Mike999

Yep, "Bear Bait" was the '79 Chevette kit. It had the 2 figures from the earlier releases in the box, but not the tent and other neat accessories. I never knew that until I read Faust's review of the kit. MPC 1/25 1979 Chevette “Bear Bait” (OOB) | The Sprue Lagoon (wordpress.com)

For anyone who might be trying to find them, those Lindberg lightbars were sold separately as "Emergency 911 Accessory Kit." Only 2 were issued. Kit #72716 had a Vector lightbar, kit #72717 had an MX-7000. Both sets also included the pump shotgun from the Crown Vic kit. Emergency 911 Accessory Kit, Lindberg 72717 (200x) (scalemates.com)

Thanks, great write-up on this oddball. The box art had me thinking it was Fujimi from the 1970's.

Week before last, I bought 2 kits at Wal-Mart, priced at $24.97 each on the aisle display. But when I checked out, the price was $19.97. Instant $5 saving on each kit! There was no mention of the discount on the aisle display, or anywhere else. Didn't know about it until the self-checkout machine rang them up at $19.97. Last week, the aisle display was gone. The remaining kits were on an end cap in the Toy aisle. Bought one and no discount - the price was $24.97.

Holy carp! What is it with that kit? Here's somebody on eBay asking $101.99. With FREE SHIPPING! Gee, thanks a lot, Santa Claus. I thought these people may know nothing about scale models, and believe these are antique kits made in 1966. But the eBay listing clearly says "Is Discontinued By Manufacturer: No" and "Release date: April 27, 2017." So the seller should know better. Weird... Revell Trucks '66 Chevy Suburban Plastic Model Kit 31445044090 | eBay

Why I love flea markets, aside from stuff like the Craftsman '64 Corvair I found this week... There are always lots of vendors selling DVD's. I had the 2-disc set of "Wonderland" (2003), and the main movie disc quit working. It just wouldn't load. Tried all the usual fixes of cleaning etc. with no luck. Found another 2-disc set this week at the flea market. It works fine, and cost me one whole dollar. The review part: for those who've never seen it, that's an excellent true-crime movie. Val Kilmer is great as burnt-out porn star John Holmes. Holmes hooked up with a gang of the dumbest and most inept crooks ever. These criminal masterminds decided to rip off one of the meanest and best-connected men in Los Angeles, club owner and drug dealer Eddie Nash. That ended with the Wonderland Murders in July 1981, known to the LAPD as the "Four On The Floor Murders." Four people found in a house on Wonderland Ave. in Laurel Canyon, beaten to death with lead pipes. The Wonderland case was the first ever in which the LAPD videotaped a crime scene. Those police videotapes are on the DVD set and they are...grim. One LAPD detective on the case also worked on the Manson murders. He said the Wonderland killings were even worse. The set also includes a short bio film about John Holmes, a nearly 2-hour documentary about the real murders and some other good special features. One complaint I've heard about the movie: it shows the same things happening from different points of view, like the famous Japanese movie "Rashomon." Some people found that confusing and hard to follow. It didn't bother me.

Sorry, I'm better at ideas than actual useful information... You could build it as a custom made wagon for a ritzy resort. I've always wanted to try that with the '65 Lincoln. The Broadmoor Resort in Colorado had a series of Cadillac station wagons custom-built in the 1950's, to haul guests and their luggage. The wagon was called the "Skyview" because of its clear roof panels. A lot like the roof of that AMT '65 Lincoln. Here's a Skyview that has seen better days, but the clear roof panels are visible.

Citadel makes a flat acrylic paint named "Leadbelcher." I guess "Gunmetal" wasn't cool enough or something. The makers say: "Designed to give a smooth matte finish over black or white under coats." I've used it on bare plastic, no undercoat, and it worked just fine.

Flea Market Day! I found a couple of New Ray 1/32 scale Indian motorcycles, to possibly use in 1/35 dioramas.. A 1912 2-cylinder and 1939 4-cylinder. Also an AMT Craftsman '64 Corvair missing 1 tail light. That's OK, first-gen Corvairs are hard to find in any condition and this one was reasonably priced. I might even have that light in the stash. Every kid in America who got a bright yellow Craftsman Corvair must have added the mirrors, spotlights and dual antennae. At least it looks like it from an Internet search. Finding them without that stuff glued on is very unusual.

The 40% off deal on kits is every other week. This is NOT the discount week, so I didn't even bothering hitting HL today. Thanks for the Wal-Mart info. It does seem like this might have been a "one and done," but I hope not. Maybe they will re-stock kits closer to the holidays.

Looks like you better hurry, judging by my closest Wal-Mart. I just went there. The Round 2 aisle display is gone, and the remaining kits are on a shelf in the Toy aisle. Also, the $5.00 price break I got last time is also gone. I bought a kit and it rang up at $24.97, the full price.

No. I have a couple of the ICM 1/24 scale Model T kits. They are all new tooling, with much more detail. I really like their 1912 Model T Commercial Roadster. It had a lockable storage compartment under that "mother-in-law seat" on the back. The ICM kit includes the hinges and lock detail on the compartment.

At my closest store, the 1/25 scale car kits were marked at $24.97 on the display cube. Big truck kits like the Western Star and Snow Plow were marked $29.97. But as I wrote above: when I checked out with 2 kits marked $24.97, I was only charged $19.97 each.

