Collector Model

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’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.

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?…

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.

I wouldn’t call him that but it’s hard to explain the roll Jim Small plays in our productions. We started out asking him to work up our initial show buildups for Wonderfest last year. Now, there isn’t a project that goes by that we don’t usually ask him an opinion or receive one that is unsolicited. He’s a professional model builder, which seems like a great job to have. I’m not so sure I would be able to part with my work as easily as he does. He’s incredibly knowledgeable and gives us great feedback as to the quality of our and others’ kits. He knows his craft inside and out. He has done 95% of our buildups and he has the job of building everything else we will need as long as he doesn’t break his hands (knock on wood). He does all of our product photography as well and it is world class. On top of all that, he has developed our decal wraps for the 1/350 Enterprise A and Vulcan Shuttle. He works out all of the artwork and sectioning out of parts.

I bring all of this to your attention because as good a job as he does for us, we failed him recently. We had promised that we would make a small tabletop stand up pointing out his contribution as our buildup expert. In our haste to prepare for the show, it fell through the cracks. Meanwhile, he busted his butt getting our buildups done right on time. So, I hope this little bit of recognition is a consolation along with a promise to follow through for him next year.

He does great work and is invaluable to us. If you are interested at all in having a kit professionally built of any sci-fi subject, please look him up.

http://www.smallartworks.ca/

Here at Round 2, it seems like I’m always playing catch-up. The only priority is the one that has a date attached. It’s a constant cycle- plan the product, get pricing, draw up the details, create the package, check the test shots, prepare for a presentation, prepare for a show. Mix it all up and start it all over for many products and selling seasons.

Things get hectic and with preparing for and working all weekend at Wonderfest then coming back to catch up on other matters. Then we get a holiday weekend but like everyone else that usually means yard work and family gatherings.

And all I want to do is create the next great Star Trek model kit… or at least figure out how to make repops even better as the new stuff is brewing. Anyway, at times like this my desk and office get to look like a toymaker’s workshop with all kinds of interesting goodies lying around. Here’s a pic that shows what state I’m in now. For the heck of it, I’m showing the shelf above my computer monitor that shows my varied taste in toys. Some other time I’ll show my shelves of Batman or Marv figures for anyone that cares.

Some things are blurred for our protection.

I used to absolutely dread going to Louisville. I’ve been dragged to a rather reprehensible show down there for 13 years. Spending late nights out and early mornings preparing to walk the show for four days straight. Oh, the monotony, the torture, the life draining experience that made up the National RV industry show. Oh, the humanity! That’s what Louisville meant to me, days on end looking at RVs, eating expensive food and going to strip clubs(and if you haven’t been there, they aren’t all they are cracked up to be) until all hours of the morning. I knew the convention center and how to get to the restaurants downtown and to a small German restaurant out in the boondocks. Everything changed last year with my first trip to Wonderfest and this year was even better.

We started planning in earnest for the show a couple weeks ago. We had Jim Small working on buildups for us and JT Graphics doing protoype decals for us for The UFO Mystery Ship and Vulcan Shuttle. Those cut a little close to the wire but they all arrived in time. We were still packing up our booth and buildups the morning before we left. We headed out about an hour late to make it in time to start set up at 5:00 Friday.

We got there and met up with a friend of the company who helped as much as he was allowed to carry our stuff into the show. We had set up a dinner appointment with him and our 1/350 TOS Enterprise consultant, Gary Kerr and found ourselves running out of time. We managed to get the booth set up in time to start a late dinner. Dinner was fun talking to Gary and our other guest about TV shows like Star Trek and Lost In Space among others. It was a great chance to get to know each other better. I’m really looking forward to having Gary’s input on the kit. Bedtime came quickly after the meal.

We got up the next morning in time for breakfast before getting into the show to set up our buildups. Again, we had to rush to get it all set up. Early birds got the brush off as we finished setting up around 9:00. We brought along a computer to show off the website as well as some striking new graphics for our booth. A candy bowl and our survey were put out for all to consume. As a reward for filling out a survey, folks received back two Star Trek tattoos and an entry into a drawing. (Third prize, a Witch kit, went to Tyler Robbins, Scott Scariot claimed a Robby kit as second prize and Beth Waddell took first prize, a spiffy new 1/350 Enterprise 1701A kit. Congratulations, prizes will ship shortly) We had a great response to the survey with twice as many filled out as last year. We are still tabulating the data that will help guide some of our possible kit choices and put some things into perspective for us.

In looking over the surveys, the most shocking thing I found was that it looks like a substantial majority actually likes the new Star trek movie. That’s a good thing because besides showing off new model kits we announced our agreement to produce kits based on the new film. More details on that to come soon!

