niteowl7710

Those 3 Jeep kits were kind of interesting insomuch as they aren't U.S. Spec, but rather European trim. There was a multi-year period there in the mid to late 90s when Tamiya had handed the development keys to Tamiya Europe in Germany.

Tamiya laid the ground work for all of this in the mid-2000s when they stopped putting engines into their race cars kits - initially packaging them with diecast metal floors to give the model the "heft" it lacked being a curbside. Fujimi then put that idea on steroids when they did their line of GT3 kits in 2010-2016 that aside from a few (now unobtanium) Asian liveries were produced as "blanks" and the aftermarket did all the heavy lifting. Since then there have been very few race car kits of ANY genre - aside from F1 - that have had engine detail unless it's something like the Lancia Delta S4 or Rover Metro 6R4 where the engine is in the back easily visible through the hatchback glass. I think the only two modern race car toolings that actually have engines, but arguably don't need them are the Aoshima Murcielago R-SV and McLaren F1 GTR Longtail. Revell's Ford GT is a great example of a huge waste of money where they give you all that engine that not only will you never see again, they don't give you ENOUGH of the engine to display it outside of the car, or go through all the work of making the body work removable. They could have taken that $20k worth of investment and put it to work in making the body assemble in a better engineered way - compare it to the Tamiya Ford GT and get back to me that the "full engine" vs. the 4 part "all you see engine" is worth it when you compare the overall models and their comparative ease of assembly.

Not to mention, never ending grudge aside, the whole engine/no engine thing is inherently a builder-centric problem field. It's sorta like over complicated, over engineered chassis assemblies. Sure the 27 part rear end of Round2 '17 Camaro has at least as many pieces as the real car, but after you spend a couple of hours slogging through assembling it - are you ever going to look at it again. Most people I know don't display their models with the hood open unless they're competing at a show to keep the dust out. I know some people live and breath engine assembly, it's their favorite thing about modeling -which is totally cool and all. But costs are what costs are and if you want a project done and something has to get cut...the engine is the least needed thing in the mix. What the other choice...ship it with an engine, but a flat plate for the chassis with no engraved detail? Delete the interior and sell it as a slammer?

That #3 sales ranking is based on Pre-Orders no less, since the kit won't be released in Japan until mid-June. Over here the demand for kit was so great Tamiya doesn't have any to sell in their own online store, and one of the major Midwestern distributors who sells on eBay blew through their allotment of 100 kits in a little over a week.

The U.S. market isn't that miniscule to them, besides the fact we have the only actual functioning international office (Tamiya Europe is a collection of vendors with no central office), we got this kit a full month in advance of the entire rest of the world. You couldn't even pre-order it in Japan before it was released here as a matter of fact. Also while the Mustang itself is the best selling sportscar globally, the GT4 specifically has precisely three chassis (all being run by the same team) in British GT, and Multimatic made a one-off appearance at the Paul Ricard stop of the French FFSA series that was a chassis that was run by their IMSA team and returned back to the U.S. after that one race. The other 27 or so chassis that were built are all running either IMSA or the GT4 side of what was the Pirelli World Challenge - which I think is currently branded "GT4 America" after Blancpain's title sponsorship with SRO ended and was replaced by Amazon Web Services.

Well the '87 kit was the "parking" of the annual Fox body kit at MPC. MPC would of course be subsequently purchased by AMT the next year, and this kit - magically aging a year into a 1988 - was released there as part of the Millennium series in 2000, and a Wally World checkerboard box in 2004. So given there are 12 & 16 year reissue gaps, I'm guessing it's not exactly blowing the doors off the warehouse sales wise at any part of it's history. Once this kit "died" all of the Fox body kits have come from Monogram and then unspeakable one from Revell. AMT didn't do another Mustang annual until the SN kits in '94-'97, which has already netted us the '97 reissue back in 2014. Given that the '63 Impala is sort of the one example where Round2 has gone in and legitimately "fixed" a kit - adding parts that it was missing, or improve it (as opposed to just restoring missing customizing parts), it's not really any surprise that if 99% of the tooling catalog isn't worth of updates, this thing certainly isn't either. While I agree your point on how to engineer the front clip is completely on spot, that wasn't how they did it 33 years ago, and now in addition to re-tooling the front core piece, depending on where the tooling splits - aka the seam lines that run across the front (and back) of the kit - you might need to re-tool the side core pieces too to make that possible. I don't foresee a world were throwing $30k+ at an old annual to replace the headlight design is in any way feasible.

Pretty sure I built this as a 10/11 year old in the MPC boxing that Tim shows in that last photograph. As for the headlights, the car itself has no buckets, just a flat place to put the chrome parts. You'd not only have to tool up new clear parts (easy enough), but then either tool up headlight buckets - and expect modelers to hack their model apart to fit them (more expensive, and off-putting for the non 1% builders who are the main consumer). Or lastly completely re-tool the front core piece of the tool, and the hot garbage fire of delays related to the 1970 Camaro are ENTIRELY about that very concept because it turns out if you measure out the area and parts in 2020, they're mostly likely not going to at all fit the tooling that was done in 1987. Round2 found out that the '70 Camaro isn't even geometrically "square" from one side to another when they started fiddling around with the new front core piece to make the full bumper version. Which is probably why the Vegas are getting entirely new bodies at this point.

