Monster Beetle re-release #58618

[njmlondon]

Hey guys - question for those of you (most?) who've had experience with both the vintage and re-re M.B. / Blackfoot: how specifically does the plastic of the A parts / chassis halves feel in the re-re vs the original? Is it identical? More flexible? Same feel? Color depth?

I've paid ~$100 on a few occasions for NIP original chassis parts for these and it's a dream come true to have them floating around the bay for $25-30 but maybe it's too good to be really, totally true? IDK. I have a set ordered and on their way to me. Just wondering people's opinions.

I just ordered a set of A-parts from Goldstarstockist here in the UK for £7.95. They are to replace an old set which had cracks in. Will let you know what I think about the material when they arrive.

[RCcoachworks]

The re-re parts that I have are more red and brighter (and not as dusty!) than the original tree that I have, but it's not noticeable unless you hold them side by side. I think the original has just suffered from age more than anything. 25 years ago, I suspect that the old tree looked the same. The flexibility of the plastic feels the same to me.

One other difference is that the new A tree includes A4 (the Brat switch cover), but the old set does not. If you look at the original Monster Beetle manual, A4 is marked as not used, but the Blackfoot and Mudblaster manuals don't even show it. I suspect my original tree was from one of those two models.

[Wandy]

I've decided to put off buying one of these kits until next year when all of the frenzy has died down. After all, it's not as if this one will be a limited edition item and will surely get a run of at least a year or two. Maybe they will even make it for as long as the likes of the Hornet, Frog and Lunchbox. Add to that the inevitable forthcoming re-release of the Mudblaster at the very least, then the parts for this are going to be around for some time.

In the meantime though I have a project to complete. A few years ago I bought a new built original Blackfoot for £120, purely for the body parts so that I could build a "re-release" Ford Ranger XLT from this body and the necessary re-re SRB parts. At that time I wasn't really interested in keeping the Blackfoot chassis so stuck it on TC trades, complete, with an asking price of £80. I didn't get a sniff...not one enquiry of interest.

So instead I stripped the chassis down and sold off all of the valuable parts on ebay, ie the A, G, J and K parts together with the Hex Drive parts & wheels and tyres. I also had a NIP set of Monster Beetle E parts that I had luckily snapped up cheaply beforehand and put them on too. I made not far off £150 from those parts...nearly twice what I had asked for the built chassis...and I still had a bundle of minor parts and screws left that could be used on a future project. The complete gearbox, for instance.

Well that time has now arrived, so using those leftover parts.....together with some spare bits off a Frog that I had lying around plus a Sand Scorcher bodyset that I bought a while ago....I have just bought the re-release E, G, J, P and K parts together with the set of gold wheels, all from Time Tunnel...for a grand total of £36.13.

So factoring in what I paid for the Blackfoot, together with the sale of the original chassis parts...and then buying back the re-release items together with a Sand Scorcher bodyset...I will have paid roughly £50 for a new built Monster Beetle and a new & unused original Blackfoot bodyset.

[lee1980]

Yea but you don't have the lovely monster beetle box yet lol!

You usually get every new kit it seems to Wandy!

[beefmuffin]

The re-re parts that I have are more red and brighter (and not as dusty!) than the original tree that I have, but it's not noticeable unless you hold them side by side. I think the original has just suffered from age more than anything. 25 years ago, I suspect that the old tree looked the same. The flexibility of the plastic feels the same to me.

One other difference is that the new A tree includes A4 (the Brat switch cover), but the old set does not. If you look at the original Monster Beetle manual, A4 is marked as not used, but the Blackfoot and Mudblaster manuals don't even show it. I suspect my original tree was from one of those two models.

Thanks for the insight on the re-re part! The intangibles so to speak. =) Am excited to see for myself.

As far as the presence or absence of the A4 part, if I'm not mistaken it's the older runs of the Blackfoot and (possibly) Monster Beetle that include it. Maybe I'm wrong! The more I type the less certain I feel.

