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New insight on Star Trek model kits gleaned from Wonderfest part 2
Further comments upon data regarding Star Trek model kits… On we go.
Disclaimer: This post refers to survey results. We make no promises to produce any subject mentioned at any time. Be good and we’ll see what happens…
The next segment of our survey asked about repopping some grey area AMT kits. Grey area from the standpoint of “would they worth doing?”. I was interested to get some feedback on these because they seem like good subjects to us but the kits do have many issues with accuracy. We are trying to determine which can be released with some adjustment to detail and which should be started from scratch or is it possible that people want them with warts and all. We found that some had lovers and haters and some were kind of “myeh” across the board. One interesting one was the 1/2500 ships. This had the nearly the least amount of “no” votes and by a huge margin had the most “yes” votes. Another interesting result was the Enterprise Cutaway. It was pretty even from “no” to “maybe” then shot up to a pretty substantial “probably” ranking then fell again to land second to last in “yes” votes. The others rated highest in the “maybe” category. 70% of people said the kits would at least need some work. So, this tells us these kits we felt kind of lukewarm about might get a lukewarm reaction if released. One of them is on our 2010 plan and had been before the show.
Then comes the juicy part. We asked about some general ideas for “smaller” kits meaning kits that would fit in a normal size box or maybe a double sized box. These would kind of be our bread and butter kits that would ideally come out at $20 – $30 price points. The possible answers came from some poles I saw on modeling forums. I kind of picked some of the higher-ranking results from those polls. Then Bob and I kind of threw in a few ideas we hadn’t seen batted about that we thought might be interesting. So, in no particular order the top five were… 1/1000 Klingon BoP, Kelvin, 1/1000 Reliant, 1/1000 K’tinga and 1/1000 Romulan BoP. Here was another case where there was a head and shoulders winner and quite frankly I had no idea what to expect. The 1/1000 Reliant was way ahead of all of the others. By my (unscientific) calculations, it scored 100 points above all others. The next three scored within 40 points of each other.
There was a more than 100-point drop between #5 and #6 rankings. #6-8 scored within about 10 points of each other.
Moving along to the big guns. These would be kits that would need to retail at higher dollar amounts. These would be more 1/350 scale kits or larger ships in 1/1000 scale for the most part. From all previous indications, I figured the K’tinga would walk away with this one. I just wanted to be sure this was the case when other kit possibilities were offered side by side with that one. While the results weren’t as drastic as the smaller kits, the Reliant won again by a respectable percentage. So the K’tinga had to settle for second… well, not quite, more like tied for second. The K’tinga actually came in third for the most “yes” votes. What other option would give it a run for its money? The 1/1000 scale Enteprise D. What about the Akira? It landed behind an accurate K-7 at 1/2500 scale. I was curious about the exploration set. The original kit is tiny, made for kids hands and inaccurate. Yet we often get people asking for it. So I threw out the idea of doing a full sized set. I wasn’t hoping for much and didn’t get much. I’m guessing the best plan is to stick to the ships. Oh, I also threw out a 1/12 scale bridge. Not very popular either. I’m wondering if no one picked up on the scale which would be a perfect set to go along with your old Mego figures…
To wrap up, we had asked what popular ships were left off of our “smaller” ship list. Seems like the Excelsior/ Enterprise B and Defiant from DS9 were the leading write-ins.
I’m probably pointing out the obvious when I say that I see a bit of a trend in these results. Regardless of the outspoken few who crave ships from certain series, it looks like subjects from the early movies win out over all other “generations”. I can see the charm of the early films. They might be my favorite incarnation if I had to choose. But I see outspoken fans out there that declare their love for the original series and likewise there are fans of later series that are also outspoken. I see people wondering about the Vulcan Ring ship and the Andorian Kumari from ST: Enterprise. General consensus is that it was the weakest series but it had some decent ship designs in it. (I’ve been watching some episodes and I don’t think its all that bad other than the whole idea that everything looks newer than it should timeline wise.) Likewise, there are big fans of Voyager and DS9 that didn’t focus as much on a ship named Enterprise and other fans who want more adversary ships. Just for fun, I’ve posted a poll on Starship Modeler to gain more insight into this. Again, this won’t keep us from exploring all of the different series. It’s just an observation.
