niteowl7710

The line for everyone who always claims they'd buy Tamiya kits if they made U.S. cars starts over there. Put up or shut up in January. ---------------------->

All of the current/future tech is very promising, but still runs afoul of the normal issue that isn't budging - licensing. It could theoretically work for parts and bodies so long as you ran them on a small enough scale to be seen as cottage aftermarket, but as soon as you try to crank out something in a significant enough volume and/or size (aka a full kit) the Cease and Desist Police are gonna come knocking. The question then becomes does someone with the technical wherewithal, financial abilities to buy the machinery and not living on borrowed time (well that last part is impossible) then also have enough bank roll - or ability to crowd source the funding to cover that up front and per unit % fee that is going to be required.

Correct scale...in your opinion. Even though there are only something like a half dozen tractors ever in 1/2x, and only a couple or other pieces of construction equipment. Yet the majority of tractors and all the rest of that stuff (including the rest of Hasegawa's newer line) is 1/35 military scale. I mean I understand the "that would be nice" of it being in automotive scale, but based on the actual evidence involved it seems like 1/2x would be the wrong scale.

Tobacco and Alcohol sponsorships got yanked out of model kits in the early 1990s starting with AMT/Ertl's NASCAR kit when a Rusty Wallace Miller Beer car was mid-planning changed to "Pontiac Excitement" - a livery it never ran - because a bunch of do gooder busy bodies had put pressure on the kit manufacturers that seeing such things would cause teens and young adults to stop huffing paint and glue and go get a serious adult addiction. Revell got around it for a hot second at the end of their run of NASCAR kits (early 2000s) by branding the kits as "Adult Collectibles" and not allowing them to be sold by major chain stores or anywhere else those eeeeeeevil liveries might prey upon children. For some reason only Martini and Jaegermiester have some how survived this prohibition, perhaps because the fame of "Martini Racing" supercedes the fact that Martini & Rossi is an alcoholic beverage company.

I guess I'll toss this in here, since creating a new thread seems silly, and it was featured at the show. This will be the next modified reissue from Beemax based on the TA64 Celina Rally kit. Decemberish release. Aside from the two new livery schemes, this kit also has newly tooled wheels for the '84 Oman Rally version. This is basically a combination of the two previous TA64 kits with the body from the tarmac rally kit with the suspension from the gravel kit. I had planned to pull two kits together specifically to make the Oman version, but bless those folks in Macau they did it for me at effectively half the cost. I already have Tabu aftermarket Oman markings, but I'm wondering how Beemax will handle the Tobacco liveries they chose to do here. The Haspengouw livery is Belga (Belgium cigarette brand) and the Oman is Marlboro. Pretty sure Studio27 did the Belga set, so the wording exists out there if nothing else. Because the P/E set they're calling out is the older Portugal Rally set which wouldn't have the tobacco liveries concealed within...

When Blitz bought the U.S. side they didn't get whatever inventory it was Revell possessed in EGV that they were using to do part fulfillment requests. So they can't replace anything unless it was either molded in Poland (aka RevellAG kits) or has been produced since last month when the new U.S. Office was established and they began to run kits again using the U.S. tooling. One last parting kick in the pants from the management of Hobbico on their way out the door.

The commentary I saw was some place in Germany that sold R/C items. But not being German, and machine translations being what they are it didn't say when it was released or if it was in stock.

Well I'll be darned, but Tamiya did do a 1/10 R/C of it in Jagerbomb livery at some point in the past.

You're right we should totally base a 2018 decision based on a 1/20 kit from 1978.

The Charger Daytona is also a car based on another car, that was specifically designed to be a race car. Which was basically so successful it was banned. Not a 1000CC 4 door economy car that they stuck a 1200CC engine into, made 2,400 of, to field to middling success in hillclimb racing (cause ya know there's so many of those kits floating around). If Revell announced it at Midnight on New Years Day, I'll be first in line to buy one because it'll look great next to a pile of Trabants. However it's bordering on patently ridiculous that Tamiya would kit one on a whim over a mound of more obvious, more Tamiya choices.

It still has a pair of Cadillac logos for the front and rear on the decals, along with all the engraved scripts, so I'm not sure how directly effective just skipping the Cadillac on the box would keep GM from chasing after them it they wanted to do so. Should also be noted to anyone considering this kit, it's molded in Banana Yellow like the box art car.

