niteowl7710

Salvinos which is the most Murica of all the U.S. options still had to go to China for tooling because they couldn't find a U.S. supplier to make the tooling. Heck they can't even find a supplier to do minor inserts and fixes to the old Monogram stuff without doing backflips through hoops of fire. Their kits are $54.99 (via their own website) for the NASCAR and the 1/20 Indy Cars are $79.99 and ONLY available through their website (and trackside). For legacy manufacturers (Round2 and Revell) who's prior management 3-5 owners ago decided to off-shore manufacturing it doesn't make a lot of sense to have two tooling banks in an age when, in the case of Revell, they don't even have their own warehouse space.

No they were not there, neither was Atlantis, only Round2 in attendance.

The kit has been around since the early 80s and all of the various releases are fundamentally all the same, so any review of it will cover the new one (minus the 3 new parts and decals).

So granted this isn't for April per say, but rather for Round2's early Summer releases. Those MSRPs were $37.99 **48 Hours Ago** and were originally $33.99-35.99 when they were listed prior to the March 4th implementation of the first initial round of tariffs.

Well I stand corrected the original info I saw months ago said it was an 833. Must have been that it's an '83 733...too many darn 3s! Irregardless it's still not a new tool, or the right generation of BMW. Not a real way to "backdate" the original RoG kit show either since that was manufactured decades before CAD/CAM.

Take this in the humorous way it's intended... Well that's not a new tool now is it? 🤣 Plus the car in the Stranger Things is an 8 Series, not a 7 Series.

For those who have been waiting on these two kits, they're now in-stock.

It's not pre-panicking the 125% tariff is in effect as of 12:01am yesterday. I hope someone comes to their senses, but to be fair China isn't doing anything to help in this International Game of Chicken we've been invited to be unwilling participants in... I cede the floor, please go back to discussing these two thrilling SnapTite kits that have been around for 20+ years and are available second hand in plentiful quantities at much lower prices than these new boxings.

Tariff changes don't apply to items shipped prior to the tariff going into affect. I don't want to parry with a mod, but don't try to correct people if you don't understand how the process works. Reference - Working for nearly 30 years in International Logistics specializing in Air & Sea Cargo, Cross-Border Automotive Parts Movements between Canada/US/Mexico including In-Bond Trans-U.S. and International Postal shipments.

54% seems like a bargain given it's now 125%. Given there was previously 0% tariff on toys (which is where models fall as far as USCBP is concerned), it's a straight doubling of the production cost rather than an incremental fraction. There's a profit ratio built in there between what it costs them and what they sell at wholesale. The tariff would be on that wholesale value and that price would have to be adjusted in whatever way is needed to maintain that original profit ratio. If a kit costs $8 to make and is then sold wholesale at $14 that's a 57% margin. To maintain that ratio with a 125% tariff the production cost increases to $18 and the margin takes the wholesale to almost $29. Which puts the MSRP around $60 and shelf price around $45. Revell might be able to slide around all of that by shipping their kits piece meal and then boxing them in Germany and claiming thats their country of origin. But Round2 & Moebius are staring down the barrel of a policy disaster, to say nothing of the actual importers of Chinese military based stuff (Meng, Border, et al). We're already seeing pre-orders being canceled on upcoming items at places like Squadron.

To be fair that image is just a screen shot from Tim's video 🤣

GravityUSA hasn't existed (as in their entire web page is long gone) for more than 5 years now, so it's rather impossible to order from there by accident. Don't even get me started on the prior 3 years before that permanent disappearance. I'll also toss out ProScale Paints based out of the U.K. as a possible source. $6 (U.S.) per bottle. Lacquer basecoat (requires a clear coat), and they'll custom mix nearly anything you can find a color code for at no upcharge. With the grand new taxation scheme in effect the U.K. import tax of 10% will be less than the E.U. one of 25%.

Hopefully this will go some ways in alleviating the concerns about the contents of this kit. Since I immediately saw a bunch of folks on social media convinced it would be some variation of already existing old tooling rather than the next variant of the new tool Blazer. I do appreciate the "Retro Box Art" as it does match the styling of the High Roller LUV kit as well.

