reissue of of kits by the new amt

[route66modeler]

Hi, I see the new amt has reissued the 66 nova prostreet,55 nomad and old tool 57 chevy. All these kits are pretty easy to find a swapmeets in that 5-10.00 range. I read that a lot of the neat parts in the old 57 chevy have been deleted. Greg can you get with the new leader of amt and get him to post a list of the kits he knows the molds are ready to be produced and give the modeling community some input on what he puts out. My 2 cents.......r66m

Edited September 28, 2009 by route66modeler

[Custom Hearse]

I can ask John Greczula about it... Anything specific you want to know about?

[FloridaBoy]

I was going to start a topic on this, but maybe this is more appropriate. I was going through some old Scale Auto mags and was reading the 2000 issue featuring the upcoming Chicago Hobby Show, and AMT announced for that year, a selection of new kits, including the Edsel, 57 Plymouth, 49 Olds, and 50 Stude bulletnosed coupe. Later on, AMT announced that the plans were "put on the table"" for the Olds and Stude, much to the chagrin of us back then.

The feature was highlighted by a prototype 49 Olds real prototype model AMT must have displayed back then. '

For those of you who are acutely aware of manufacturer's goings on, to me it seems that this development perhaps indicates that AMT may have some partial tooling for either or both of these cars.

Frankly, with an AMT body chassis, grille pieces and interior, I am willing to pay the price for either or both of these kits.

Does anyone really knowledgeable with the "new AMT" and now their habit of reissues, maybe can resurrect what is left of the tooling?

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

[PatRedmond]

It's been said before but it bears repeating.

The common kits need to be released to to the mass market in order to fund the 'fun stuff' we all desire.

Whether we believe the common kits are of value to us, the 'fringe modelers', we NEED to indulge them while they attempt to make money to fund the new tools.

[Tom Jackson]

Amen Pat

[Guest]

I can ask John Greczula about it... Anything specific you want to know about?

I was going to start a topic on this, but maybe this is more appropriate. I was going through some old Scale Auto mags and was reading the 2000 issue featuring the upcoming Chicago Hobby Show, and AMT announced for that year, a selection of new kits, including the Edsel, 57 Plymouth, 49 Olds, and 50 Stude bulletnosed coupe. Later on, AMT announced that the plans were "put on the table"" for the Olds and Stude, much to the chagrin of us back then.

The feature was highlighted by a prototype 49 Olds real prototype model AMT must have displayed back then. '

For those of you who are acutely aware of manufacturer's goings on, to me it seems that this development perhaps indicates that AMT may have some partial tooling for either or both of these cars.

Frankly, with an AMT body chassis, grille pieces and interior, I am willing to pay the price for either or both of these kits.

Does anyone really knowledgeable with the "new AMT" and now their habit of reissues, maybe can resurrect what is left of the tooling?

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

Can you ask about their Opel GT kit? Ken, that 49 on display was a diecast bank!

[route66modeler]

Can you ask about their Opel GT kit? Ken, that 49 on display was a diecast bank!*******Hi, The opel mold should be available since it was a "buyers" choice 10 or so years ago. The opel is a good example of the kits I'm talking about. r66m

[Art Anderson]

I was going to start a topic on this, but maybe this is more appropriate. I was going through some old Scale Auto mags and was reading the 2000 issue featuring the upcoming Chicago Hobby Show, and AMT announced for that year, a selection of new kits, including the Edsel, 57 Plymouth, 49 Olds, and 50 Stude bulletnosed coupe. Later on, AMT announced that the plans were "put on the table"" for the Olds and Stude, much to the chagrin of us back then.

The feature was highlighted by a prototype 49 Olds real prototype model AMT must have displayed back then. '

For those of you who are acutely aware of manufacturer's goings on, to me it seems that this development perhaps indicates that AMT may have some partial tooling for either or both of these cars.

Frankly, with an AMT body chassis, grille pieces and interior, I am willing to pay the price for either or both of these kits.

Does anyone really knowledgeable with the "new AMT" and now their habit of reissues, maybe can resurrect what is left of the tooling?

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

Ken, and anyone else who thinks that AMT/Ertl had actually started tooling either the ''49 Olds 88" or the bulletnose Stude as plastic kits, you are following one of the enduring urban rumors of this hobby!

As I have said numerous times before, model companies in this country, for years, have pitched new product ideas to their immediate customers (mass retailers and the hobby wholesaler pipeline) to get their interest before moving to that next step, mastering and tooling the kit in question. Most often, this presentation is done behind closed doors, out of the public eye.

