niteowl7710

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".

They wouldn't need to run test shots on that. It was one of the kits they ran when they were still leasing the tooling from Tomy before they actually bought the whole thing. It's been 15 years, but Round2 has done it before. The previous 2010ish release and the original 2006 release in the "Rides Magazines" box are all the same kit. Used to be a point where you couldn't give those kits away.

PA cracked down on what were pretty lax regulations on what it took to get a Dealer's License (to get Dealer Tags). It's to the point now where you basicly need a physical location that you'd actually be selling cars from to be approved. Used to be if you had a desk, 3 chairs, a phone line dedicated to the "business", a 4' x 6' sign for the business and enough space to display 3 vehicles without the doors touching when opened, you too could be a used car dealer in the Commonwealth. 🤣

My local hobby shop has it for $28, which is $5 more than the new tool Blazer. Because it requires two tools to be run in order to create the kit. Looks like MSRP (aka HL shelf price) is $35 (vs. $32 on the Blazer).

From what I've seen it's a diecast mold they've run plastic through similar to DDA and all their Aussie cars. The GWM Tank 300 is a Chinese Domestic (CDM?) Crossover. Looks like it's exported to Australia, South Africa, and several countries across South Asia.

I got the Revell Hot Rod 3 Pack of Tri-5s for Christmas when I was like 8 (1985). I refused to build another Revell kit until well into the 90s. Which is probably why I still have an affinity for AMT/Ertl and Monogram.

It's not a kit you can build in "two days" like he said he attempted. It's actually quite hilarious that he even tried to rush build that hot mess. Should come with a warning - Caution Heavy Lifting Ahead To Even Complete Assembly.

Like Matt mentions test shots do not have decals available for them. Decals traditionally aren't sent to print until 30-60 days before the kit is going to be sent to full production

In a fanciful catalog put out in 2021 BeeMaNuNu vaguely announced (It was in the R&D/Licensing section) an Evo version of the 205 TI6, which is the car that came out the one Tamiya made a kit of back in the 80s. Tamiya's is also the Group B T16 version and not the Gr. A "factory" class Rally car which the new decal sheets are for...they're also labeled as being for the new Heller kit.

Warner Brothers pulled all licensing and stopped allowing the show to be aired after Dylann Roof murdered 9 people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC in 2015. Amongst that dirt bags many issues was an obsession with the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee, which most people incorrectly identify as the "Confederate Flag", but wasn't actually ever used as such, nor is the Stars & Bars of the Confederacy. But one entity that DID decide to use that flag to much adoration of the uneducated masses (who joined in decided it was the "Rebel Flag") was of course the Dukes of Hazzard which put it on the roof of the hero car. WB decided it wanted no part of any poo tornado associated with that flag and what it symbolized to certain folks out there. I'm not here to argue meanings or what's in people's hearts, but for the scum in question it was a symbol of the worst kind of bigotry, hate and racism. For a while the DOH Charger was on the box without the flag being shown in the artwork, but the decal was still inside. But with the licensing pulled it's why every release of the Charger has been the City Charger & Country Charger (or soda sponsored) - depending on whether it's the new SnapTite kit or the old glue kit. I've tried to keep my answer as sanitary, fact based and devoid of politics as possible. Keep in mind everyone, anybody deciding to add their opinions is likely to start an express trip to pain town that will get this thread locked and you an indeterminate length forum vacation.

Decalcas has already announced several decal sheets for a rally version...that is the one that's very close to stock - not the Gr. B T16 monster. I wonder if that's going to wind up in some sorta - make it yourself - type deal or if Heller plans a Rally edition and the Spanish have blown their cover.

Nobody has a Dukes of Hazzard license, those don't exist anymore for anyone. Having a license for a diecast would in theory smooth the road to a kit as a door opener, but otherwise means nothing. You'd have to license it all over again for a plastic kit. The majority of the other police cars in the movie CPD & ILSP are 1977 Royal Monacos, which have a different front end and interior than a '74 Monaco. Chicago's also almost a 100% no to licensing something like that because the fallout over how CPD was made to look in the movie they refused to allow anyone to use their likeness. That's why Hill Street Blues is "Metro Police" while clearly being CPD. That has continued to the present day. The existing MPC Pinto Wagon is an annual parked as a 1979, the movie car is a '77 Pinto wagon which would require back dating the tooling, or creating a new front mold insert - which after the 70.5 Camaro is something they'll probably not be high on undertaking.

No doubt, My office is on an Island in the Ohio River just North of Pittsburgh and we're next door to a liquid fuel distribution rack. Every so often they burn something off over there that makes that whole God forsaken island smell like hot superglue.

Looks I'm a huge Belushi fan because of my dad, and I'm also closing in towards the middle age of 50. But the fact is Blue Brothers came out when I was 3, and Belushi was dead by the time I was 5. People who were in their late teens and early twenties when Animal House and Blue Brothers came out are now in their late 60s and early 70s. Those folks are already pretty well represented in the hobby already. With Revell putting out models of a "TV" show currently in production which features cars that actually appeal to the current middle aged gentleman, it pains me to say there's probably not really a market for a '74 Dodge Monaco (2n1 of course) in 2025. The movie, glorious musical that it is, just isn't relevant anymore.

They've got a bunch of things coming, they just re-showed - for much larger public consumption on YT - the '72 Duster, '65 Cuda and '60 Chevy Wagon just last month. They released a whole slew of stuff in January, one kit last month, and March is usually iffy because of Lunar New Year shut downs. It's hard to get to worried about them not shoveling out the 100th reissue of some 60 yr old kit for a month and suddenly deem that as being a huge indicator that Round2 suddenly doesn't care about models as I've seen people here and elsewhere on social media claim.

There are still several "big stinking plastic factories" in the Houston Metro area.

That's not a DTM car, that's a 24hrs of Nurburgring entry. 😎