Collector Model

Long story short (don’t worry it’ll get longer again in a minute) is that we ran into a snag in our plans to re-release the 1:1400 Enterprise 1701D. I’m not going into that right now. To be honest, the result of looking for a replacement kit is much more intriguing anyway.

We keep a handful of kit ideas in our back pocket in case our intended plans go awry (which happens all too often). On our backup list is the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701B and U.S.S. Reliant. Personally, I like the design of the Reliant but I’ve always seen an overwhelming amount of support for bringing back the B or the Excelsior. To be honest, I wasn’t very familiar with the B. I had seen ST: Generations when it came out years ago but I think we can all agree it was a pretty forgettable film. I barely remembered the Excelsior. In my mind it was the new ship that could live up to the A. It wasn’t until recently that I re-watched that one again to see that it was Scotty’s ingenuity that made the ship stall out.

We were scrambling to figure out which kit to do. So I put some feelers out. I asked Jim Small, our go-to buildup guru about the Reliant and the B and then I put a poll out on Starship Modeler. Between these two sources, I knew I’d quickly be educated on the state of the kits and get a better feeling about which way to go. It seemed like the majority of folks who liked the B actually would have preferred the Excelsior. This led to a lot of discussion on the board about what state the tool of the B would be in. Had the tool been permanently altered to transform the Excelsior kit into the Enterprise B? It became a case of model kit archeology- determining a hypothesis, investigating the clues, waiting for the vault to be opened to find out the truth…

I could see the differences between the ships but I had never cracked open a copy of the kit. In fact, at the time, all we had was the Excelsior. Jim had copies of the kits so I had him send down some pics of them. We found that many of the sprues looked the same and probably were identical but something stood out right away. The belly of secondary hull of the B had been split into two halves while the Excelsior had been one solid piece. I could see why. The flares added onto the hull would have caused a draft issue. If the original hull tool had just been modified, the injected part would never have come out of the tool.

I investigated our tool list, which is our only real documentation, and it is spotty and unclear at best. To boot, I have never gotten a clear explanation of the info included one the list. If the tool had been recorded, it shows the corresponding numbers. Most tools, which have been transferred from the US to China, have had the tool numbers documented. Most kits that have never been repopped and are still in storage in the US have no tool numbers and the tool would need to be physically searched for. The list showed two tools were required to make the Excelsior and three tools were required to make the Enterprise B. The two Excelsior tools were the same number as two tools need for the B.

The strange thing about the list is that many of the kits are listed more than once. I never noticed why until I really concentrated on this conundrum. There is one column labeled Cat # which showed a year in it like 1998. My determination is that this is the year a kit appeared in a catalog. Both the B and the Excelsior would have been shown in the catalog for several consecutive years. The Excelsior came out one year before the B but both kits looked to be available in every year the B was produced. With the volume of kits produced during that time, I doubt that the company at the time would have produced enough inventory to last for four years, then permanently alter the tool to create the B.

We landed a copy of the B and compared it to the Excelsior firsthand. There are definite shared parts as well as completely unique parts. The detail of the top saucer is much more crisp on the later Enterprise B than the Excelsior and although some injection points are close, they don’t match exactly. The troublesome part is that some sprues with many common parts have had one part switched out. That’s where it gets dicey. My theory is that the saucer top, the belly of the secondary hull, the base and the other sprue of parts for the B are all on one tool. This would leave the saucer top intact as the Excelsior but I think some of the other smaller parts may have been switched out. If these were done as tool inserts, we shouldn’t have a problem. In any case, if we find that the Excelsior parts have been lost, have a lot of existing tooling for the kit gets us a long way. Retooling the missing parts should be affordable to do at some point.

So where do we stand right now? We are having the Enterprise B/ Excelsior and Reliant tooling moved to our factory to have test shots done. This is really the only way to know what we really have.

Have we decided which kit to bring out? Right now, it looks to be the Reliant just because it is easier to move ahead with not knowing what the status of the other tool is. We do have some ideas for the Reliant which I think Star Trek model kit fans will like but we won’t be making a final announcement until we receive costs back and we are sure we can carry our plans through.

As for the Excelsior/ Enterprise B, I’ll keep you posted. One way or another, one kit or the other will be back out again some day.

I posted before iHobby that if people would sign up in that thread and show up at 1:00 on Sunday of the show, I’d have a drawing for a test shot of our latest Star Trek model kit, the 1:1000 Enterprise Refit. Well, people came and went and I was wondering who would stop back on time. It would have been great odds as we only had a few sign up but no one did.

I decided I still wanted to give one away to let someone who is a die hard modeler have a crack at it and let me and everyone else know if it is as good a kit as I perceive it to be. Heck, I’m way too busy to actually glue, seam fill, paint and decal a kit. I’m lucky if I get to do the glue and decal parts. I’m hungry to do it but I’m just pinched. But hey, anyway, I wanted someone who could do a good job with it and I knew one where die-hard sci-fi modelers congregate, on Starship Modelers boards. I’ve seen lots of people post there and I’m familiar with some of their work from what I’ve seen at Wonderfest. I didn’t want to play favorites though so I offered up a drawing again. I figured we could even take the hit on the shipping so I offered it up. We had an outstanding response.