Tom Walsh, then the product manager for AMT at Ertl, told me up front at the 1999 RCHTA show (I had known Walsh for several years by that time, due to my aftermarket involvement) that those two concepts were a last minute addition to their line of proposed kits--hence the public proposal which appeared to consumers to be an actual announcement. I attended RCHTA on Saturday that year, after the "trade days" when only members of the hobby industry trade were admitted, and Tom Walsh told me rather firmly that it didn't look good for either subject--the mass retailers and many wholesalers, and not a few hobby dealers in attendance panned both subjects more than those who signed up for a presell order.

By 1999, it seems, any new car idea from a model car company just had to have that particular "pizzazz" in the minds of industry buyers in order to sell, and those people are ultimately responsible to the upper management of the companies they work for--too many mistakes, too many "bad calls" and their bosses will be advertising for a new buyer, plain and simple.

As for us modelers having a strong input, yes we can, but as can be seen from other threads here, as well as on other message boards, it's really rather rare for there to be a broad concensus on any particular possible model car subject, we modelers have become that "fractured" a community it seems. Ask 50 modelers, completely at random what they would like to see manufactured, and likely you will get at least 25 DIFFERENT requests--very hard to get a read on what really might sell, although there might be some confirmation of thoughts back in the company conference room--doesn't always happen, but likely it can.

As a kid, my dad would tease me about my "wants" changing more often than I changed my clothes, and in a real way, he was right--I suspect that is just as true today of a lot of model car people; either that, or their individual wishes have become both adamant and eclectic. A very good example of the llatter is the Monogram 1/24 scale '91 Chevy Caprice police car--hotly requested by a very determined police car modeler's lobby. Of course, WalMart said they would buy X number of a kit, IF it included a battery operated light bar (which turned out to be a toy sourced unit out of Hong Kong), and that was the turning point. However, beyond the police car, and a so-so taxicab variant, the kit died very quickly on shelves, only to be ressurected when Monogram modified the tooling into the 1995 Impala SS, which did sell reasonably well.

One of the toughest things about making a real, and believable push on a model company for a particular subject is being really objective. In that, it seems to me that one needs to get beyond the ME factor, what I want stuff. Does anyone REALLY KNOW that everyone else wants what he wants? Come on now, get real--none of us truthfully know that with any degree of authority, if they did, they'd be one hot commodity in the world of consumer goods in general, model companies in particular--but real life likely will never turn up more than a handful of those clairvoyant types in a generation.

In addition, I've sat in more than my share of product planning meetings, even when I was just doing box art buildups for AMT Corporation as an independent contractor some 30yrs ago, to my doing product development for Johnny Lightning Diecast Miniature Cars for Tom Lowe in his Playing Mantis days (also a few Polar Lights model car kits as well), Trust me, the ideas in these brainstorming sessions can flow like Guinness on St Patrick's Day in Chicago or South Bend, but in the end, there are just so many dollars available for new products at any time, and FAR more ideas than can be made. So the process of winnowing through a ton of great ideas gets pretty intense at times, it's a matter of deciding which product ideas have the greatest chance for success--and that is likely just as true with the 1:1 automakers, in fact just about any manufacturer of consumer goods. In addition, retail and wholesale buyers also have their "open to buy" or the dollar limit of what they can spend for new merchandise in any year or season of that year, and FAR more proposed products of all kinds than they possibly could afford to buy--so that winnowing happens once again, LHS's have the same problem, far more products in the hobby industry than the vast majority of store owners have the capital to put on their shelves (indeed even their local customer bases), so they winnow down what goes on their shelves as well. Last but not least, we ourselves, as hobbyists, as consumers, face the very same issues, our funds are limited, so we have to make those same winnowing-down decisions, we can't have them all, so which ones do we grab up, carry to the cash register, and which ones get left on the shelf? You see, this same sort of decision, albeit for perhaps different reasons, gets made, every day, by all levels in the chain--from the manufacturer, all the way to us, the ultimate customer/consumer.

Art

[Custom Hearse]

I talked to John and he said they will be announcing some of the new 2010 releases at the ihobby show next month. So we will have to wait and see...

[samdiego]

The '55 Nomad has been nuetered also. Nothing in the box but bone stock 'mad. Lots of empty space on the trees where cool stuff used to be. I should have gathered that from the box art but I didn't really look, just grabbed the kit and ran to the check out.