January 4, 2002

So, boys & girls... how did we all do in the year 2001? In a 12 month period, how many new kits were added to the kit closet?... how many new kits were completed and added to a shelf?! Were you able to make any shows? Meet new friends, either online or in person?

In looking over my New Release page, 2001 was pretty lax in the styrene arena, with only seventeen kits coming out all year... a low, measely five from Polar Lights! Big difference from the 34 kits that came out last year, 25 being from PL alone! What's even sadder is the fact that of the 5 PL kits in 2001, two were actually reissued kits with a chrome paint job added, so actually they only put out three new kits!

Fine Molds' X-Wing just squeeked under the 2001 deadline and from initial reviews I've seen and read, it sounds like a really nice kit, and Gawd knows the 'Ship Guys' did pretty good this year! Seven of the 17 kits were vehicles or space related!!

But for the commercial side of the Scale Model hobby, it's not looking too good boys & girls. Either you start looking, and resigning yourself, to snap-together, prepaints like Gundams and future PL releases... start hitting eBay up more for styrene kits released over the last 40 years, or say fuck it all together and just start collecting action figures... there's not that many alternatives left to the die-hard styrene heads.

For those of you who don't mind spending more than $16.00 on a kit, our Garage Kit producers did pretty good this year! I'm showing a total of 339 kits on the New Release pages!! 74 Busts, 57 Female kits, 47 vehicles, 14 props, 49 Horror kits, 84 Fantasy kits, and 14 SF kits!

Not too shabby at all, folks!! I went through the pages and counted up the kits I added to my collection last year and was somewhat surprised! I actually purchased two styrene kits, and 18 Garage kits, with an additional 5 given to me by friends or for magazine reviews! And that doesn't count the kits I bought this year that came out in previous years!

Nor does it include the kits listed on those pages that I still want to get! That Yagher 'House of Wax' dio is one sweet piece, Manit/Nagle's King Kong vs. T-Rex, Escape-O-Nauts... hell, the list goes on! It's going to be tough as hell just trying to vote for the 'Best of...', nevermind trying to decide what to spend your money on!!

...and speaking of voting! I'll be putting the Gluie Awards voting forms up on the website sometime Sunday night. Voting will take place all next week, January 7 - 11! Should be fun, but like I said, it's gonna be tough as hell! Trying to pick the top three favorite kits out of all those out there isn't going to be an easy task!!

As for actually building said kits!??! Well, in 2001 I got seven completed and up on the shelves, with two here on the workbench in the final painting stages, and one in the glueing together stage. Seven kits done in 12 months! Not too good. Only one styrene kit, (Predator 2) and my first ever vinyl, (Son of Frankenstein), with the rest being resin. I'd say the Pred 2 kit and the Jim Henson bust ate up the most time. But I have to be honest here and say I pretty much procrastinated much of the time! If it wasn't for Ed's magazine deadlines, I'd have probably done less than this if left on my own!

In the Garage Kit arena, we lost Fatman, & George made Judge so don't know the exact status of GEOmetric right now, but we saw some new kids appear on the block! CD Productions, 999-S, ACME 360, just to name a few. Andrea Minatures, N&T Productions, Diceman Creations & Needful Things pumped out a lot of great kits last year to keep us more than happy & busy at our workbenches!! So I think the GK side of the hobby is in good hands!

On the show scene, was able to make both CHILLER THEATRE cons! I'll be looking to buy a house this year, so don't know if I'll be able to make CHILLER in 2002, and I retire from the Navy next January... so hoping to have more time to attend other shows out there then!! So the future looks pretty damn good!

How'd you do?

Til next week...

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