made to begin with or are fervently demanding a reissue of something that in fact just WAS reissued 6-8 months prior.

Another flight from Hong Kong, another batch of freshly released race cars. The E90 shares the chassis plate, interior floor plate, and tires with the earlier 2001/2004 320i kits, the entire rest of the kit is new tooling.

Most Monogram tools of that era are massive one piece molds outside the body and inject all at once. Makes modifying them difficult as you're affecting the plastic flow when you start adding additional cavitations that weren't designed in from the beginning. Just repopping it would be a "new" kit to a whole lot of people who never bought one back then.

True, but it's been in April for 14 years now. 2/3rds of my kids weren't born yet, seems like forever...

...the USPS collected it, as intended.

NNL East is always that weekend in April and they're booked out through 2027 at this point. Permanently mark your calendars. ?

Then you're going to not be buying anything into 2024 as the only kit for November on the distribution list is a re-pop of the...venerable...1970 Dodge Challenger in a USPS Collector's Tin.

Fresh off the plane from HobbyEasy in Hong Kong. P/E sets are for the Civic and the smaller one is a Hobby Design for the Revell Audi eTron RS

The guy who owns Atlantis is a "Pete"... Round2 did sell off a bunch of old tools to Atlantis at one point a few years ago, neither company is ever going to admit exactly what they bought/sold, nor commit to what actual inventory they have. Although the Serpent was reissued under the Lindberg name, and that means Round2 owns that tooling still at the very least.

Your local vendor was almost slower to stock than NuNu, that kit's been available since mid-April.

In that time frame it was probably because Wal-Mart's buyers didn't like it. Those folks killed off all sorts of projects in the mid/ late 90s and about took out the Domestic Kit Manufacturers as a whole.

It was reissued in 2010, my LHS still has one on shelf. I've never not found one at a model show. I know none of that makes the current Revell any money, but it doesn't seem like that 2010 reissue sold particularly well. If there's anything to doom a project or reissue it's lackluster sales of that thing previously or a related piece of subject matter. We still haven't gotten a modern pickup out of anyone because of the utter clunkers the '97 F-150s that were simultaneously released by AMT, Revell & Lindberg. Revell completely ignores any sort of modern high end sports/supercar because of the disaster that was the video game inside a model kit project.

They can re-pop the Cyclone, it's been reissued long after any of the S-10 versions. What they don't seem to have anymore is the regular S-10 drivetrain and suspension parts to make a RWD truck. So the recent mish-mash reissue came with the Cyclone suspension and AWD drivetrain.