Tom Geiger

Again guys... it's not about us. Kits like the Starsky and Hutch Torino, Elvis Meyers Manx, Beverly Hills Cop Nova, Batmobile, Herbie the Love Bug / Spiderman VW, Simpsons cars... the whole genre isn't for us. It's aimed at the absolutely HUGE TV and Movie Memorabilia hobby and show industry. Huge, slick professionally run shows across the country that attract thousands... complete with celebrity appearances and other hoopla. These events make our model car shows look like lemonade stands! And for these kits, it's all about the box art and the movie or TV show tie in. Most will never have the cellophane cut open, they'll be kept in memorabilia collections. Ever wonder why Round 2 hasn't done a new automotive subject, but has done new sci fi kits? Ever check out the Moebius website and see the skads of sci fi theme kits? Yea, it's a huge market, much larger than our ever complaining herd!

I was in a hurry today as we were on our way to my sister's house in New Jersey for a party. We had a large cooler with beer, wine and food we needed to keep cool so I stopped in the local convenience store / gas station to gas up and get two bags of ice. I followed a guy into the store and to the ice cooler. He reached in and grabbed the last two bags of ice! I didn't realize it at the time so I opened the door and... no ice! He spotted me and offered up one of his two bags! Super nice! Made my day and restored my faith in humanity... a small thing, but he didn't have to do that!

That wouldn't be a good thing at all! I never want to do the direct links of photos because each member has a limited storage area and needs to delete photos after a while, depending on how many photos they post over time. That's why so many of the older threads have red Xs instead of photos. When I post a link to my Fotki albums, I never intend to delete or move that photo so the picture will always appear in the thread. If we had to choose one way, I'd eliminate the site storage option as most of us have online storage, and others can get it for free.

The hood is like a small potato chip. Mine doesn't sit right at all. One story I heard was that the Surfite was a side project for Roth. As he was working on other cars and was laying fiberglass on them, anything left over got added to the Surfite as it sat in the corner of the shop. I've always loved the little bugger! Just because it's so different from the show cars of that period!

Hosted on Fotki With Avenel Hobbies closing in New Jersey, I made my final visit and saw these Danbury Mint pickups in the display case. I will buy diecast for my light commercial / pickup collection for vehicles that we'll never see in plastic. And I couldn't pass these up for $50 each complete with boxes etc. They are a '29 Dodge, '31 Chevy and '42 Ford pickups. That's equal time to the big three!

Hosted on Fotki Well I added the passenger seat in my version!

H Here's a reference photo I used when wiring up my Trabant And here's my engine bay so far. You did a great job and picked out a few things I hadn't. Note that the X on the left inner fender well is supposed to be wiring, so I hit mine with black paint. Also, I saw small wires running from front to back on either inner fender, I believe those are for headlights, etc. so I added those as well.

I haven't hit the work bench in a while myself. This has been a crazy year here with my wife having heart surgery, and me working from home to help her recover. So I've been preoccupied, and haven't had the time or patience to work on a model. And it's summer! I'm spending my day light time outside fighting with weeds! One thing that's always helped me is to clean up or reorganize the model room. Once I have everything in it's place and the bench cleared off, I usually want to work on something. I'm like you, I have a dozen projects that just need to have a little focus to get done. Time goes by fast and I don't realize how old some of those actually are!

I cannot tell a lie Harry! It's a Danbury Mint 1929 Dodge Pickup. I know the photo is too sunny but I made the display base today for taking photos and wanted to see how it looked in a picture! I will buy a diecast of a light commercial truck that I will never see in plastic.

Thanks AZTom! I just tried your method and it worked. A good work around until we can get the "insert other media" button to work again. Kurt- I've had the same issue with not being able to get an image to appear on a post through the "insert other media" button. I just did a few tests that eliminate it being a Fotki issue (I tried to use images from other websites - same result), and I tried it from another laptop that didn't get the latest Java update, so I've eliminated that possibility. So it's a board issue!

Trying Pete's solution to get a photo onto the board.... and since we don't have a preview button anymore....