New insight on Star Trek model kits gleaned from Wonderfest part 1
So Wonderfest 2009 is kind of old news by now but it has taken me some time to examine the data from our survey that we handed out. Anyone who took the time was given a couple fresh Star trek tattoos. Seemed like some loved ‘em and some could have done without them. Oh well, you can’t please everybody… Well, that’s pretty much what the survey results told us too.
The majority, if not all, of the survey covered the ground of Star Trek model kits. I have to admit that as hard as I tried, this survey wasn’t all that great. I was in an incredible rush to write it. I didn’t structure it well and it was probably even biased towards certain subjects just in the way it was written. I’ll try to do better next time. So with that said, it couldn’t be considered scientific; therefore, I won’t consider the results scientific either. As with all polls like this, it’s just asking for suggestions. We won’t really be steering our ship from it. I’m not going to go into every ranking or specific winners and losers but I’ll point out what I thought were some interesting results. A copy of the questionnaire will be posted as one of this blog’s images if you would like to follow along.
I was fascinated that people who like bigger kits are so outspoken about it. On more than one occasion, the part of the survey addressing the “smaller” kits was left blank with a written note saying “I only like larger kits”. In the question that directly asked which size was preferred, “ALL” won out which wasn’t much of a surprise.
The majority of folks preferred decals but if an answer of “some paint with decals” had been offered, I’m sure it would have won out.
Now this next one was the biggest shock of all. Bob and I downplayed our announcement of landing the rights to the new movie because we had seen all of the online debate about whether the movie would be “accepted” or not. We were shaking in our boots at the thought of making the announcement to a group of rather outspoken fans. Turns out you guys overwhelmingly liked the film. We didn’t ask about the Enterprise specifically but just the movie itself. Quite a few folks said they “loved” it. Well over 100 people surveyed said they liked it, less than 5% said they didn’t like it. About 20% hadn’t had a chance to see it yet. No one said that they refused to ever see it. We were surprised that we didn’t really have any outspoken haters at the show. A few verbally said they didn’t like it and a few took the opportunity to debate with their friends. So, we are pretty encouraged with the new kit in development.
I was really interested to see what size people hoped the kit would be. At the time, the size was still under great debate and we had just gotten the “official” size a day or two before the show. It turns out that the choice of the larger kit won this debate. I guess this makes sense when you consider the aforementioned demand for larger kits as well as fans who want a consistent scale. The 28” kit would match our popular 1/1000 scale. We are proceeding with the smaller one at this point. Cost of tooling is a significant consideration but also the fact that we’ve had some success with placement of our smaller snap kits in larger retailers like Hobby Lobby and Toys ‘R Us.
Skipping down to the last two questions… What are we getting right? Well, everything apparently. At least that’s what 45 people wrote in. While I appreciate the compliment, that’s not realistic. We’ve got tons of room to improve and I seriously wanted to find out what we are doing so far that folks are digging. Some people did make note of the extensive decal sets and improvements to the kits. Twice as many people commented on our interaction with the modeling public whether that be responding to customers’ kit issues, being at the show or posting on message boards or maybe even this blog. (it was cool that I had more than one person say “Are you Jamie? I read your blog”. It’s hard to believe people are reading the rants of little old me.) People seem appreciative that we are making some effort to get modelers input. The overwhelming comment was our choice of kits that we’ve released. I’m not sure if that just means people are happy that we are doing Star Trek kits or that they truly like the specific kits we’ve brought back out and have in development.
On the other hand, we did want to learn what we could improve. We didn’t get a ton of feedback on one specific area but it seems that bringing to market quicker and offering newly tooled kits were answers given a few times. Believe me, I’d like to bring things out quicker too. I’ve said before that we’re still gaining momentum. I can say that our projected list of sci-fi/genre kits for next year is twice as long as our release list for this year… and there are new kits(plural) on that list.
More juicy discussion of the results next time.
Model Kit: Tidbits shmidbits Vol.3
Bob posted a “special features” post awhile back about the Star Trek Enterprise E box art meant for the mass market. These would be larger stores to make sure the model kit offers a point of difference from the hobby shop version.
