niteowl7710

You're on it right now. Revell's actual website and FB presence are still a *cough* work in progress to put it mildly.

FWIW the WoO Sprint car is Joey Saldana's, not Kevin Swindell. Unless you're talking about the origin of the kit, which would be Sammy Swindell, although I think the Sprint Car kit is older than that in terms of who's car it was supposed to represent first in the late 80s.

The actual Priority Mail boxes you get from the Post Office have a flat minimum price attached regardless at to what an item weighs. So it is more economical to ship stuff in plain brown boxes either buying them new or recycling older ones since you then can ship for Priority using the size and weight scale rather than having an artificial pricing "floor".

With things like the Hasegawa Celica, Bluebird & 2000GT you're also talking about tooling that at it's newest (the Celica) is 16 years old at this point. The rest of it is over 20. At 21 I can remember seeing very few import kits around any hobby shops, and those ones were a few random Tamiya cars, and a lot of military stuff. Nobody was tooling LHD parts up for kits that were effectively not even being sold to places that had LHD cars. The explosion of HLJ, 1999, eBay sellers like Plaza Hobbies/Tokyo Hobbies, and even other far afield vendors like Hobby Easy, Spotmodel, Hiroboy, etc weren't even thought of back then, or had effectively no real profile in the U.S. Hobby Search (aka 1999) is celebrating their 20th Anniversary this year - they were founded in 1999 ergo the website address and nickname. HLJ just celebrated it's 25th Anniversary last year, and up until maybe 8-10 years ago was basically a big chain e-mail list of product numbers and descriptions and you had to know what it was you were trying to buy, like the old SASE lists from Hobby Heaven. There was no website, there were no pictures...Now we have real time coverage of hobby shows on FB & Instagram.

Well now that they're finally making a Gasser out of the '57 Ford itself instead of the wagon, we can finally build what was the "no brainer" car from this arrangement in the first place. Given that the car was working on by the guys at D&M in Downers Grove, who also did the '62 Corvette Gasser that Revell did. I'm like the last person in the world to build a Gasser, but this is something I've always liked the looks of from the first time I saw it, and was harshly disappointed with the first "57 Gasser". https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/1957-ford-gasser/

Well he also managed to (counting the Model King releases) make NINE different kits from one tooling. It might be a car he was very personally attached to, especially given his father's connection, but it was also a sound business decision in terms of tooling amortization.

I know, I know...my apologies...

I suspect for the same reason U.S. model companies don't make RHD versions of U.S. cars exported overseas. There's probably $15k worth of tooling done to the Z to make it fully N.A. Spec, and the only reason that's viable is because they sank $30k or so into tooling up the rest of the LHD parts for a Rally version of the Z that came out at the end of 2018. Spending $50k all in one go is quite a bit of cash to sink into something you're selling specifically outside of your home market, to a market that lets face facts is notoriously cheap, tends to hate anything imported and/or not a GAAAAAAAAAAAAASSAR, muscle car, or hot rod. You'd have to convince Hasegawa they'd sell 5,000 Celicas or 510'd Triple Ses in America at a $10 premium over the existing kit prices (to pay for that new tooling) before they're going to seriously consider it.

You might as well go buy an AMG kit then, because that livery is being worked on by an aftermarket decal supplier as we speak.

I didn't say it was an Impala. I said the Impala had already been reissued earlier this year. The T-Bird & Caddy has been announced at the Tokyo Hobby Show, but the Impala was just released between the shows. I was pretty sure in this crowd people knew the kit announced for this show was a Buick.

Yeah now that they're finally doing the promised 488 GTB (along with the 812 Superfast), I feel my wallet lightening. I don't mind the Spyder, but I really wanted one with a roof on it. My interest is piqued with the Huracan Evo they have cooking, and how easily it will be to wedge an Aoshima Performante chassis into that resin body rather than using the slab that will come with it.

Tamiya - Reissue of the Mazda 787B in what I suspect will be the Charge Livery from their Le Mans win. This is a much in demand kit with crazy resales prices which Tamiya will Hulk SMASH with a Japanese sale price under $28. Also they are reissuing their AMG GT3 kit, this time with the Leon Cvstos livery from the 2018 Super GT GT300 Championship team. To further gin up speculation for a Tamiya Fall Release announcement for the Tokyo Model & Hobby show in October the AMG GT3 is kit 24350, and the reissue of the 787B is 24352. So what will be the "missing" kit #24351. The last time there was a missing kit number it begat a Ford GT...