The '68 Roadster is the "B" side of the '69 Corvette that infamously had the first boxing printed as being a "429" when it was a new tool in 1989. That later came as Baldwin Motion and most recently Yenko versions. The Roadster was stock with a soft top & hard top, then became a 2n1 with Drag Parts, and also "Rebel Racer" SCCA/Trans AM race car. That's still a good 5-6 years before 1/25 kits began to come out as Monogram branded kits (50 Ford, 55 Bel Air, etc) and would have been the same Revell time period that the '69 Camaro & '32 Ford Series would be tooled up, along with the '64 Fairlane Thunderbolt.

Sure...it'll be out February 31st... In seriousness the Shizouka Hobby Show next month would be the next chance to see if they've made any progress on it. It's in a rapid prototype format in the original picture, and the BMW M4 GT3 that's sitting to the left has been in perpetual "Coming Soon!" for about a year now. Sooooo again end of 2025, maybe 2026, probably definitely possibly 2027...

Designs and injects...but the tooling itself is done in China.

FWIW the ending of the de minumis exemption is back on the table for May 2nd. Currently only for items shipped from China & Hong Kong. It will subject individual mail pieces to a 30% duty or $25, which increases to 30% or $50 June 2nd. No guidance from the magic felt tipped pen as to whether that's a "whatever is higher or lower" type of thing. There's also no guidance as to who, how and when the duties have to be paid in order to actually receive what you order. This of course could magicly go away May 1st, or May 10th. Still no word if Customs refunded the duties paid by people during the first four day attempt at eliminating the exemption earlier this year.

Aoshima has announced (for August delivery) URAS styled versions of their new tool 180SX Difference between the two appears to be wheels and spoiler height, with the Work VS-KFs on the white car being new. This comes on the heels of the recent (within the past two weeks) release of a factory stock 1989/1991 kit. The 1991 car (top) was also done by Tamiya and Aoshima's body choice directly mimics that kit's box art. I don't believe anyone has directly replicated the "1st Gen" ('88/'89/'90) 180SX before.

Tamiya is the only one to do a 4dr of this generation of Skyline, and it came with a Suzuki Gemma Scooter. Aoshima and Fujimi (along with two more kits from Tamiya) made all of the other coupe and racing versions. All three company's kits were made back at the time when these were new cars and therfore are each in their own way motorized dreck.

While the show doesn't happen until May, the things that will be featured at the show will start breaking cover as the pre-orders need to go up in advance of the summer. To that effect we got the Hasegawa show announcements (June/July delivery) today. To whit the most significant items are a new tool Nissan Skyline R30. I'll do a victory lap here as this is a project I've been saying needed done since the introduction of their excellent R31 series. This plugs one of the last significant "crappy old kit" gaps in modern (80s and up) Skylines and the early Group A years of Japanese Touring Championship action. Also featured the first racing version of the new tool EF Civic line - the factory stock kit was just released last week.

And for some ungodly reason Revell is reissuing it as the Captain Hook again in 2025. That kit is less than 50 pieces and the bed makes up 28 of them. The Captain Hook is actually a 1:1 truck for what that's worth. The tow bed in this kit isn't the same one from the Midnight Cowboy, and it's very specific to the 1:1 truck. The bed's front wall is also the rear wall of the Chevy truck cab, so I'm not sure how well that would fit anything without major surgery. I'm never one to tell someone how to build their own model, but given that Moebius has just given the modeling world the most accurate to date 70's tow bed, I don't see the point playing around with these literal kid's toys,

I wouldn't necessarily expect to see them next month. The new owner is based on the Chicago side of Michigan and at this point there isn't any (well not much of any) inventory existing after Matt Wells sold it all off.

But it doesn't, the Midnight Cowboy (Sneaky Pete) is a glue kit of a Chevy with a modified "Peterbilt" hood from 1977. This weird-o short wheelbase Ford is part of a 3 kit SnapTite series that has a Styleline, Stepside and "Dually" beds tooled up in 1981. Might be a happy accident that it fits, but it certainly wasn't intentional - given the tow bed from the M.C. has never been reissued, but the Sneaky Pete was in 2001 as the "Alley Rat".