Ace-Garageguy

After doing a little more research into this kit, I found that, though it was apparently never reissued after 1971, PARTS of it appeared in at least two others.

The image was available through Google reverse image search, so I didn't play this one.

Gross revenue means very little, really. If you have gross revenue of 40 million but expenditures of 41 million, you're going down the toilet.

This'll get you in the ballpark...

Hmmmmm...Michaels...ribbon for seatbelts, beading wire for plug wires, rubber beading line for small hoses, brushes, acrylic paints, X-Acto stuff, miniature chain, MANY kinds of markers and glues, general art supplies, sometimes jewels for lights or dress snaps for seat swivels. That's all I can think of. Did I leave anything out? Maybe balsa, or embossed dollhouse floors and brick for diorama work. But like the man said, if you're big into "macaroni-on-velvet artwork", or papier-mache-and-popcorn replicas of the Pieta, they got you covered.

So...I pay top dollar for a miniature lathe / milling machine, almost $700, because in the photos online it looks looked like it's hardly ever been used, it's complete with everything it came with almost 50 years ago, and the fitted hardwood box it came in, with dovetailed corners, is was just about immaculate. Did I say I've wanted one for 50 years or better, and that I COULD have paid substantially LESS for one that had signs of use? It arrived yesterday, with the outer cardboard box looking like the FedEx guys used it for the puck in a game of fork-lift hockey. I cross my fingers, open it up, and sure as hell, the end of the wooden box is split, the dovetails are all destroyed on the same end, the little machined handles on two of the feed wheels are snapped off, and one of the wheels is broken. The shaft attached to the tailstock feed is bent too. Bozo who packed the thing inside the fitted box (and thousands of these things have been shipped all over the world since the late 1950s with ZERO DAMAGE) ignored the holes provided that keep it from sliding around INSIDE the box. Instead, he packed it full of styrene peanuts and sheet, in such a way that when the monkeys handling it dropped or booted or whatever they did to it, the ONLY things to prevent it sliding were the little handles...where they first busted out the end of the box, and next time, just snapped off when they hit something hard. Both FedEx and the shipper / seller WILL be hearing from me shortly.

And the engineers and everyone else in the chain of events that led to this (yesterday) thought they did a fine job too...6 people dead.

The same attitude was prevalent in the train camp too. I've been reading through my collection of late 1940s through mid 1960s Model Railroader. The introduction of plastic easy-kits and RTR rolling stock, though lauded by some as making the hobby accessible to the skill-free crowd, was roundly condemned by "serious" modelers for the very same reason. It wasn't until about 1959, when a very highly skilled modeler by the name of Alan Armitage showed what could be done with plastic, that attitudes really began to change. Still, the toy-train group and the model train group are as far apart today as they were back then. Yes, I know. It's sad that the more access people have to information, the less they seem to value knowledge.

I think people, more "serious" and "experienced" modelers, who REALLY want the stuff will either buy the vintage parts-packs (as I do), buy the excellent resin offerings already available (as I do), or go to the next level and cast their own replicas of kit parts not otherwise available (as I'm about to). Expecting major model companies to design and tool entirely new parts-pack kits for a market that probably gets smaller every day (as the geezers fall off their perches), when the concept has already been shown to be not-as-profitable as would be nice (if it was ever profitable at all), is just as much delusional wishful thinking as the guy who's certain that a full-detail 1954 Borgward Isabella kit would be the next million seller. Re-releasing existing packs, as R2 has been doing with the fine old AMT engines, or releasing already-tooled bits from existing kits (though the chrome seats was probably a mistake) makes a LOT more sense economically. Sometimes, it's just not as much fun to think like an adult.

A thorough perusal of old hot-rod and custom car mags will show that model cars were aimed in large part at the older-teen, young-adult, REAL car guys...from the introduction of Revell's 1/32 scale car kits. These kits were advertised in the real-car mags, and feature articles reminding real-car guys that models could be used to work out customizing ideas in scale abounded. I don't think anyone could really believe that most "kids" (which I assume to mean pre-teens) had the manual skills to put together one of the multi-piece bodies that even adult modelers cry about today. I sure as hell couldn't make anything decent from one of them back then. Just as the toy-train / model train camps are (and were even in the 1950s) as different as night and day, I believe that car kits were initially made more for "modelers" than "kids". I also remember from my youth that, to get any kind of decent selection of models, I had to go to a hobby shop. Toy stores typically didn't have much, if anything, in models. That implies the target market was at least older kids, and adults.

You are correct sir. I hadn't actually looked carefully at one of those kits in some years. I don't see any way to get that stuff to stick to anything like a compound curve. How you covered a tunnel and floors with the stuff without cutting it into multiple sections is beyond my comprehension.

You would be correct sir. What diffused through the gray primer was indeed purple.

Near as I can tell so far (though I haven't really looked that hard yet), there's very little available in aftermarket or interesting kit tires in 1/16 scale. I have a '34 Ford build that's fallen flat on its face because there just don't seem to be many "traditional" tires that are good quality available. WHATEVER you decide to do, please provide a 1/16 scale 3D printing option if you go that way.

"Unsecured" debt would also include outstanding bills owed to suppliers and contractors. For instance: if the "replacement" tooling for our much longed-for '29 and '31 Ford kits is finished and ready to go into production, but the tab for doing it hasn't been paid. A situation like that could well delay our seeing any '29 or '31 kits on the shelves for many months...until somebody coughs up the jack to pay for the tooling, and demonstrates they have the funds available to pay for a production run. I'm not saying this is the situation (because I just don't know), but it's entirely possible. And it COULD well have been strangled cash-flow that caused the stoppage of these kits anyway. The "lost" or "damaged" molds thing may be entirely speculation or smokescreens. As a supplier of short-run aftermarket real-car tooling from time to time (air dams, spoilers, scoops, fiberglass seats, aero-kits, etc.) I've been left holding-the-bag full of nothing but promises (more than once) when my clients were unable to pay me.

One of the most important theoretical physicists in human history is dead, at 76. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008

Thanks, thanks, and thanks. Most helpful.

Yup. And they both work reasonably well under the ancient-tool AMT '32 Fords too, and vice versa. And the REASON is because they're ALL 1/25 scale versions of the same car, so IF the different groups doing their measuring and dividing by 25 did their work correctly (surprising how many people in the industry don't seem to have these basic skills today), they all SHOULD fit each other...at least pretty damm close.

The chrome-reverse steel wheels in the recent repop of the AMT '36 Ford, and the set in the "new-tool" Ala Kart are also both very nice.

Everything I've seen from these guys so far has been exquisite. Several styles and widths available. Injection-molded styrene.

I like the very old AMT 16" steel wheels. Though a little clunky as they come, with some tweaking, they can look quite good for the right application.

The impossible-to-actually-use Revell interior pack...(image thanks to K&R Kustoms & Rods on Fotki: https://public.fotki.com/jferren/revell-parts-packs/ ) Four pieces of textured vinyl, a piece of black felt, and a piece of "chrome" paper. Neat idea, but impossible to do anything cool with unless you had the skills of a brain surgeon, and always the last parts-pack hanging when every other one was gone. Probably 90% just got thrown out.

Here's a vintage Monte seat-upholstery pack, plus the world famous Convert-A-Top. Not exactly million-sellers even in their own time.

This is the vintage AMT chrome frame. There are a couple currently available for about the same money as if they were new from AMT, at current prices.

Well, if there was a traditional I-beam axle and buggy-spring rear end parts-pack, you could build it traditional and still pirate it for the IFS. There's a couple of shots of the front end in this thread...