niteowl7710

The 71 Coupe was something done afterwards in terms of the tooling, there was never a roofed car baked into the original tooling. So doing a '71 Convertible would require making an additional insert with the 71 Upholstery Pattern on the Convertible specific door panels. Which granted wouldn't be the world's largest investment, but I'm not sure they'd necessarily sell well enough considering the pace of the 1972s. The only one of those that really moved quickly was the one with the Linda Vaughn figurine that also happened to have the correct grilles to do a Cutlass Supreme.

Says Wes Hurst, that's Wes' Model Car Corner the guy who paid the freight to release the SJR (Jim Rogers) designed and produced Asphalt Modifieds last year and more recently the race car trailer. If someone here is a member of his group and can actually use a pause button with more efficiency that FB Live is most likely posted there. I'm not joining his group just to take better screen shots.

...there already was a Convertible version. Three of them. This is kit is based on the '72 Convertible kit with a new body, glass and interior pieces.

The only thing Okey has the "rights" to is the name and tradedress of JoHan. Tradedress being the logos and labels of the company. Otherwise he physically owns a pile of scrap steel, which I suspect these many years later is now utterly useless more so than it was when he got ahold of it. Okey has been flying very close to the wind for the entire time since he spent all the money to get what he got and I wonder how he's managed to preserve and protect that tooling from rusting away into the netherworld. Not that it really matters since none of it is complete to begin with and he doesn't seem to be in possession of the few pieces that were run last for the production of the Testors kits.

I'd wonder what "Steve's" all-in cost is though, as the industry standard $250k for a new tool (which was back in 2018 and Covid and inflation have done a number on certain costs) is the whole thing, not just the tooling steel. It's the R&D (be it 3D scan of a kit, 3D scan of a 1:1, or the old measuring with a black and white graduated grid), conversion of the data to CAD, someone who takes the CAD and splits it into a model kit by separating the CAD into pieces and designing all the parts runners and how the parts are alloted to them. The tooling steel, cutting the tool, EDMing the tool. Artwork for the instructions, box art and decals. Producing 5-8k sets of instructions, boxes and decal sheets. Producing the kit (injection) and production & packaging the kit. Trans-Pacific and then Intermodal U.S. Shipping Costs. Oh yeah and of course licensing.

Model kits and associated paraphernalia are classified as "Toys" by the Federal Government for Customs purposes. There are no Customs Duties on anything that falls under the umbrella of "Toys" regardless of the country of origin. Some of the larger overseas sites and especially eBay will collect your state sales tax, but there's no other charges beyond the kit and shipping. The only minor caveat to all of that is if the value of the imported good and shipping exceed $800 on a *singular* shipment you will have to file a Certificate of Self Importation with U.S. Customs & Border Patrol which is a single sheet of paper swearing you are importing the items for yourself and not for commerical resale.

This is an Academy kit and is currently only available in South Korea. There are several people in S.K. who sell it on eBay that will ship overseas. If you're in the United States there is no such thing as Customs Fees on Model Kits or related products. If you're not in the U.S. you'd need to consult your home country's Customs to determine what type of duties and/or taxes would be due.

It's a Kawasaki KH400 A-3/A-4, reissue with a different molded in color fuel tank. Was a modified new kit back in 2019 off a new tool KH400 A-7 tooled up in 2018.

Yep it always has in the factory stock boxings.

October Releases...the real ones not the imaginary wishful thinking ones that come in the videos a month earlier than actuality are... MPC - '69 Cuda Polar Lights - Gold Plated Batmobile AMT - Fruehauf '40 Exterior Post Van Trailer Fruehauf Tanker Gulf "Livery" 1/16 1955 BelAir H/T 1964 Dodge 330 (ex-Lindberg) Green Lantern "Black Beauty" (New Tool)

Depending on how the construction of the interior and rear hatch area go, not only do the doors open, but it would also appear there's a perfectly good stock DMC lurking in there. The literature displayed with it says - Over 200 Pieces for Easy of Paint (gotta love machine translation)...meaning none of the movie schtick is molded to the body or integrated into the interior pieces. It'll just be a matter of whether or not you can build the interior and rear hatch structurally without putting all the stuff on there.

The Surf Wagon MSRP was the same $45 price. Which proves a point I've always said around here, the MSRP is meaningless, nobody is paying that price. You paid about half the MSRP, and now it's at Ollie's for $9 soooo...

From last weekend's model show... This month's SJR kit...

The current AMT kit is the MPC kit in lineage, but the original AMT body/kit is currently inside the Warren Tope race car. Don't know how well that sold the last time around (paging Justin), but again I don't see them necessarily permanently killing off one model for another.

I wasn't expecting full detail on a SnapTite kit per se, plus I've seen earlier box art stuff that showed that engine plate for the bottom. I guess I can't really gripe about the hole in the roof from a "Starter Snap Kit" aspect, but I would have rather had it be a panel line in the roof I could quickly fill rather than a whole missing panel that has to be fit and then leveled and then filled. Life's too short to fight with stuff that doesn't inspire me out of the gate.

Gotta say I'm rather nonplussed about that roof being cut open like that. Plus great googlie-moogilie that plastic is swirltastic. Maybe they'll see fit to at some point release a non-bond DB5, otherwise I think I might have to pass on this one.