[beefmuffin]

Yea but you don't have the lovely monster beetle box yet lol!

You usually get every new kit it seems to Wandy!

Someone on ebay was selling the empty re-re boxes for $20 I think... may be worth it - they did a decent enough job with the box interior (I say without having seen it in person, but still think so).

[Wandy]

Yea but you don't have the lovely monster beetle box yet lol!

You usually get every new kit it seems to Wandy!

Oh I will be getting one soon enough, but it's not a "must have immediately" kit for me.

And besides, there will be announcements of more releases at the end of this month for the November Tamiya Fair...so, who knows, there may be another big re-release announced, one that is on my own personal "must have" list, that I need to keep my funds for.

[lee1980]

Oh I will be getting one soon enough, but it's not a "must have immediately" kit for me.

And besides, there will be announcements of more releases at the end of this month for the November Tamiya Fair...so, who knows, there may be another big re-release announced, one that is on my own personal "must have" list, that I need to keep my funds for.

Hehe yea can't get them all, loads I not got but as you say some just say must have!

Oh no don't tell me that lol, no more!

[Wandy]

Oh no don't tell me that lol, no more!

Lol, sorry Lee, but I am hoping that the Nissan King Cab rumour from earlier in the year is about to come true. That will be a must have for me.

[lee1980]

Lol, sorry Lee, but I am hoping that the Nissan King Cab rumour from earlier in the year is about to come true. That will be a must have for me.

Ahhhh noooo, lol I have thing for that to lol, or the hilux but prefer the kingcab!!!

[mheald]

Utterly gutted.

Spent all week painting and finishing the body (and this was easily my best paint job yet), decided to give it a coat of lacquer, went to Halfords, came home, sprayed it on and BAM...its destroyed the paint finish, utterly destroyed it. So, so annoyed.

In hindsight I've now read up on Halfords lacquer and just found out that it reacts with Tamiya TS paints Aaaaaaaaargh.

£60 for a new body set or £120 for a whole new kit....good excuse for another id say ha ha haaaa.

[lee1980]

Darn thats bad, to be honest not sure if I have any model specific stuff either would of probably done same to!!

[Wandy]

Utterly gutted.

Spent all week painting and finishing the body (and this was easily my best paint job yet), decided to give it a coat of lacquer, went to Halfords, came home, sprayed it on and BAM...its destroyed the paint finish, utterly destroyed it. So, so annoyed.

In hindsight I've now read up on Halfords lacquer and just found out that it reacts with Tamiya TS paints Aaaaaaaaargh.

£60 for a new body set or £120 for a whole new kit....good excuse for another id say ha ha haaaa.

£60 for a body set? Where are you looking?

Just buy a Sand Scorcher body set, available for £27 from Hong Kong, then get a set of P parts for £4.91 from Time Tunnel. Did you apply the decals before lacquering?

[beefmuffin]

£60 for a body set? Where are you looking?

Just buy a Sand Scorcher body set, available for £27 from Hong Kong, then get a set of P parts for £4.91 from Time Tunnel. Did you apply the decals before lacquering?

Yep - the re-re M.B. body is really a re-re Sand Scorcher body molded in red rather than white. The original M.B. bodies came in white too and the Italian Red was/is just painted on. The one thing I don't know, since I haven't handled a re-re M.B. body is if the body mount hole in front is in the M.B. location or the Sand Scorcher location, or both. Did they fill in the holes on the top for the SRB mounting clip? If so they should have done the same for the side mirrors too... except I guess if they want to make sure it's easy to tell an original from a re-re.

[moffman]

Utterly gutted.

Spent all week painting and finishing the body (and this was easily my best paint job yet), decided to give it a coat of lacquer, went to Halfords, came home, sprayed it on and BAM...its destroyed the paint finish, utterly destroyed it. So, so annoyed.

In hindsight I've now read up on Halfords lacquer and just found out that it reacts with Tamiya TS paints Aaaaaaaaargh.

