niteowl7710

Simple, that old stuff exists. The reason Atlantis went dumpster diving at Revell (and by proxy Salvinos buying the old NASCAR stuff from Atlantis) is that stuff is. 3D scanning opens a world of possibilities, but other than shaving some R&D costs off the top doesn't make the costs associated with making a new tool kit any less than the costs of making a new tool kit. Make no bones about it Round2 is spending large piles of that cash they got when they sold 49% of the company to that investment group a few years back. They've got to be getting close to a million dollars worth of new tooling at this point and there's still more coming in 2023 & 2024 - Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Round2 is reissuing the curbside version of the new '63 Nova Wagon next month with a Coke box...because you have to amortize that cost somehow. I'd buy a Maverick because of the oddity of it if nothing else, but it's still going to cost what it's going to cost - to say nothing about doing the same sort of subtle upgrades all the recent projects got like the Nova, 4070A, '68 Coronet, et al. You still need to sell at/around the same number of units to turn a profit.

That tooling is going to wind up in the same dumpster as the guys who have have the traveling kit museums pretending to be vendor tables at model shows. Eventually they'll pass from this mortal plane and their family will pitch or fire sale it all.

Everything would have been moved over to Romeo where Seville was based at back in 1991 when they took over the assets of Jo-Han. At this point Okey has owned whatever he owns for closing in on 23 years and other than re-packing some Furys, 56 Plymouths, Rambler Wagons and bodies for some X-El nothing has ever come of it. I don't have high hopes of whatever he does have being stored properly for the past two decades either to be honest. At this point it might be worth scrap steel value and nothing else.

I mean it's a very good possibility that Okey is in possession of most of, if not all of what tooling was still left when Seville sold it to him. Lots of inserts went missing - by employees selling them so the story goes - before Seville got hold of it, but they clearly produced a bunch of stuff under that USA Oldies label, plus the kits they ran for Testors. They were the same type of company that JoHan was in so much as Seville Industries made plastic car parts and ran Jo-Han on the side. If the inventory was so poorly managed and you don't have a background in tooling it's very difficult to tell what a given tooling might produce. It's not like Okey (appears to anyways) has a injection machine, or the financial wherewithal to pay someone else to run hanger shots of whatever he might have. Not to run Okey down, but based on the notes he added to the instructions to the few things he did release by making whole kits out of leftover parts it's pretty clear he had no idea whatsoever what he was looking at, and didn't even have the ability to pay someone to make a clear glass piece (to replace the smoked one) in the Plymouth Fury which would have cost a few thousand at most, let alone all the rest of the improvements for that Furyt hat were once touted that never materialized.

Powerslide is doing three variants (on one sheet) of the CV Roadrunner as well as the red Petty Enterprises #99 one driven by Fred Lorenson in January.

New Powerslide decals offering an alternative to doing the new Salvinos JR 1971 "Chrysler Plymouth" as a Petty car.

Testor never made or owned a single piece of tooling, everything was either run by another company or contracted out in some fashion. The F-19 you seek was actually made by Italeri, and then reboxed by RPM in a Testor box...it was one of a slew of Italeri kits resold in the U.S. in that fashion.

November pre-orders were in at HLJ, so I deported the kits to my front door.

Camaros are also 1/24.

Thanks I figure Round2 will clone it first thing next year knowing my luck ?

I suspect point of personal pride aside to do the best you can with what you're given, whomever built the box art model for this (since it's the same one as their table display model) also built the Ramp Truck, the 67 250 and the "Day 2" 4x4 that's still coming. Four models in maaaaaybe a months worth of deadline (if you're super lucky) for a pittance that means building box art models isn't your actual job. I wonder how much research you'd actually do to take things to that level of accuracy. Based on everything I've seen of box art/display models over time...it'll be everything possible just to get them done and out the door on deadline.

Box art models are traditionally built without instructions or decals and under severe time constraints (2-3 week turn arounds). Finding people who can build things in that manner at that speed in a neat and clean manner suitable for use in promotions is hard enough. Expecting them to be an expert in the car/truck at hand, or have the time to research small details is pretty much impossible.