As he stated in that post, I was fortunate enough to do the hobby version box art. The Star Trek licensor has established a style guide to ensure the look of their brand that calls for us to use one of their supplied backgrounds. So I had a dilemma, do I just paint the ship or the ship on a background. I wanted a finished piece when I was done so I went ahead and did a full background too in hopes that someday the whole piece could be used somehow. The piece was a bear to do. 80% of it was a struggle just because I hadn’t picked up an airbrush in years. I didn’t start feeling good about it until about the last day or so as I worked on it. Looking back now, there are some things I wish I had done differently but overall it turned out pretty well. Here is a look at the entire piece with background and the lettering overlaid in photoshop.
Model Kit: Tidbits shmidbits Vol.2
And a moment you’ve all been waiting for… a first glance at the 1/1000 Enterprise Refit model kit. Ahem… a little technical difficulty here… damn camera. Well, if I could, I’d show you a nice clear image. But I wouldn’t want anyone to be disappointed. Keep in mind that this is the very first draft. The overall shapes are good but many details need work.
The kit is being mastered from equal parts 1/350 kit and a set of Gary Kerr’s drawings (which are considerably more accurate, btw). We’ll see how much detail can be captured in a version of the ship at this scale. Whatever isn’t formed plastic will be supplied as decal. More images when the model kit gets further along.
Model Kits: Tidbits shmidbits Vol.1
Sorry I haven’t posted recently. I’ve been super busy reviewing test shots for Forever Fun (Take a look foreverfunblog.com to check out new product coming down the pike later this year.), upcoming model kits and jumping in on some packaging to meet a deadline that managed to sneak up on us.
In the meantime, I’m gonna churn out a few quick hit blog entries. I’ve got lot’s of stuff to write about but not enough time. I still want to keep folks interested and coming back so even though my next few blogs may be short, they’ll be worthwhile. So here we go.
The first test shot buildup of the backdated Mr. Spock model kit. You’ll see a nice little detail we have added but may also find the little detail we missed. (It should make its way back into the model kit… hopefully… eek!)
Model Kit: All good things…
So, many people have picked up on a small detail in our latest press release that our 1/350 TOS Enterprise looks to be pushed back into 2011. We don’t want to be the company that cried wolf so although an explanation isn’t required, I’ll offer up some quick detail.
First, let me address all of the Eeyores out there that say “oh man, that model kit will never get made” Or “I may die of old age before we ever see the model kit”. To them, I offer the hard reality that aliens could invade the planet Earth tonight and we’ll be involved in an interstellar war that rages for a millennia and they’d be right that the model kit may never happen in their lifetime. To them, I say, lighten up lest your bottom lip gets a rug burn.
Development of the model kit has begun. It has beaten the start of the new movie Enterprise by a full month. This is a model kit that MUST be right in every way. It MUST be accurate. It MUST build better than the 1/350 Refit. (yes, I said better) It MUST be special. It will be our best effort to bring a definitive model kit to market that requires nothing more to add to the subject.
Our original goal was to bring the model kit out by the end of 2010. By that, I mean out in late November. We have limited resources and with the economy as it is where banks don’t hand out money as freely as they did just a year ago, we were told the date needed to move back into 2011. By pushing it back a few months, we are allowed to still do most of the other new kits we have planned for 2010. If it was the only new kit we did in 2010, I’m still not sure it could have happened. It truly is out of our control.
So we hope to have it out just after the clock strikes 2011. Thanks to those who have been reasonable and can understand that we don’t make decisions like this to torture anyone. If we had unlimited funds and a time machine, we’d put it out tomorrow. But the invasion starts tonight so it still wouldn’t have happened…
Round 2: Putting It All Together
Round 2’s Creative Team consists of a small, fiercely dedicated group of individuals who juggle a variety of responsibilities. As most folks know, we don’t just make models kits (AMT, MPC and Polar Lights), but also have a holiday figural line (Forever Fun), a slot car line (Auto World), a 1:18 die-cast line (American Muscle) and a custom die-cast line (Auto World Custom & Premium). As you can imagine, with such a variety of projects, there’s never a dull moment at Round 2. (Maybe our mascot is a kangaroo because we’re always jumping from one project to another!)