The upside down decals were also done with the M3 Rally kit that was Bastos sponsored. The words are half upside down and chopped in half and the decal sheet is in the P/E backwards so it can't be seen through the packaging.

Well this is the great dilemma of the hobby revisiting the 70s-90s in auto racing. EVERYTHING was sponsored by eeeeeeeevil tobacco and alcohol at that point. The next reissue coming from Beemax is another '84/'85 Celica Rally kit that has not one, but TWO tobacco livery choices (Belga & Marlboro). The great irony of the "Vice Ban" in models is the people it was designed to "protect" are now in their 40s and want to build more models of things with verboten sponsorship liveries.

Ehhh I won't debate the size of the European market - although it doesn't seem to be able to keep Heller solvent for more than a year at a time, regardless the car in question only had 63k copies made over an 8 year time period, so even in Germany it can't have been THAT popular a car.

I don't object to the oddity of it all, bit why on earth would Tamiya kit an obscure German economy car? I mean given the Trabant and whatnot, that seems to be more a Revell project. Considering how few new automotive kits Tamiya actually does anymore, they have to stick to subjects that are either important in Japan, or have instant recognition world wide. Not something that people outside of the EU have to look up on Google.

Looks like a review sample. Test shots wouldn't have decals and instructions.

The only Fiat 131 with an engine I know of is the old ESCI rally kit. Italeri is about to reissue it. From everything I've ever heard and read about it that kit is pretty horrid and a royal pain to assemble.

A touche, I admit I didn't really pay attention to that post since they normally don't do anything at this event. Well if it's really ALL NEW, I'm tossing my guess in as the TS050 Le Mans/WEC car, they already have both Toyota and Gazoo Racing licensing. The latter is supposedly impossible to work with, but Tamiya already managed to with both the Mini4WD TS050, as well as the 1/24 Toyota 86 Rally car that Mr. Toyoda infamously drove.

I'd be surprised to see anything come out of their little Open House they do, historically they haven't announced anything new, and it's just been a featuring of their fall releases. The Heritage Z should be getting released just prior to the "Fair", so I would expect all the 1/24 attention to be focused on that "new" kit.

What gasser parts are you guys expecting in that '55? That particular kit has only ever been a 2n1 Stock/Street Machine since it was tooled up in 1989.

It's not Discord like a fight or lack of harmony. It's Dis-Cord like taking away a cord. The software isn't so much a chat room, although it has that functionality, it's a VoIP (aka voice chat), and more recently a video chat platform similar to Skype. The combination of cell phones and VoIP services are effecively what killed off hardwired (dis-cording) phones (I'll wait here while you all tell me how you still insist on paying Verizon for a house phone). But the idea you can TALK to people in another country for FREE was once pretty outrageous. Anyways Discord is primarily used by gamers in situations where large numbers of people need to be able to voice chat with one another while playing (Call of Duty, Fortnite, World of War craft, etc). I'm not sure what putting a "room" on Discord has to offer over a Google Hangout per se.

Yeah but in the gap between the 2009 Challenger/2010 Camaro and the pre-paint/simplified '13 Camaro/'14 Mustang, the Mustang was released as a full 2010 GT and Shelby kit and 2013 Boss 302. 2010 was also their last full Corvette kit after doing "annuals" throughout the 2000s and of course well before until the pre-paint/simplified C7 came out. Which is why most people will point to Revell deciding to effectively abandon modern cars to adult builders.

Revell was around plenty long enough to do something else with that 2009 tooling, they just for whatever reason never did. Makes you wonder if that and the 2010 Camaro were designed as one and dones, or there are more versions tooled into them that the sales figures just dictated they weren't going to do. Lindberg shot themselves in both feet with the Chargers. The R/T and Daytona were never sold as Lindberg kits, but rather as Lincoln Mint kits by Testors. The Super Bees sold like farts in church and ended up getting blown out at Ollie's. Then the police kits didn't come until the now infamous "West Coast Warehouse Fire" and by that time they were 4 years overdue and the body style had already changed in 2011.

Kit has been released in Japan this morning, and H.K. last week.

Breaking cover this weekend at a smaller trade show in Osaka was the announcement by Hasegawa of a new tool Toyota Starlet. This is another one of those cars that ran in JTCC in the late 80s (like the Gemini) so many versions coming.