regular guy Posted August 20, 2018 Author Posted August 20, 2018 Thank you Bill! ' Round 2 go to that trouble' Well. Then they need to get a third party to do things right. Give the the third party what they have and let an outfit like Model King or Moebius put in the hours on it. Another give them credit. I think they are still working with some outfits but I think they cut Model King out of the picture. ' If you wanted to clone it, ' ' recreate it somewhat ' You can do that for the Mr Gasket funny car with the new Malco kit.
niteowl7710 Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 1 hour ago, regular guy said: Thank you Bill! ' Round 2 go to that trouble' Well. Then they need to get a third party to do things right. Give the the third party what they have and let an outfit like Model King or Moebius put in the hours on it. Another give them credit. I think they are still working with some outfits but I think they cut Model King out of the picture. ' If you wanted to clone it, ' ' recreate it somewhat ' You can do that for the Mr Gasket funny car with the new Malco kit. If you think you can personally sell 5k of all these kits you want, feel free to come a "3rd Party Outfit" and foot the bill to restore or recreate all the missing tooling. Moebius isn't going to "put in" any hours on some old AMT tooling that Round2 owns.
regular guy Posted August 20, 2018 Author Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) None of that makes sense Nite Owl. Note in the Ramchargers kit it says Logghe chassis or frame. Logghe Brothers also built dirt track frames. It's a learning experience looking at one of there frames. They sure knew there stuff! Wikipedia just mentions Funny's and dragster frames. Nothing about dirt track ones.Surprising! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logghe_Stamping_Company Edited August 20, 2018 by regular guy
niteowl7710 Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) 1 hour ago, regular guy said: None of that makes sense Nite Owl. Note in the Ramchargers kit it says Logghe chassis or frame. Logghe Brothers also built dirt track frames. It's a learning experience looking at one of there frames. They sure knew there stuff! Wikipedia just mentions Funny's and dragster frames. Nothing about dirt track ones.Surprising! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logghe_Stamping_Company What makes no sense? The fact that this obscure stuff you personally come on here and demand isn't financially viable to spend tens of thousands of dollars on to either restore or recreate missing/changed pieces? Or the fact that you seem to think that tooling is constructed out of lunch box sized pieces of metal that can be inserted Tetris style into a machine to run off bits and bobs to recreate kits? If you need tooling from 3 kits to make one, you are either going to have to run complete runs of all three kits and have a whole bunch of leftover parts, or gate off the parts of the tooling you don't want run to just get the specific parts out. Which means later you have to go back in and un-gate the rest of the kit in order to run the tooling in whatever complete kit it represents. Gating & un-gating is such a delicate task that you often see the un-gating process never taking place. That's how AMT "lost" the Peterbilt 359 California parts for 4 decades when they were part of the tooling of the Pacemaker which had been reissued multiple times. It's tantamount to impossible to expect Round2 to pull out the engine runners - and whatever else is attached to that - to run off the top end of the engine from another kit, and put it into a easier to find kit, just to make something that kinda sorta looks like a vintage kit you can't afford to buy. Also remember Round2 went through and ran test shots of EVERY SINGLE TOOL they own, they know what they have and what they don't. It's not some vast conspiracy to hold back "the good stuff". Edited August 20, 2018 by niteowl7710
Casey Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 31 minutes ago, Dale Gribble said: Round2 ran test shots of every tool??? No, not all: "In the end, not all the tools got sampled. When RC2 bought Ertl the program was cancelled and tools started getting shipped overseas. However, an impressive number of tools did get checked and sampled and the shots thereof have proven to be a big help in finding and putting some old kit tooling back together!" http://www.collectormodel.com/round2-models/2224-whats-a-hanger-shot/#sthash.d8SrRYk8.M8yER8mI.dpbs
regular guy Posted August 20, 2018 Author Posted August 20, 2018 Thought of something productive to do about this. Each time a kit come out we rate it. Use a standard form with say 3 questions and a 2 line comments. Then we send the results to Round2. Obviously one question could be.Have you pre ordered this kit? Was this a good kit to for AMT/MPC to produce? Do you plan to buy it? Comments. Two line limit. What's everybody think of that?
mike 51 Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 Yes I think you should do this ...then report back to us about their response.
Can-Con Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 4 minutes ago, mike 51 said: Yes I think you should do this ...then report back to us about their response. I agree, you should get right on that Bob. If I was you, I go out right now and start buying kits to review, maybe start with the Malco Gasser. Then you could see that it already has a blower in it.