Hasegawa - So Hasegawa's brand new tool kit isn't a surprise specifically. They had teased this back at the end of 2018, and was originally supposed to be released back in March (per the tease). 1986 Toyota Starlet EP71 Turbo S Next installment of reissuing all the 1966 American Cars? Check. Resin "sexy blonde"? Also Check. If you missed it the "1966" (looks like a '65 to me) Impala was reissued this year already between hobby shows. Modified in the sense of a new set of decals, the next JTCC R31 Skyline is here. This time with the Diesel Kiki Team from the 1988 season. Their new tool R92CP kit gets it's version modified reissue this time as the YHP Hewlett Packard livery from the 1992 JSCP Series, specifically the 1000km of Fuji. New rear cowling pieces and new wheels. Lastly of interest to anyone who likes Japanese cars, but has always lamented the lack of LHD. Finally there is a solution. With the tooling of the LHD parts needed to make the Monte Carlo version of the 240Z Rally kit, they've decided to tool up the correct grill, bumpers, left hand mirror and side marker lights to make a legit U.S. Spec Datsun 240Z HLS30

Beemax - For the purposes here I am also putting NuNu Hobby/Platz in here, because they're also the same company just different operating names depending on who's distributing their kits. Mitsubishi Starion Gr. A - Looks like the initial release of this new tool will be liveried for the 1987 Japanese Touring Car Championship STP cars. They won a pair of races during that season. There will also be a P/E detail up set. Audi R8 LMS GT3 - Over at NuNu we're getting this one in the Audi Team WRT liveries for the 2015 24hrs of Spa. The #1 car started 6th and finished 21st. The #2 started on the Pole and finished 2nd. There will be a P/E Detail Up set as well.

Yes indeed it is that time of the year again. Preorders are flying for the products being announced and displayed at this year's Shizouka Hobby Show - which is officially May 9th - 12th. Jonathan has already teased the new tool kit from Aoshima in another thread, but we're going to take a comprehensive look at upcoming items here. Aoshima - So yes the new tool from Aoshima for the Summer is the 2017 Toyota NTP10 Japanese Taxi. This kit will be offered in two versions one molded in white, one in black. There is a subtle difference in wheels between the two. Also coming from Aoshima - Wataru Akiyama's Toyota AE86 Levin - Modified Reissue - Initial D Series - This is one of a half dozen existing Aoshima kits that have/are getting new parts to fold them into various parts of the Initial D Series 2016 Toyota Crown Police Car - Modified Reissue - Getting a new grill, and requisite police parts (several of which are also newly molded) to make a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Traffic unit LB Works "Charaska" Nissan Skyline - Modified Reissue - New overfenders, new rear end pieces and exhaust. Going back to the retro kits after beating us over the head with FIVE R35 variants. 1990 Toyota Estima - Modified Reissue - This is the minivan we got as the Previa here, but it's a JDM only kit. This is getting a substantial rework of from the original with new bumpers, new wheels, and other bits to make a legitimately factory stock version of this vehicle. One last thing from Aoshima, that isn't really part of Shizouka but is another Modified Reissue, in June they're releasing a 1998 version of their new tool Nissan Skyline ER34 25GT kit. This is the earlier "pre-facelift" car which has a different front fascia most noticeably, but also has different wheels, rear end treatment, spoiler and other bits. This is why this kit was molded with the separate front clip pieces to make this conversion not require an entirely new pieces of body tooling.

I got two via Japan because of the lack of AG distribution here. Probably get more when the rebox is released if they build up decently.

Yes we have food on site.

The Pajero came in this morning too, although your HLJ stocking mileage may vary as always.

Hot off the injection molding machines, this is available this morning in Japan.

Considering the only difference between this kit and the other Comet drag kit is the decals, I doubt the delay is anything related to the kit production itself.

Racing Decals 43 makes both of the "retro" Daytona liveries as well as a C/F decals sheet, and are the only ones actually approved by Ganassi Racing if that sorta thing appeals to your concious. Frankly I wouldn't go near anything made by Slotfabrik with a 10ft pole, they're notoriously awful decals to work with and usually have a plethora of errors and aren't actually designed to fit anything in particular.

Studio27 is doing a P/E set for this, should be out in Early April in Japan.

February is Chinese New Years, so pickings are always slim in March/April while the factories spool back up. There were multiple releases in Dec/Jan/February and outside the 1% here most people won't realize when what kits got where in terms of there being only three automotive releases in March & April.

I just think they risk overplaying their hand to Coke collectors, I mean almost everyone has a turn off switch where "enough is enough". Right now there are a DOZEN Coca-Cola branded kits in the catalog counting these future releases, which doesn't factor in the kits that have already run their course and are back to being OOP. Some of the things that got Coke branded were pretty quick turn around reissues of something that had just been put back in the catalog a few years prior. IMHO the danger in that is that it's going to kill the sales of either the "generic" reissue or Coke reissue which everyone comes second to the general hobby market. I'd be more on board if they were throwing in decals on things like the '78 Dodge P/U release - a kit that tangibly has never existed as the kit is being released - so you get all the sales from the builders AND the collectors, instead of trying to cater to both separately.

Seeing as this kit is chugging along in development I felt it deserved it's own thread rather than being buried in various Hobby Show ones. Yesterday the folk at Beema...err NuNu Hobby shared the current tooling test shot of this upcoming kit. Be interested to see how many more tweaks and whatnot this is going to need before we see an actual built test shot "in color" instead of out of raw plastic. The Audi is expected to be released in 2019, perhaps as early as Late Summer as the Porsche 911 "program" has been split into two distinct kits a 911 GT3 and 911 RSR (GTLM/GTE spec).