niteowl7710

More fresh decal goodness, this time from S.K. Decals. 2017 24hrs of Spa winning Audi, and 3 sheets for the newly released NuNu BMW 320i

Be interesting to see if Academy actually goes back and digs out the Pony II, Stellar, and first gen Excel tools and maybe sees fit to make some actual clear glass parts for them. They're by no means great kits to begin with being from the 1980s, but the biggest drawback to them is they all have weird blue/violet tinted clear parts for all the windows.

The general gist of the Korean is a celebration about this being the first domestically made car in South Korea in 1975, as Rob pointed out. It is also a new tool as the other one is a Pony II which didn't arrive until 1982. You do indeed get the young lady in question, and she is pre-decorated as you see her. The model is also the 2nd in their "Stationary Series" that uses their MCP (Molded Color Plastic) gimmick meaning highly polished body shell and everything else being molded in gray and black. It also means this thing is coming to you molded in Stoplight Red.

Speaking of which, slated for mid-January is the first livery. Overall Winner for Race #2 of the 1993 JTCC season.

I think the ProStar thing might be a Western States vs. East of I-35 thing because there are still several companies with the follow up ProStar (now called the LT) including Crete, Knight/SWIFT and Western Express. The uphill battle you face is that sure you can make the kit modular for various WB and sleeper lengths, but I think for the average modeler - who is gonna be who supplements the actual sales of these things, truck builders are a niche of a niche inside a niche - is going to want a 379 Pride & Class or a W9 84" Studio. The same way there's a handful of people who want slant 6s, or Biscaynes, or whatever base/low trim. But to sell a volume of kits they need to be Impalas, GTOs, and Hemi Cudas.

Yes well there are plenty of inaccurate 30 year old kits floating around, and then never get any cheaper when they get reissued. To that end it's not reasonable to expect that Italeri is going to allow AMT to sell kits for less than Italeri themselves sell it for, that's a bit of cutting off one's nose to spite their face. Shouldn't be baffling, a new tool truck kit would be pushing 3/4 of a million dollars to get to market, you wanna sell 10k of those then Round2 would have to charge $75.00 at wholesale to get their money back, which would put the MSRP up around $135.00. Neither the 379 or W9 share enough parts with each other or anything else in their respective line ups to do multiple versions from the same base tooling like Moebius did with the LoneStar/ProStar. Moebius also has the cautionary tale where the ProStar which was expected to be the big volume seller of the two took over 5 years to sell out the initial run of kits and that's with part of the production run being sold to RevellAG to rebox in Europe.

So looks like Round2 is going to do an Auto World Exclusive run of 500 pieces of the Courier in it's Stepside configuration with Firestone Super Stone livery (and new wheels). https://www.autoworldstore.com/product-p/scm063.htm

So possibly of interest to those following the James Bond Mustang, direct from the kit literature distributed today. AUTHENTIC DETAILS: Featured in a Vegas chase scene from the hit movie, Diamonds Are Forever, the 1971 Mustang Mach I is a kit sure to please every Bond fan! Fully paintable, this kit includes NEW movie-accurate water-slide decals, ALL NEW 1971 front end parts, NEW chrome wheels and pad printed tires, 351 cubic inch V-8 engine and more!

I dunno about truck guys, there's an entire separate fit being thrown one forum down over the costs of the next two AMT reboxed Italeri kits.

I agree completely, but after this Revell 4Q thread took a multipage excursion into ugly headlights and obscure European vehicles, I was trying to not re-derail my own thread... P.S. The S-10 is on the shelves.

Yes my point to the HL refusing to close is cited by other people above. Locally they tried to sell flats of bottled water to claim they were an "Essential Business" even though I'm pretty sure glitter and scrapbooking supplies are not. There's also the part where HL refused to pay Covid related sick leave to hourly employees, cut most hourly employees to part-time, and blah blah blah I don't want to turn this into another HL flame thread. But my point being those folks for all their "values" certainly know how to make money regardless of how it's accomplished, and the salient fact remains they aren't losing a single penny when they sell their kits for "40% Off".