Woo-hoo! Stopped by WM today and they had the Round 2 aisle display. First time ever in this store (Seneca, SC). The kits seemed to be selling well, lots of empty space in the display. I got the last '63 Nova wagon and '65 GTO. The store still had the '60 Ranchero, Western Star, Snow Plow, the 1/32 T-Bird and some others. Even better: the price on the aisle display for those kits was $24.97. But when I checked out, the price I paid was $19.97 each.

I guess you could park a 1/12 scale motorcycle in it, and have it being washed by a really fanatical owner. Not 1/25 scale, but this is a new 1/35 kit from ICM in the Ukraine. The first in plastic, AFAIK. A couple of resin companies have done these in the past, in both one-holer and two-holer configuration. Maybe ICM will follow the trend of their car kits, and upscale this one to 1/24. Imagine the diorama possibilities!

Those battle-damaged 1/72 scale aircraft kits were originally made by IMC (Industro Motive Corp.). The same company that did 1/25 scale car kits like the Little Red Wagon, Ford GT-40, etc. The first issue of the IMC F-4 Phantom was sold as an RF-4B, the unarmed photo-recon version. It had decals for VMCJ-3, a recon squadron in Marine Air Group 11 at El Toro, CA. I thought that was great because I was in MAG-11 at the time, working on the recon systems in the RF-4.

My closest Ollie's has a series of books with the title "The Life." They're $3.99, originally priced at $30. Hardback with lots of photos and interesting writing So far I've found 2 of those books at Ollie's, "The Life: Steve McQueen" and 'The Life: Harley-Davidson." Also found the big hardback photo-book "Storm of Eagles: The Greatest Aviation Photographs of World War II."

Haven't checked for a while either, but that build is all kinds of awesome. For lazy builders like me...not all of these Service Cars had a towing rig. Some used a simple 2-wheeled dolly for towing the customer's car. One of the most popular was the Weaver Auto Ambulance, which looks pretty easy to scratch-build. http://www.castleequipment.com/Museum/auto_ambulance_weaver_history.htm

Or a "Harrah's" script and bags of money in the back. Casino mogul Bill Harrah was famous for his hot-rod station wagons. Like the Pontiac wagon with a 421/3 deuces engine and 4-speed. Harrah said he enjoyed surprising young hot-rodders, when they tried to blow past the old geezer in the long-roof. In the late Sixties, he asked Chrysler to build him a plain-Jane Plymouth wagon with a 426 Street Hemi. MoPar asked why he wanted such a car. Harrah replied, logically enough, that he often transported large sums of money between his casinos and wanted to make those trips quickly. Chrysler finally said they might build the car, but needed $10,000 up front to do an "engineering feasibility study." Harrah laughed at that and said, "Sell me the car, sell me the Hemi, and I'll do the swap in my garage." And that's what he did. (His "garage" was a totally equipped restoration facility with full-time mechanics.)

Here are some pix. I was wrong about the plated parts, it doesn't have any. Bad memory! I also have a resin kit of the '59 Mercury Commuter 2-door hardtop wagon. But that was offered standard from the factory.

Looks like somebody had that idea back in 1958, and converted an Imperial into a 2-door station wagon. The (bad) pic below is the only one I could find, when the poor Imp had seen better days. The conversion doesn't make much sense to me, unless the 2-door wagon was only used as a "hack" to transport luggage and such. I can't imagine that passengers of the Imperial class wanted to climb over the front seat to get in. Even weirder...I have a resin kit of that '58 Imperial 2-door wagon. It's a full kit, not just the body, with a chassis, interior and plated chrome parts. I don't know who made it. Found it at a kit swap meet many years ago. Your work on this kit is impressive, and I'm stealing your ideas!

Currently available, but hard to find in the USA. I finally ordered 2 from Jumblies in the UK. The kits were only $22.46 each, but the international shipping nearly doubled that. Worth it, IMO. These are re-issues of ESCI kits from the early 1980s, and have never been available with both tops in the box. The last reissue, around 2005, had no top at all. These are curbside kits with no engine detail, but very well detailed chassis and body. All the body emblems are there and very sharp, even the little "4 Wheel Drive" emblem on the back and the big Toyota lettering in the grille. The interiors have no firewalls and no pedals, so you'll have to add those if you want them. If you use one of the tops, that's not very obvious. The doors are molded to the body. So if you want a topless Toyota, you'll also have to cut the doors out. The colors are the same way ESCI originally molded these kits way back when: black plastic for the chassis and interior parts, bright blue for the body and white for both of the tops.

Stopped at the Ollie's in Anderson, SC on Thursday 9/9/21. That was disappointing. The store had 2 Lindberg Civil War Cannon kits, and 1 Lindberg Mars Probe spaceship. Not much for modeling in the Paint aisle, either. I did find "Harley-Davidson: The Life" for $3.99, with lots of vintage photos and Harley history. On the last visit I got "Steve McQueen: The Life." If you like WWII history, Ollie's has "The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe 1944-45 " by Rick Atkinson, a huge and detailed book. I just finished reading it. It's part of a trilogy, so now I'll probably get the first two.

I have all the seasons of "Adam-12" on my obsolete WD-TV box. The show ran from 1968-75, prime car-watching times. Sometimes I freeze-frame just to gawk at all the great cars on the screen. Watched a couple of episodes from the first season today. That's when Reed was still new and Malloy was training him. In one scene, a drunk crashed his '68 Nova SS into a tree. Well, not really...

The number stamped into the non-louvred hood of my original kit is "86." On the parts list it's Part Number C86 ("C" meaning "Body Color Plastic," which is turquoise). Here's a scan of the parts layout. A previous owner added the hand-written notes.