That's from the good ole days when things were made to last! My inlaws bought their house in 1960 and there was an old tombstone refrigerator as a spare down in the den. We sold the house in 2014 and that sucker was still there working! My irk of the day... I spent some time today taking some nice photos. Edited a few and put them up on Fotki. And for some reason (probably the Java 1.8.0_15 that was uploaded yesterday) I cannot get a photo into a thread. The "Insert other media" "Insert image by URL" suddenly doesn't work anymore. I just get the in motion hamster wheel that keeps going forever!

Harry- I'll make you feel better! The people I bought my house from had money oozing from their pores (the wife's grandfather left them millions) so they put in this major kitchen upgrade. Included with this is a Sub Zero brand refrigerator, a commercial grade $10k unit... and it's built in. The first year we were here a cooling fan went out, $300. Last year the freezer compressor went out (it has two!) for $1400. And a few weeks ago the freezer was warm enough to make the ice cream soft, and the main control panel inside the fridge side went blank so I feared I was going down for a major bill once again. We do have a second refrigerator / freezer out in the garage, so when we've had issues we've been fortunate enough to spot it early and move everything out to the garage fridge. I checked to find a replacement.. it's 48" wide... and found that all the units that large were $10k. And since it's built in, it would be a problem replacing it with a 36" wide unit (which most household ones are!) since there are cabinets over it and other special finishes I couldn't match. So I call my reliable repair guy and he checks it out. His first look at the control panel told me this was going to be a major bill... then he discovered it was just a bulb! If he was dishonest, he had me, but I'm glad he was honest. And it was the same friggin fan that we replaced a few years ago. He remembered and did it just for the part cost. So I got away with $200 this time. And per your comment that the average refrigerator lasts 4 years... My daughter had a one year old Whirlpool refrigerator that the compressor went out on a short time out of warranty. The cost of the repair was going to be more than buying a new one. She looked up the CEO of Whirlpool and send him an email. It got answered by an assistant who arranged to get the refrigerator fixed free of charge.

Jonathan, your photos disappeared! What version of the Land Cruiser has been reissued?

When a model manufacturer decides to make a kit, one of the criteria is the final retail price. Revell and Round2 seem to aim for the '$25-30' range. Tamiya, Moebius, Hasegawa, Fujimi, etc. aim higher in the retail price range, $40-$70 I leave the Japanese companies out of any comparison because it's a totally different market, kits not created under the same conditions and budgets that the US manufacturers face. First off, the Japanese kits cost $40 plus here because they are imported and pass through several sets of hands, aka profit takers. Take a look at Hobby Link Japan and you'll see the same kits being offered much cheaper. Japan is a different market! As a country, they have many more modelers and hobbyists than we do. Somehow they never stopped building models. Thus, the companies there still have their own design staff in house, AND their sales per model are much greater than our current US market, so that design cost is spread across many more units.

I suddenly cannot add a photo link to a post. I'm on my Windows 8 laptop. Won't work in either IE or Chrome. My pc took upon itself to install Java 1.8.0_51 yesterday. This is probably the problem. Prior to this Fotki uploader wouldn't work, kept telling me my Java was out of date. Now that works fine! I rebooted to see if that would help, and the "New Content" button gave me no results. Now it's showing threads updated since I logged in. Is that supposed to keep my new content history, or redo itself every time I log in? What can I do to get my ability to add my photo link (to photos in my Fotki album) back again?

Ooooohh! I'll need to get that issue fer sure! One of my favorite show rods. Still I wonder why they didn't put a passenger seat in it with all those girls just standing around.

I wasn't around for the original releases of any of these kits so I never had them as a kid. When the rereleases came out in was it the 1990s(?) I wound up getting both the Blueprinter Double Dragster and the Tony Nancy pair at my model club meeting one Friday night. I got home and opened them up and man oh man! Suddenly I realized where all the parts I owned stuck to old kits had come from! The possibilities abound between those two boxes. I couldn't get to sleep at all that night!

