Tom Geiger

Photo taken from my model room window

Very cool! I started shortening one myself but never went too far with it!

Ha! Just caught the view of the hood! Guess we’ve gone International !

i believe they are using the clear lens

Love it! I have one of those Jaymar fiberglass Valiants, as well as a Falcon 4 door sedan. The Pringle description is a good one! That’s exactly how they do that!

Welcome! It’s a good bunch of characters here!

That is such a very cool period piece!

Guys it’s a matter of business and decisions are made based on facts and metrics that we are not privy to. The paint business is complicated. There are enormous EPA regulations that get tougher all the time and everything that doesn’t leave the plant as product in the can leaves as haz material which is expensive to get rid of. The cost of the product itself is nil. It doesn’t matter if it’s the little Testors can or the large Rustoleum can, product cost is about the same. Same for the can. Where the cost comes in is the size of the run. The smaller Testors can costs more to produce than the larger Rustoleum can with more product! The larger Rustoleum can can be sold at thousands of stores across the country. Walmart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot just for starters. You can set up equipment to run Rustoleum Gloss Black, both the formulation process and packaging line and walk away. Thousands of cans! The economy of scale. The smaller Testors cans are another story. Small market. Being kind, between Hobby Lobby, Michaels and hobby shops maybe stretching it to a thousand outlets. The runs are shorter. Change out of product in manufacturing is more costly per unit. The fluids between runs to clean out the equipment between colors are all disposed of as haz. Then you need to maintain staffing to sell to that smaller market, costs the same to talk to Michael’s to sell paint in small quantities as it does to sell rail cars full to Walmart. So in the end it had nothing to do with “serving a market” or that Testors has always sold hobby paint. It’s a matter of how can I maximize the output and profit from my factory. Using their numbers and logic we’d come to the same conclusion. Now I’m also a believer that if there is a market to serve, there will be a smaller and nimbler company that will jump in to fill that need. We are seeing that with kits today. It may get interesting!

Amen, agreed! When I was in high school I wanted to be a journalist. I was a stamp collector so I set out to get autographs of people involved with newspapers. I sent out about a dozen of these “Freedom of the Press” first day covers and only got one back! Charles M. Schultz was very nice to me. He signed it and returned it in my stamped envelope along with a handwritten note wishing me well in my journalism studies!

I think the Snoopy stuff is a wise choice. No doubt the molds were in good shape and ready to run. These will sell to the Peanuts memorabilia crowd at cartoon and nostalgia conventions. Much bigger market than model cars! The last episode of American pickers ran older segments including a visit with a Coke collector who had an entire building wall to wall of Coke memorabilia. Multiply that by thousands of collectors.

Kwap! Less detailed ? That RR has more detail and scratch building than 99.7% of the folks in this hobby accomplish! Beautiful model!

I already made the decals!

Cool! Very nice build of a rare kit. Especially like the doggie! Did anyone see the recent episode of Chad Hiltz show where he cut up a decent 57 ?

But exactly where?

It’s interesting.. the original Dodge van kit was done around 1972. MPC updated that kit every year for at least a decade. I wanted to find a body to cut up and went through my junk ones, then the good kits and every one I had was different! There were the big changes like small vs larger tail lights. The grills changed every year. But there were subtle changes like the pattern of the roof ribbing ! Below Is an album of the different kits over the years: Behttps://public.fotki.com/ModelCitizen/model_cars/my_model_car_box/dodge_van_kits/

Love it! ❤️ But your driver has no head..howz he going to see to drive? ?

We need a photo! Dodge vans exist in scale! Edit - just saw your photo in another thread.., yes that kit exists, even down to the long wheelbase. The kit has been updated over the years. Your photo shows a 1970s van, unfortunately the early small tail light versions are expensive!

Today’s irk? The friggin Walmart “Back To School” commercial with kids wearing masks! Enough!

A while back I thought about slimming down and saw that many of the kits I was willing to shed, were the same ones guys were selling for $5 and $10 each at club meetings and local shows. They are worth more than that for parts to me, so I’m hanging on! As an adult I started back in the hobby with about two dozen kits. A dozen from my youth that I wisely hung onto and another dozen I had bought the next 15 years just because. It’s good to keep your future options open!

With the long...

I see Revell’s strategy here. Release the roadster first and everyone will jump and buy them. Then later release the more desirable coupe and people will jump to buy those, Release the coupe first and when the roadster comes, everyone is already satisfied with the coupe, and those who really wanted a roadster already left the roof off the coupe!

When my girls were young we built a few models. I still have them in my display case. Evidence of time well spent!

Keep on dreaming

I love it ! I’m a big fan of unusual light commercial vehicles!