In any case, I’d like to introduce you to the people behind the products. (In future entries, I’ll plan more detailed individual biographies of my fine cohorts.) As seen in the photo above, from left to right:
Jamie Hood is Art Director for Forever Fun and Model Kits, and on occasion contributes to Auto World as well. Jamie’s primary focus is product development, and he has a particular talent for reviewing sculpts, test shots and dealing with production-related issues. (If you’ve been following Jamie’s excellent entries on our model kits blog, you already have a fair idea of Jamie’s many talents.) With our Forever Fun holiday lines just starting to get under production, Jamie has been reviewing test shots and pre-production samples of Rudolph, Peanuts and Little Drummer Boy on an almost daily basis the past month or so. In addition to those responsibilities, Jamie is an accomplished artist; his most recent contribution, art-wise, at Round 2 was his stellar illustration of the Enterprise-E for our Star Trek model kits line.
Bob Plant (that’s me) is Creative Director at Round 2. Mostly that seems to mean that I get loads of e-mail and sigh a lot. (For variety, some cursing is involved occasionally, as well.) Other than that, well, I guess describing my job is a little tricky — mainly I try to make sure that things keep rolling and that I provide any support the creative team needs to get their job done. My background is in graphic design, so I still design some of our packaging as well, and recently have particularly enjoyed working on model kit boxes and instruction sheets. I’m a Trekkie/Trekker from way back, too, so it’s been a thrill being involved with the Trek kits. I can’t tell folks how exciting it is to be bringing back some of this vintage styrene — the Mr. Spock kit and the UFO Mystery ship are particularly thrill-worthy and absolutely make my geek heart jump for joy.
Terri Rach (that’s pronounced “rock,” and she, indeed, does) is Art Director for Forever Fun, but she also contributes to our other lines as well, particularly in a graphic capacity. Terri’s background in graphic design and advertising has been invaluable — she’s equally adept at designing a poseable holiday figure blister card as she is putting a model kit ad together. Terri ran her father’s ad agency, Impact, for many years, before striking out on her own as a freelance designer. Among her many clients were Playing Mantis and Round 2. At last, we convinced her to come on board full-time, and, in addition to her fine graphic skills, she’s proven herself to be an excellent conceptualist and product developer, working on Peanuts, Rudolph and Little Drummer Boy, developing both product and packaging. Terri posts Forever Fun progress reports on our sister blog, www.foreverfunblog.com — check it out!
Mike Groothuis is Art Director for Auto World, American Muscle and Custom & Premium. Mike’s focus is packaging design, but he also has his hand in the development of product as well, and is responsible for much of the beautiful and highly accurate pad print artwork that can be seen on our 1:18-scale American Muscle die-cast, as well as our Custom & Premium vehicles, which cover a wide range of vehicle types, from vintage delivery trucks to dragsters to funny cars. Mike is a fantastic photographer, and recently completed photography and packaging design for our line of classic automotive kits. Mike also specializes in photo-realistic renderings of automotive subjects; his illustrations have graced packaging art for Playing Mantis, RC2, and Greenlight. Be sure to check out Mike’s Auto World progress reports (and his excellent product photography) at www.autoworldblog.com.
John Greczula is Art Director and Brand Manager for the automotive segment of our model kits. A styrene kit fanatic from way back, John knows more about the history and the many permutations of MPC and AMT car kits than anyone I’ve ever met. His knowledge has been invaluable in restoring (“backdating”) these classic kits to their vintage glory. John’s obsessive attention to detail has helped ensure that the kits we release meet even the most serious model kit fan’s expectations. John is also a graphic designer who handles his own packaging, having a particular knack for accurately recreating vintage model kit boxes. John’s obsession with styrene car kits is nearly equaled by his peculiar fascination with the Gorn, from Star Trek the Original Series.
Tony Karamitsos is Brand Manager for Auto World, American Muscle and AW Custom & Premium. Tony has serious real-world experience with automotive restoration (specializing in muscle cars), which makes him perfectly suited for our automotive lines. Tony’s unparalleled attention to detail and intimate knowledge of many makes and models of cars have helped ensure that Auto World’s die cast and slot car lines are the most detailed and accurate on the market. Tony is one of the hardest-working individuals I’ve ever met – Tony runs a successful business as a DJ on weekends, restores cars in the evenings, (and occasionally drag-races them!) while still finding time to spend with his wife and three sons. (Three weeks ago, I saw him doing some serious partying with his wife in Vegas, but perhaps that’s a story for another time…)
Andy Jewett is Art Director Web Services and manages our many websites and blogs, from Forever Fun to Custom & Premium to Model Kits and everything in between. Andy is the most recent addition to our team, and his sardonic wit and enthusiasm helps keep us entertained. Andy is one of those multi-talented individuals who can handle the intricate inner-workings of our many websites while still making sure that everything looks pretty on the outside: he’s a true tech with taste. Andy has a great sense of design, and is also an accomplished comics artist, whose work has a distinctly indie (as in “independent comics”) bent. In the jack-of-all-trades department, Andy recently completed a couple of illustrations for our Rudolph packaging.