Supposedly he had to sue Seville over the naming right after he bought all the tooling bits and NoS leftover parts because he was under the impression he bought that too and they were under the impression he didn't...or so the story went back when the whole thing changed hands. There was a point where he had to call it JoHan Models or some such cause he really didn't have ownership of the trade dress and name. I seriously doubt he owns any of the actual IP of JoHan at this point since he doesn't possess a single piece of tooling that's in one piece as all of the stuff that got run for Testors by Seville has gone AWOL.

A bigger issue with 3D printing as it currently stands is there's no industry standard by which all printers operate. Until the machines function as ubiquitously as a toaster or a microwave instead of a whole new expensive and time consuming hobby I don't see a future of actual Revell "PrintHome! Model Kits". Files that work on one printer often times won't work on another without tweaking to supports/slicing to say nothing of the wild variation of build plate sizes, print depth (height) and resolution. It's great for aftermarket, it's great for home use (if you have the time, energy and finances to sink into learning it), but it's still quite a ways away from it's full potential in the "Press a Button and Out Pops XYZ" that is touted for the machines.

Studebaker's legacy is owned by Eaton, and as we know from Moebius Hudson is owned by Stellantis. I doubt either one would allow Okey to commercially advertise products using their names that are obviously for-profit with his attaching the Jo-Han name to it (as opposed to being just a guy who prints some 3D aftermarket stuff). The Powell name and company died with the last of the Powell Brothers in the mid-60s, I'm not even sure there is a person to ask for permission to use the name at this point. The subject is an interesting read, it sounds like every single one of those early Plymouth chassis they used for these things was recycled out of L.A. Area junkyards. Talk about gambling with your safety.

Local Hobby Shop had one of their "Jumble Sales" over the weekend. Which usually means a bunch of dusty old stock out of the back and some kits out of the owner's personal collection. So this is now officially the most expensive piece of styrene I own (although I have a few resin pieces that have cost more). All there and untouched... Also grabbed some more mundane items.

I'm not saying they're running crazy sales, but the exchange rate between the US Money Dollar and the Euro is floating around a 1:1 ratio in the first time in forever. The byproduct of that is a drop in what European kits (Revell, Italeri) and aftermarket costs to purchase by a few dollars compared to a year ago.

Another order in from SpotModel as I abuse the great $ to € rates. One of the Le Mans winners for my collection of those (and Fujimi 917Ks in general). Also the primary reason for the order Decalcas did a "reprint" on these Opel Manta wheels for this specific decal sheet. I dilly-dallied around and missed out ordering the wheels when they were originally released. So I grabbed them and the decals after getting a re-stock notification email. Love those 80s sponsors...Philips Car Audio...when was the last time they even made a car stereo? ?

I'm guessing Charlie is thinking the E58 was a Police Package only thing, which of course as you pointed out it wasn't. It was for the engine and HD components. A38 was the code for "cop stuff" and a slew of Mopar squads are described as "A38 E58" models because both of those are required on an official Police Package car of those eras - those fender tags make it easy to determine a legit one (which are somewhat collectable) and a "clone" made out of a regular low powered civilian car. As far as I know Dodge didn't recycle either fender code into the Police Package Charger the way GM badged a number of sedans as "9C1" or the entire three generations of Vics that were "P71"s.

Container has finally arrived, pre-orders ship through next week.

Oh as an adult I'm well aware of the issues regarding that kit. It just struck me as bemusing that for a car that came in 13 colors the same one has been used 3x by what would be technically 3 different companies (I believe the MPC issue from 1988 came post merger, but pre-discontinuation of the name).

Was that blue and silver combination the most common option on a '71 Boss? I built the original MPC kit as a kid when it was reissued in 1988 and it was in that combo on the box art. When RC2 reissued it in 2004 it was also blue/silver...and now this box art/media build.

This is a new tool, or well 75% new tool kit (as it uses the base chassis/suspension that's universal to their own 1/25 kits) from Salvinos, it doesn't have anything to do with the old MPC kit.