I've always mentally sub-titled this kind of thread "How To Kill A Model Company". Some of the posters understand the MO of Moebius, and what it takes for a model tooling to be be commercially successful. Others just make a quick list of cars they'd like to see as models without much thought. And then there's those who will argue to their death that the world needs a full detail kit of a 1978 Ford LTD station wagon. Luc Janssen did a contest on these boards asking for a new tooling proposal for the model companies. He had rules and criteria, so you had to put some thought into it. One year I submitted the 1965 Barracuda, the next year I did the VW split window which has never been done in 1/24 or 1/25. The criteria included demographics of audience, number of versions possible and other things I forget now. Sooooo... Here we are suggesting / predicting what Moebius will do in the future. What is their MO (method of operation)? First, in today's market no company can make money off a tool that only has one possible version. Back in the heyday, when we were kids, ANY subject could recoop the tooling costs just on what they could send out as the initial offering! And even then, the companies tried to make more money off "spent" tooling. That's why the Beverly Hillbilly car became that silly pirate custom. There's dozens more examples. And the sad fact is that even those vehicles sold more copies then than our best efforts will in today's shrunken market. So what do we know about Moebius? They seem to choose auto subjects that have never been done before (for the most part) and ones that will afford them the most opportunities for different versions. For instance the Hudsons started out with a sedan and then a convertible, followed by a bunch of race cars in different team livery. I counted once and found eight different versions and I think that was before the 1954s! So Moebius has a plan, and really knows how to work a tool! And notice that they haven't strayed into 4 door sedans and station wagons. Those would surely be money pits best handled by the resin aftermarket. I'm sure others can pipe in with more criteria, please do! My kit suggestion would be my winner from Luc's contest of many years ago... a first generation Barracuda. There are three years, a 1964.5, 1965 and 1966. There's not enough differences between the first two, only a Valiant emblem on the back panel, different heater controls and a push button automatic on the dash of the 1964 car. That leaves two versions, a 1965 and 1966, which are the same car but very different in appearances. Options in these kits could include the base 273 V8 car and a Formula S version. Automatic and 4 speed transmissions. If we're in a gambling mood, add in a slant six engine. A well done chassis and engine compartment will earn many sales as donors to all those old Valiant kits we have. Then we get into racing versions. Depending on licensing, the first hit would be a 43Jr Petty car that would sell like hotcakes (I never did understand why hotcakes sold well?). There's a Don McEwen version, two years worth of an accurate Hemi Under Glass and a bunch of other drag cars. There was even a 1966 Monte Carlo racer. Then lets expand on that chassis. It's unique to the 1963-66 Mopars, but I wouldn't suggest 1963-5 Valiants as I don't know if they'd carry their own weight as issues. The 1966 Valiant was never kitted, only briefly appeared as a very rare promotional model. So the world MAY embrace a '66 Valiant and the race variations of that car. This leaves us open for a car that's never been kitted... 1963-66 Dodge Dart. This may be a winner since it's never been done and there are also a slew of race variations. So, what do y'all think?

I think it really does Steve! With all the anti-smoking laws today, we aren't exposed to smoke like in the old days. So we notice it even more. I certainly don't want to be surprised like when I opened the stamp envelope this week!

I guess this photo is making the rounds. The stamp collectors board I follow beat ya by a couple of days!

Art... an educated guess from you? Why? The romance has always been a convertible. People don't buy them in 1:1 because they're usually more expensive and not as utile as a closed car. But people build models of their ideal ride. Do you think that we consider the roof line an important part of the character of the car, so much that we want it on our models?

Great work, I'm hooked! Mark do you have any photos of the real truck or are you running off memory? And what happened to the truck?

Yes! It is a difficult little bugger. It has that classic Revell "fiddly" quality. Lots of realistic but tiny.little parts, but a lot of clean up of seams and ejector pin marks. Much of the chassis components are chrome, but I had to abandon it due to the clean up. So I used Testors Metalizers instead. I also found that the interior tub doesn't fit well against the body. I remember adding plastic to the edge to fill it in, and then sanded both the tub and body to a decent fit. I also glued on all the body panels, puttied them in and then scribed the seams to get it to look right. And I learned patience on that model. I kept putting it away for a breather, then going back to it. At one point I promised myself that I wouldn't start anything else until I finished it! Mine is a more mellow yellow than the real car. I built it back when the kit reappeared and we didn't have the Internet as a research tool. I worked from one photo where the color looks like mine... but ya know, I like my version better than Roths!