This is how I actually conducted the drawing. I basically printed out the entire thread. I then cut out everyone’s little avatar and threw out the ones who posted but said they didn’t want to be in the drawing. I also tossed all of the duplicates so everyone got one entry only. I folded each little piece up and put them in a kit box to toss them around a bit. I picked one out and it was Rogue9 of Tennessee. Congrats to him.

I sent out the kit the following Monday and he’s been posting his progress in the “On the Bench” of the SM message boards. I’ve got the prototype decals on their way here so they should get to him next week hopefully so he can finish his build. The kit he received was 99.5% of what the final one will be. Only a couple little adjustments were made before giving the final approval on the kit. Now, it is only a matter of time before everyone else gets a crack at it themselves.

Have you heard that we are developing a new Star trek model kit of the TOS Enterprise in 1:350 scale? We assigned the job of putting together the plans for the ship to Gary Kerr. I hope to interview Gary at some point to give you some of his background. Although he isn’t really a modeler in the sense of one who builds them. Though, he makes the yearly trip to Wonderfest. I got to meet him there last year. Bob had already started a dialog with him about the project. Gary has been around the Trek universe in a way many of us could only dream of. He has actually gained access to review and document the actual filming models used for the Star trek TV shows and movies including the 11’ model of the TOS ship.

Gary has already dipped a toe into the model making pool. Actually more like jumped into the deep end and swam like Michael Phelps when he joined forces with one of our friendly competitors to help them plan a highly detailed kit of another iconic sci-fi subject. (sorry can’t advertise for them here)

So about a month ago or so (or was it longer…) we received an email from him saying he was nearly done with the plans and would start emailing them over. The first batch was 26 sheets. They detailed the nacelles… That’s right, 26 pages covered just the nacelles. He continued to send batches over the next couple of days until we had the entire ship documented. Let me tell you, Gary is thorough and particular. There are very well spelled out details in his plans that, in all honesty, I don’t think you will pick up on in the model even at 1:350 scale. I can’t wait to get started. Since receiving the plans, we have gotten approval from the guys up stairs to get costs, etc to start the mock up. That was great news to hear. It will all happen one step at a time. It’s almost time to reserve the space in the dry dock…

Bob and I really value the input of the behind the scenes designers and craftsmen that had their hands in the creation of some of the best sci-fi out there. We’ve taken the initiative to contact people here and there that we feel would give some good insight into the subjects we are releasing as model kits. We think it is a good way to really give more content to our website to keep people check back once in awhile.

Bob recently interviewed Ryan Church, the designer behind the new movie Enterprise. We’ve also contracted him to do a box cover illustration for the kit when it gets released. Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on in the great debate over the ship, I think the interview does a good job of showing what went into the design and Ryan’s approved concept sketch seemed to capture more of what fans thought was missing.

It was my honor recently to interview Andrew Probert. It was kind of difficult for me because I can get star struck at times. I had to buck up and come up with some good questions and not sound like a newb. I’ve been exposed to Star trek my whole life. I knew the characters and the ships but not the names behind the effects and I knew a lot of the readers would probably be more “in the know” than I was. I did a little research by reading a couple other interviews with him and decided to focus on subjects we have coming out. I felt that approach might gain some new insight that modelers would find helpful as they sit down to capture some of the magic of the filming models. Andrew was very gracious and answered everything I threw at him. The interview can be found in the “articles” section of our website. I hope everyone enjoys it. Feel free to comment here to discuss it.

A little while after the interview, we came to the realization that the artist we had planned for our new box cover (me) seemed way too busy to get the art done in time. I had really been looking forward to painting the ship but I saw no gap in my schedule to do it in. While researching the green-cast strongbacks for our new 1/1000 Enterprise Refit, we were shown a section of an image by Andrew. It struck me that the image was a great angle of the ship and as usual was an awesome rendering. We would just need the ship itself, as the licensor requires us to use a certain background anyway. I offered up the idea to Bob that if I couldn’t find the time, maybe we should see if we could gain the rights to use that as our box art. I’ll tell you that at the time, I was BUSY (heck I’m still just as busy or more so) but I would have made the time (slept less) to paint the ship for the box. Opportunities like that only come along once in several life times. At the time though, I just figured if I couldn’t paint it, having a Probert illustration is actually better for everyone as more people know him than me obviously and I would still get my beauty rest. So we contacted Andrew and we agreed on terms to use the Refit image as seen in his print, “Past Reflections” (which is available on his website).

And the crowd went wild while I shed a tear as my opportunity to paint my favorite Enterprise for commercial use passed me by.