The short answer is no, having licensing to produce a diecast doesn't not automatically grant you the ability to produce a plastic model kit, or even a different scale diecast. Furthermore having a "master" license from one of the Big 3 - the big expensive proposition that gets you through the door to produce your first item from their catalog and allowing you to put the "Ford Approved" holograph on the box doesn't grant you automatic license to create anything else from a given manufacturer without paying additional licensing and getting an entirely separate top to bottom approval of the project. In this sense a "project" can be the entire series of kits expected from a given tool. The example would be Revell making the '71-73 Mustang kit series, you'd approach Ford for licensing approval for the Boss 351, Mach 1, and theoretical Gone in 60 Seconds and '73 Mustang as one singular project before cutting the tooling. In the current environment the maximum length of a "Master" license is 3 years at which point you have to renew it and of course pay for another term. Of the Big 3 GM is the only one that maintains their own in-house licensing, Stellantis uses IMG, and Ford uses an 3rd Party firm in the UK. There is an overall "ease" in being an established customer of a licensor they get to know your staff and your products and in some cases the approvals are more of a going through the motions, and making sure all the tradedress on the box art is correct and whatnot, but you're still paying an individual licensing charge on each item.

4. If you "slice off the top" you are either permanently and forever damaging the tool in a way that they can never release a regular Mustang again, or we're back to the throwing a huge bucket of money at a body tool because you're going to need at least the top half of the mold, and perhaps new sides (I'm not familiar enough with the 1:1s to know if there needs to be different side trim and/or body shapes involved. 1/2/3 - Revell under Quantum still has a U.S. arm and plans to service the U.S. market. The '71 Mustang was a kit that was measured and designed here. It's is first a foremost a Revell USA release that happens to have a RevellAG boxing of it as well. Based on the fact that Quantum owns everything now they can go ahead an utilize the resources of this new kit to release the 007 kit. I couldn't swear to it, but I believe the Bond License that Quantum has is for Europe (with Round2 having the U.S./North American one). None of the upcoming 007 kits have an "U.S. Rebox" pending and the only way they'll come is in the Euro Boxing. Lastly it's a business case to do a '71-73 Mustang because the MPC kit is an unholy wreck of a model, even with the "fixed" front end. This goes back to an earlier point from another thread. Military Modelers don't ask these questions. They expect new kits of EVERYTHING all the time. A 15 year old kit is demanding a more modern re-do in that world. The MPC kit 52 years old at this point, and anyone who's been around the hobby for more than an hour knows what they're getting in that box. The new Revell 71 is state of the art, and something that's been needed for...well 50 years ever since the MPC became a 71 then a 72, then a 73...then sorta a 71 again, then sorta a 73...never had a right engine for any of the later year reissues etc etc. It's not much of a competiton to me, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we aren't buried in an avalanche of eBay sales of people trying to unload that MPC kit out of their collections now that it's been supplanted by the new Revell offering.

Actually I believe there's been a "regular" (aka no movie tie-in) reissue of the 70 Chevelle in the meantime as well. *double checks* - Yeah in 2019, the Reacher kit was 2014.

From what I've seen of the rest of the box art it has a 429 in the engine bay, plus the hood and the wheels at least.

Fixing it for real would require a new body tooling and a new clear parts runner and that'd run over $70k (probably closer to $100k these days). In the end for all the kvetching that was done here when we nearly burnt this forum to the ground with the battle over how bad it looks being a scale 2" too low, neither the "general public" nor the the licensor actually cared. They sold out of both releases of the kit in relative short order of their arrival, so it's hard to justify spending that money to fix a problem that only a fraction of their customers actually cared about...I cared to the point I never bought one because I couldn't unsee it, but clearly someone else was happy to buy mine in the overall scheme of things.

The Sidewinder is still their banner picture on Facebook and that change (to the Sidewinder) was just made on the 14th of this month.

You sir are what we call a "GPI"...Goal Post Installer. You just move them around to wherever you see fit to try to make your argument instead of just planting them in the endzone and leaving them there. Now do you want to clone a JoHan kit or what? Because that Johan Caddy doesn't have a "fantasy race car" or a lowrider as part of the kit. So you want to clone a 60 yr old kit, and then add a whole slew of new parts to it that have never existed. If I might...ahahahhahaahahahahaha *wheeze* ahahahahahahahaha. Ask the folks at Round about how well making the 1970 Full Bumper Camaro went and that was just changing a nose insert and making a bumper to fit a tool that was half as old as any JoHan kit you might want to deal with...The only thing cloning a kit does is save time in the process of figuring out how to break the 1:1 item down into a model, because you are for all intents and purposes copying the original layout. Adding mock race parts and lowrider bits, sorry but it would be easier to start from scratch and design it all to fit from Day 1 rather than beating your face off interchange issues. Then you can create a real chassis for it, not have the front axle go through the engine block and make a full depth interior for it while you're at it. The 1963 Nova kit was produced exactly how the original one came back then; they didn't make a new engine and a new trailer out of whole cloth to make a 2nd version of it. Also these forums represent the "top" 3-5% of the hobby in terms of interest and "fandom". They are not an accurate representation of what would actually sell in a retail format. 90-95% of the models sold go via the casual "accidentally found it" Ollie's, Wal*Mart, Hobby Lobby crowd. I'm guessing while you could generate interest in a 64 Cadillac - perhaps even enough to move the 25-30k kits you'd have to sell to turn a profit off the tooling investment - but saying "CLONED FROM ORIGINAL JOHAN KIT!!" is going to make those people go - Huh? Who? Jo-What? Because while nostalgia sells kits for Round2 for sure, people who were actually teenagers when that kit was new are now in their 70s (my dad graduated HS that year and he's 76)...the nostalgia gravy train has a very finite future.