Force Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) 16 hours ago, regular guy said: 'what the difference in the two different MPC Ohio George Mustang Gasser ' That is what YOU CHOSE to talk about. You put a blower on the Malco kit and Ta Da! It looks close enough to the hard to find Mr Gasket kit. Okay I'll try to explain once more even tho' I said I wouldn't waste any more time on this topic... I point out the differences because there are obvious differences between the kits, you might think they are small and insignificant but if you want to do an accurate model of the Mr Gasket Mustang you can't do one from the Malco Mustang kit alone as the body in the Malco kit is the wrong model year...1967 for the Malco car vs 1969 for the Mr Gasket car. I also don't understand why you are talking about putting a blower on the engine in Malco Mustang kit...as I have said before in my earlier replies, the engine in the Malco Mustang kit is a Supercharged 427 SOHC and a Supercharger IS a Blower, so there is no need to do anything as it allready has a blower as also Can-Con Steve pointed out above. The Mr Gasket Mustang kit had a Supercharged BOSS 429, a totally different engine than the 427 SOHC...and as it's supercharged it also has a blower on it. Here you can see for yourself. First the Malco Gasser...it sure looks like a blower on top of the 427 SOHC engine to me. The Mr Gasket car...a blown BOSS 429...yes the "Cougar engine" IS a BOSS 429. The real Mr Gasket Gasser Mustang on the other hand first ran a blown 427 SOHC pretty much the same setup as the Malco car had but it was later changed to a dual turbocharged BOSS 429 as Ford wanted George to run the then new BOSS 429 engine instead of the older 427 and you do as the sponsor says. None of these engine options are in the MPC Mr Gasket Mustang kit so MPC took a little artistic freedom there when they did the kit...but you can take the blown 427 SOHC from the Malco car and do the early version. Ohio George ran both his Mustangs at the same time so they are two different cars...so the Malco car is not rebodied with a newer body to do the Mr Gasket car. The latest version of the Mr Gasket Gasser with the Dual Turbo BOSS 429. Okay...now I'm through with this. Edited August 20, 2018 by Force
stavanzer Posted August 20, 2018 Posted August 20, 2018 Holy Wah, Hakon! What a Motor in that Mr. Gasket Car! I'd like to see that one run. I hope it makes it out to the March Meets sometime.
tbusch Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 9 hours ago, CapSat 6 said: did just read that Aston Martin will be making 25 continuation DB-5's, complete with 007 style gadgets. They'll only be $2.5 million each. There is hope that I will win the lottery in time to get one. Sign me up!!! Their is no way I am paying 2.5 million for a model kit LOL
niteowl7710 Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 4 hours ago, Casey said: No, not all: "In the end, not all the tools got sampled. When RC2 bought Ertl the program was cancelled and tools started getting shipped overseas. However, an impressive number of tools did get checked and sampled and the shots thereof have proven to be a big help in finding and putting some old kit tooling back together!" http://www.collectormodel.com/round2-models/2224-whats-a-hanger-shot/#sthash.d8SrRYk8.M8yER8mI.dpbs Alright probably not EVERY tool. But that article is also 4 years old, by now they have an even better idea of what they can produce.
Tom Geiger Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 10 hours ago, CapSat 6 said: MPC used whatever tools they had, however they wanted to, in order to maximize as many different releases as possible. Back in the 60's and '70's, MPC simply looked at their tools as product, so, if they made modifications to update a stock annual body in order to put a new kit out as a Funny Car or NASCAR Stock Car, they had no guilt whatsoever in making alterations. The 1970 cars were preferable to the 1969 and 1968 cars, as the market wanted the newest versions of the latest cars from Detroit, so annual updates were made (as well- the promo contracts from the Big 3 that essentially paid for the annual kits dictated that the newest cars be offered). I'd love to see the MPC 1968 Dodge Coronet back, but to date, that seems like a lost cause. MPC in particular (and the other manufacturers in general), also seemed to have great engineering and artistic know-how during this period, enabling them to make these changes on a regular basis. They were absolute masters at making something out of something else. It's wasn't all good, though- sometimes you got Pro Stock kits that were more "Stock" than "Pro", and funny cars that were perhaps too funny (or not funny enough). Compromises were definitely made. Over time, some of that know-how might have been lost. Employees move on or retire. New facilities and processes are adopted. The market changes, so that fewer models are sold, and consumer tastes change so a business case can't be made to invest in engineering and tooling like the glory days of the 60's and early 70's. As a result, some tools can't be reused to put out exactly the same products they were able to 40+ years ago. An example of this is the recent reissue of the Petty 1/16 Charger. The announcement originally stated that it was to be offered with a clear body. That never materialized, the rumor was that Round 2 tried it and had too many problems with the process of offering a clear body, or that the bodies they could produce were substandard. We did still see the Petty Charger released, which in my opinion, is a great kit. Some small things had to be redone or undone in order to get it back, and Round 2 seemed to handle that well. To me, the clear bodies were overrated anyway, as they were tougher to work with. Having that kit back at all made my decade! I can't think of any other type of commercial item being offered that is so dependent on tooling and trade dress that was created so long ago, except for maybe Hot Wheels. I think it's an absolute miracle that we get what has been coming out. Round 2's very existence as it is today is against any reasonable odds. That is a fire that has been fanned expertly for 30+ years. Bingo! It's amazing that 1. the tooling some 50 years ago was so over engineered that it has lasted all of this time, with constant reruns of some kits! and 2. the tooling survived, some of it through poor inventory control and bad house keeping. No company today would allow assets to sit idle for decades. People just don't get what a miracle it is that this stuff still exists. And some back story on the good ole days. We cannot compare the industry today to what it once was. Speaking with guys who were involved back then, first they had no idea that there would be a collector market some 40-50 years later. They were in the toy business. A kit was hot for that season. If a promo got ordered for the next year, it went forward. Otherwise it was seen as obsolete and anyone who could design a new kit around that tool was pulling in money for the company. The market today is what? 5,000 kit runs VS 500,000 kit runs in the golden era. The company had full staffs of designers, engravers and other professionals under roof. It wasn't hard to make a profit. I was told you could sell 100,000 units and that was a bad kit.... think of some of the MPC customs from the late 60s! There isn't that kind of money to invest today.