There you have it folks – a small taste of the personalities behind the product, and a big, big part of the reason why I look forward to coming to work every day.
Model Kits… Larger than life!
Hi all, I’m Mike and this’ll be my first post to the Round 2 models blog! I’m the guy who lays out the box art for most of the mass vehicle model kits. I get the pleasure of photographing the professional buildups of our model kits for the photos you see on our kits. Being a shutterbug in my personal life as well, it’s a real joy to be able to present these amazing kits to the world through photography for Round 2.
Most of our model kits use the standard 1:25 scale box size. However, AMT-632 is huge, so we needed to enlarge the box! Though still 1:25 scale, this truck crushes any other scale models in its path. The 1988 TNT Motorsports National Points Champion was Everett Jasmer driving his USA-1 Chevy Monster Truck. I love the details on this truck that make it look larger than life. The realistic tires, the detailed suspension, and the USA-1 decals all come together to create the ultimate model kit. It’ll be as much fun to assemble as it was to photograph this monster!
Round 2 says, “HEY… YOU… GUYS!”
You know, like the beginning of the Electric Company? Man, that headline may suck, but it’s actually relevant so please read on…
So, if you’re reading this blog you probably have enough web savvy to know about our Round 2 model kit website. We do our best to update it but with everything else going on, that kind of happens in spits and spurts. That isn’t to say that it isn’t important to us and we love finding new ways to make it pertinent to modelers as a spot to regularly come back and check out.
What I’d like to do is throw a feeler out to see if anyone wants to contribute articles to the site. If you check it out, you’ll see we have spots for articles and a workbench area. We’re interested in finding contributors to help fill out these areas. Contributions to our “articles” area could be historical in nature whether it relates to any of our licenses, individual kits or even our brands. Or, an article could be a review of one of our kits. Workbench articles should be more educational. Workbench articles could touch on general modeling techniques, build-alongs or similar kinds of topics. All content should be specific to our product and should paint us in a positive light, obviously.
So what would be in it for you beyond the fame and glory of being featured on our company webpage? Why, model kits of course. Just give us your pitch and if we like it, we’ll figure out what and how many kits we can give in return. Just go to our site and click on contact. Put “WEB ARTICLE PITCH” in the first line of the comment box or put it in the subject line of an email to the given address.
But don’t fear that if we don’t get any contributions no other web content will be coming. We still have lots of stuff coming down the pipe. We’ve got great Jim Small articles, upcoming interviews and more.
Speaking of more, just like everyone else, we are hopping on the social networking bandwagon. Become a fan on facebook to get notifications of blog and website updates and other news. You can also keep up with us on twitter.
Why didn’t they ever let Spiderman talk on that show by the way?…
Round 2: Everyone’s 2 favorite words… “Container Arrival”
When our staff at Round 2 receives and email with that title, cheers can be heard rising from every corner of the office. Oh the joy of a new container arriving. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek here) While it is actually good news that model kit product like a Robby the Robot reorder or brand new stuff like the huge 1/350 Enterprise 1701A has arrived, it throws a wrench in the works from a productivity standpoint. No, we don’t all just run out with mouths watering and dive right into a trove of new model kits Scrooge McDuck style. We actually have to got to work for an hour or more.
You see, we’ve only got a dozen people give or take on staff that handle more than half a dozen brands. We all wear many hats. Brand managers have to handle their own customer service issues for example. On those great days when a container arrives, we cobble together enough able bodies to go out and unload the truck by hand. Usually it takes a minimum of seven people and usually nine when we get the truck pretty fairly unpacked. Trucks used to be a rare thing, coming every couple months but it’s getting to be a weekly thing. We’ve even had a couple trucks in one day. It gets to be tough work when you are unloading 500 25lb boxes of Enterprise from the front (back) of a 45 foot trailer. Throw in 25 degree winters and 100 degree summers and it really becomes quite a treat. Ultimately, it is all done out of love.