The '52 Convertible & '53 Hornet's chrome trees only differ in the front grille, extra set of wheels - and the deletion of the '53's hood spear. If someone actually bought the Mel's Drive-In '52 they might be in possession of whether or not Moebius had that chrome clipped still or included both grilles. The whole point of the '52 MDI kit was the fact that the '52 grille is different and wasn't in the original Hornet. Which begs the question why there hasn't been a '53 Convertible kit yet...

Geez guys, calm down, it's just a straight reissue of the original '53 Hudson kit that was their first 1/25 car release. All of the subsequent variants (NASCAR, Convertible, '52) have ALWAYS been part of the tooling from the time it was designed. They managed to release it correctly the first time, why 9 years later would they be rendered incapable of pouring plastic through a mold?

Well ya see...there are all these parts pack tires they'd like to sell you...

They're on the distribution list for June. Wouldn't be surprised if they don't beat the 1st of the month since the two May kits were in distribution early enough a few places got them the last couple of days of April - which means there are now "no" kits for this month.

Because the current Revell rating system is based on the total number of parts? ? I mean come on it can't be THAT hard, it wasn't even a Skill Level 3 in the old system. *I kid, I kid*

The hobby tends to be very cyclical in inverse proportion to the actual economy. That being it tends to do well during and directly out of economic downturns when people don't have the money to go out much or work on more expensive hobbies. Consider the Great Recession and the follow out - Round2 was leasing and then bought all the AMT/MPC tooling, Hobbico (before it went utterly sideways) infused Revell with a life line you could argue led to many years of new tool kits. Moebius entered car models, you saw the slew of Asian manufacturers based in Hong Kong, Macau and China explode like Meng, Beemax/NuNu Hobby. A resurgence of Japanese manufacturers in Aoshima & Hasegawa, with Tamiya. While I certainly wouldn't nominate a global pandemic and tens of millions of unemployed people as a catalyst, sales were at best trending sideways. As social distancing continues into the Summer and early Fall I would only expect sales to continue to be robust, and I'm very intrigued to see what the established companies (and perhaps newly created ones) do with this sudden combination of cash flow and "captive" audience. Barring flare ups so bad it requires shutting things completely down again, it's gonna to take another 6-8 months or longer (presuming there even is a vaccine) before people are going to want to congregate in large groups, and probably half a decade to untangle the mess of the economy to put it back to where it was when 2020 started. As a side note, once we can actual have model contest/shows again in 2021 (maybe late 2020 in some spots) those entry tables are gonna be LIT. ?

I admittedly haven't been in HL in over a year, but have they gone to SKU "guns" yet, or are they still typing everything in manually? It would be next to impossible to take call-in/web orders for products if they still don't have an automated inventory system to know what they do and don't have on hand without needing someone to run around the store and physically check. You'd also have to put in some sort of system to keep people from putting in say 5 one item orders and applying a 40% coupon to each one. With the number of hobby shops that have gone online via eBay or their own sites, I'd think people would want to support those LHS struggling to make ends meet, even if they aren't in your specific local area over worrying about whether or not a multi-billion dollar corporation has which locations open. Is the addiction to that coupon that bad?

To anyone who's been pacing a hole in their Stay at Home in anticipation, the Supernatural Impala is on the distribution list for June (along with the old AMT Car Hauler).

The ENTIRE Rat Roaster is new tooling. Ed Sexton said at the time that the original '32 tooling (remember that started back in 1998) had been "pushed to it's design limits" by the various other kits released from the tooling. So by the time 2013 rolled around it was more economical to tool an entirely new kit patterned from the 1998 CAD data with the changes for the Rat Roaster plugged into the design.

Soooo....how do we blame the Chinese for this? Anyone? By the same token is anyone totally shocked, this is the same U.S. facility that produced all of those warped Dodge Ramchargers.

Testors would reissue anything that people would produce for them. They didn't actually make any of their own kits.

I think you're confusing two people, as I'm the one who was looking at a distributor list, not Matt...I never said it was NEVER coming out, I just said it wasn't - as of yet - on the distribution list for things that Revell announced for the 2Q through July. It could of course come out August 1st, but this thread was started at the same time that Revell put out that 2Q release/restock list and the Wrecker is not part of that slate of kits. That was the only bit of clarity I was attempting to add to the proceedings.

Yeah last release was 4 years ago, and it seemed like it was on the shelves for about 15 minutes before the limited reissue run sold back out again.

Aside from the fact that the stock number would indicate which kit it would be. It quite literally says Peterbilt 359 Tractor Cab, that doesn't leave any ambiguity in my opinion.

Looking at a Vendor Distribution list the Pete 359 Tractor is due for a restock in May. There isn't a listing for the tow truck through at least July.

At the time Ertl owned ESCI and there was some tool sharing in both directions. We got this 928, along with the worst Diablo kit possible, the Italian market got a few American kits boxed as ESCI/Ertl. For other 928s out there Fujimi has a couple of variants all based on curbside tooling, and Italeri offers a full detail 928 S4 which is a '87-'91 model.

The aero tabs were only used at certain race tracks and the only period reference photos I can even find of them in action is the Wolleck's car at the race the decals represent where it used both the rear and front fender "flaps". Gregg's car as liveried out of the box used neither set.