CapSat 6 Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 12 hours ago, tbusch said: Their is no way I am paying 2.5 million for a model kit LOL Well- it's a big scale kit...1:1...and it's prebuilt. I'd call it a diecast, but I think it's going to be in the original hammered aluminum...it's going to be hefty, in any case...
Can-Con Posted August 21, 2018 Posted August 21, 2018 6 hours ago, CapSat 6 said: Well- it's a big scale kit...1:1...and it's prebuilt. I'd call it a diecast, but I think it's going to be in the original hammered aluminum...it's going to be hefty, in any case... I think they refer to those as "multi-media collectibles" now.
regular guy Posted August 23, 2018 Author Posted August 23, 2018 Way to go AMT putting this kit out! https://www.autoworldstore.com/product_p/scm038.htm Keep making more like it! That Autoworld store exclusive sand rail is a great kit too! Reminder about including a clear body with each kit that has a tube frame or special features. Looks like AMT and MPC can make Ghost Blue bodies real good but not clear. Okay.I'll meet you half way.Make 'em out of Ghost Blue. Reminder about metallic bodies too like this dragster.More of those.
Bob Ellis Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 It still comes down to the same thing; You have to make what the public wants , not try try to figure out how to market something you have to sell.
regular guy Posted August 23, 2018 Author Posted August 23, 2018 (edited) Okay.That's an opinion.I don't see any statements backing that up. I disagree with it.Giving them what they think they want is pandering. Giving them what is good for them is leadership. Okay.Jumping to best artwork. I think AMT and MPC inherited or hired the artist when Johan went poof. Here's some shots of best artwork. Plus special features on side of box is definitely the way to go. That's the best. BECAUSE. It tells you what you're getting.'Mystery boxes' have the chance they will be a letdown and that will sour future sales. Edited August 23, 2018 by regular guy
Richard Bartrop Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 (edited) On 8/20/2018 at 6:10 PM, tbusch said: Their is no way I am paying 2.5 million for a model kit LOL Another example of how car modelers are just too cheap. If they were willing to shell out two and a half million dollars for a kit, then they'd get the kits they want. Edited August 23, 2018 by Richard Bartrop
bobthehobbyguy Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 2 hours ago, regular guy said: Okay.That's an opinion.I don't see any statements backing that up. I disagree with it.Giving them what they think they want is pandering. Giving them what is good for them is leadership. No providing a product that the consumer wants is basic retail is all about, if its not what they want they aren't going to buy it and your business is going to fail.
bobthehobbyguy Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 There are limitations on box art today because of truth in advertising laws. That why new box art has pictures of the actual models on them. The retro box art is the exception. However with the internet it is easy to get reviews that show you whats in a kit
regular guy Posted August 23, 2018 Author Posted August 23, 2018 (edited) ' how car modelers are just too cheap ' Let's explore cheapness. If it's going to be lame-o box art then do this. Put it in a plain white box and sell them for $14.99-17.99 ' wants is basic retail is all about ' The box art can sell the product with boxart.The leftover Johan art work is the best artwork in a lot of ways. Or carried over Johan artwork style.. If it was like that basic retail statement salesman would not exist. ' The retro box art is the exception. ' Good. The newest kit that is worth a darn is the Petty Charger.The 72 Lotus Indy car too.Might be McLaren. Indy set. So all the good kits can slide through with Retro artwork. I will give it to you that there is embellishment in the artwork. But it is not deception in a dishonest way. Edited August 23, 2018 by regular guy
bobthehobbyguy Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 I am curious how you think no box art is going to have such an impact on the retail price. Current msrp is around $30 . There is no way the box art costs half of the kits price.
Chris in Berwyn Posted August 23, 2018 Posted August 23, 2018 8 hours ago, regular guy said: I disagree with it.Giving them what they think they want is pandering. Giving them what is good for them is leadership. I am about 99.9 percent sure you are trolling us and having a good laugh when we all take the bait. And now, here I am taking the bait. The problem with your statements above is the manufacturer is not giving anyone anything. If they were, they could give people what’s good for them. But they are selling the merchandise, and if people don’t want it they are not going to buy it no matter how good it is for them. For example, Frosted Flakes, which are loaded with sugar, is the number 2 selling cereal in the US. Corn Flakes are a healthier product and aren’t even in the top 10.
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