We had plenty of traffic both days and it seemed like most of the vendors did well at the show. Among other high points was meeting John Eaves when he stopped by the booth. I tried to visit him later in the show but couldn’t seem to catch him. Luckily, he stopped back by so I could give him an Enterprise E kit. Bob made a point of telling him that I had done the cover painting. (I’m kinda shy in person) I made a comment about how I hadn’t realized how complicated the ship was until I had to draw it. John smiled and didn’t tell me it sucked so I took that as a compliment (he was extremely friendly).

Saturday went by pretty quickly. I made one of my only purchases early that day when I saw a huge mobster figure hanging at a dealer right at the entrance. I had never seen them before but he’s a huge Mezco figure that looks quite like the Goon. I was shocked to learn he was only $5 so I had to stake my claim before someone else grabbed him up. My other private purchase was a FineMolds Tie Fighter. I’d never seen a FineMolds kit first hand before and the Tie Fighter is one of my favorite space ships. I hope they come out with a larger scale version some day. I also picked up some “R&D” kits of the MAK A.F.S. Mk2 figure and the new, popular Falke vehicle. I’m starting to dig into other kits like this to “see what they are made of”.

I saw a few excellent builds of the Falke in the contest showroom. The talent demonstrated in that room always blows me away. Amazing, amazing work. I particularly like well-done figural stuff and this is the show to find it. But hey, we make space ships here and folks out there are doing some awesome work with our kits. There were too many to mention but to me the best use of one of our kits was by the gentleman who did a great job with our 1/350 refit, painting it with real pearl paint and adding lights. It was impeccable. Not to be confused with what we referred to as the U.S.S. Vegasprise. This was a 4’ long refit that was actually shaped pretty nicely if you could stand it long enough to look at it. It literally had bells and whistles on it, and lights and chrome and everything that a well-made jukebox would have.

It turns out there is more to Louisville than a convention center. They’ve got movie theaters there too. One in particular looks like it has a great program going on showing great movies form my formative years. This particular weekend, they were showing Alien and the show organizers made sure that we Wonderfest-ers would have the opportunity to see it. It would have been great but as it turned out I was so incredibly tired from preparing for, driving to and working the show, I couldn’t keep my eyes open through the parts I really wanted to see. I barely got glimpses of the space jockey on the big screen. It was a real shame. I’ll need to see if we can get an arrangement like that made with a theatre around here. It seems like a great program. Upcoming films were Sixteen Candles, Superman 2 and Master of the Universe… Not so sure about that one.

I made a brief stop at the CultTVMan suite to round out my night. I bounced a couple kit ideas off Steve and checked out the Doctor Who Easter special. I’d always heard of the show and it seems like the current series is pretty popular. I have to admit to never watching a single episode. The show was entertaining and I can see the appeal. The not so special effects still distract me though. I’m not sure how everyone can put up with them. I guess if you like the character and story enough you can forgive the budget a little.

Sunday seemed like a decent crowd and it kept us busy enough. Things got a little slow towards the end of the day. That’s when I got my last look around the show and made some of my purchases. We wound up the day by tearing down the booth and were the second to the last people still in the room. We were a little late to the Wonderfest banquet. It was worth attending but the food was a little blah and the program was a little longer than it maybe should have been. I know lot’s of other folks enjoyed it all but it had been a long weekend.

I’m already looking forward to next year. Maybe I’ll find time to do a buildup worthy of entering into the contest or maybe participate in the Iron Modeler competition. Just like last year, we learned a few lessons and now we know better how to prepare for the next show.

In the meantime, you can give me some insight. I asked a question on last year’s survey that was a little hard for folks to answer at the time. It requires some serious thought but I’d really like to know…

What is your favorite model kit of all time and why? Be honest. I don’t want every response to be one of our kits. It doesn’t even need to be sci-fi. I truly want to know what commercial kits are great and what makes them so. Ease of build? Amount of detail? Parts fit? I want to learn from these kits in an effort to make all of ours just as great. I’m all ears.

Wonderfest – Blastoff!

If you aren’t there already, you’d better leave now… well depending on where you live. By the time this hits the blogosphere we should have our truck packed with all of our buildups from the Enterprise 1701A to the Witch to… hmmm, what else could we be planning?

Yes, we will have a major announcement at the show. It is not something any of us have mentioned to this point but it will trigger some new model kits to be released in 2010. Hmmm… What could it be????????????????????????????????(I hate it when people do this. It’s so obnoxious)?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(okay. I’m done)

See you at Wonderfest.