The only truly "newly" tooled parts on the '29 reissue was the channeled frame and transmission mount - it comes on a parts runner that looks like a boxed frame rail rather than the normal round shape you'd expect out of any model kit. I suspect people saying there is a substantial or total re-tool of the parts haven't seen a '30 kit up close and are presuming what contents came with what kit compared to the re-mix of parts that come in the reissue...(use of the SBC vs. Nailhead, inclusion of the "Halibrand" wheels, the '30's roof insert is ungated and included in the '29)

I think SpotModel's release date of February is probably far more realistic than anything within 2020. They've still got 3 backlogged kits from this summer to try to cough up before then, and I suspect we'll see the 24hrs of Spa AE92 Corolla before the M8 as well since that's some driving lights and a decal sheet away from how the AE92 was released as a JTCC car in a Beemax box.

Well the other alternative is they don't make any profit, can't invest in things like the 70 1/2 Camaro, 72/74 Vegas, 64 Olds, and 63 Nova, and eventually go out of business because it's far more important to tow some magical $20 line, than to run a functional business. Also keep in mind folks you're all wringing your hands over MSRP of kits. Now I know there are more than a few poorly run hobby shops out there that rip off their customers by charging the MSRP, but in reality NOBODY should actually be paying that. You don't pay MSRP on a 1:1 car either. Does anyone think Hobby Lobby is losing money when they sell things for 40% off? Considering their overall behavior, and refusal to shut down earlier this year specifically - they're not going to give money away for anyone/anything. That 40% off MSRP is still 40-60% more than they're paying for their inventory. The problem really isn't with Round2, or Revell, or Moebius at all unless the end goal is to continue to artificially cap prices and try to actively kill the hobby on behalf of everyone who thinks it's dying anyways.

The two latest GT3 decal sheets from RacingDecals43... 4 bottles from Splash Paints

It's printed as part of the bar code on the bottom of the box between the bars and the SKU numbers.

One way to figure out the concept of specific Ollie's runs. One of you folks with the KW and/or International, what's the run date on the box? Because both of those kits were "blown out" LAST Christmas, and the ones I have are dated 6/19/2019.

Picked up the other Belkits Metro 6R4 Rally kit from UpScale Hobbies.

Cut it 50/50 with Mr. Leveling Thinner. That goes for all of the X, XF, and LP lines of bottle paints.

If Revell wanted to make a new tool kit for this forum it should be a 1:1 tin foil hat...

There are Hemis in both, and they're not the same size at all, which probably is mostly to do with the Magnum being a dual use diecast/plastic kit. But that's always been an amusing aside to that time period of Revell. Two kits with the same engine and one's more than 2" (in 1:1) bigger than the other.

But in all fairness if AMT/Ertl doesn't nearly get run under by the mismanagement of Racing Champions putting it's tooling at Tomy who didn't have an idea what to with it either and finally find itself under the umbrella of Round2 would we see any of this happening? Because if none of that happened and AMT had continued forward to be a direct competitor to Revell and Moebius wouldn't they putting their money into new kits just like everyone else? For better or worse they've all but officially attached their wagon entirely to the idea of catering to a customer base old enough to remember this stuff when it was new. I wonder how long an end game it can really be. Seems like every month this forum gets a post or two from people having to hang up their sprue cutters because of various health concerns. One thing is for sure Father Time is undefeated and it'll come for us sassy-mouthed Gen Xers before too long as well.

Repeated gating and ungating the tooling, especially on something thaylt's so old already, to release the Parts Packs in different ways is way more expensive and labor intensive than running the tooling wide open and then clipping the "offending" parts off and throwing them into the recycling hopper to be ground into more styrene.

They're stupid fun to me. I've bought so many resin transkits that came with 0 instructions or advice on how to assemble the box of bits, to say nothing of pieces being too long, too short, warped, and/or entirely shaped wrong to fit the base kits. Alphas are self-reliant, you don't need anything but paint and glue, and they assemble like a big set of Legos in a lot of cases. They have a nice bludgeon-your-neighbor heft to them so you can handle it and not have it explode into a pile of resin dust. Curbside and basically no chassis detail other than front and rear splitters and exhaust tips in most things not rear engined. But to me those "cons" don't outweigh the positives if you subject matter floats your goat. Aston Martin DB11 is the next one coming out at the end of next month. Photos don't show the fact it does come with die-cut "windows" that have the black surrounds preprinted and several sheets of P/E.

Of the Alpha kits? They're $180 shipped from Alpha directly, and you can gleefully be like me and be the first person in the world to have one for all the FB and IG likes. So far the cheapest option had been catching them on pre-order sale at HobbyEasy out of Hong Kong, with the mail system back up and running you should be able to get one delivered for around $165.