£60 for a new body set or £120 for a whole new kit....good excuse for another id say ha ha haaaa.

seriously bad luck mate! I know how you feel I had the same annoying bad experience when I was spraying my ranger body with tamiya paint can and I mixed my own gloss (thought I would be clever) and it reacted I did save it because I got a hair dryer on it before it dryed but it was far from perfect,I know its no constellation but humbrol doesn't react with halfords I've used that combination a lot and thanks for the warning about tamiya paint I didn't know that!!

[Terz1]

Lol, sorry Lee, but I am hoping that the Nissan King Cab rumour from earlier in the year is about to come true. That will be a must have for me.

Hope this is true! A cancelled order from childhood for one of these makes me want one really bad. I was going to get the rere monster beetle but since I've got my box art wt01 monster beetle and a vintage blackfoot I feel I've filled that need for a monster beetle and an rc with this chassis.

Now a rere nissan king Cab! That would be cool! Money waiting.

[mheald]

Cheers guys. Yeah the £60 price was factoring in all the bits that make up the body, the extra sandpaper, primer, TS paint, lacquer etc etc. Its surprising how expensive a new shell is all in all. Going to throw caution and my wallet to the wind and just by another kit...I never buy just one anyway, I'm a sucker

I spy a future mudblaster project!

Oh and regarding the King Cab...even Tamiya couldn't be that kind in one year...surely? If they do, by god, I will be a happy boy!

[beefmuffin]

I'd love to see a re-re King Cab! Would def get one and keep it NIB.

However, I have a theory based on the past few true re-releases (not variants, like a new rainbow Hornet)... could be totally wrong, but maybe there's something to it:

Rough Rider, Sand Scorcher, Egress, Fox, Super Champ, Monster Beetle... if we look for some sort of pattern in the recent choice of re-releases it seems, to my eyes anyway, that Tamiya bases their decision at least in part on the demand in the market (ie, us / collectors / eBay, etc) and subsequent inflated value/cost of parts, etc for certain models. A vintage Monster Beetle nosecone + lights would have sold for $100 last year and no one would have thought anything of it. A set of Fox rear lower arms could fetch $80 easily, NIP wheels $100+. A decent Super Champ body even slightly damaged and not finished, etc $150 no problem.

In the eyes of Tamiya that means: 1) there is pent up demand for certain models, which translates into the expectation that a re-re would sell well; 2) that somebody is profiting from the high prices for these parts and vintage kits, but not Tamiya; 3) I believe Tamiya genuinely values their fan base and considers what would please the Tamiya-loving community to be a factor in their decisions.

So, if we look at it from this perspective I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bigwig re-release, for one. Expediency alone would argue against this, since the Bigwig has so many unique parts not shared with other models, would probably take a lot of effort to get right, and be of limited value for future re-releases. Expediency would argue strongly in favor of a Mud Blaster next, since now - literally - every part needed to produce a Mud Blaster with re-re parts has been produced (other than decals, obv). You could make a similar case for the Super Sabre, which really only needs the body and a handful of parts to fashion out of the re-re Boomerang.

However, despite the ease of creating these re-releases the missing piece is that there isn't really a huge hunger in the market for Mud Blaster or Super Sabre parts. Nothing special anyway. On the other hand, a Bigwig sub-chassis can go for $80-100 easily. Moon Craft wheels in the same range. I've noticed in the past year or two a general depression in prices for all these parts, reducing nominal prices somewhat, but I think this is due to general economic factors - it's a buyers market, a natural swing, not reflecting a change in the relative demand for certain parts vs others.

I think that Tamiya on a business level place a lot of emphasis on their re-release decision on something that is linked to their observations about the secondary market for these parts: what is the risk that if they produce a re-re it won't sell well and they will be left with a huge glut of unsold product. Any release they do needs to be done in sufficient numbers to make it worth doing at all... and Tamiya wants to ensure that whatever the minimum number of units is that they need to produce to justify a release will sell well. Then they probably decide whether and how many additional production runs to produce to meet the demand seen.

I personally would LOVE to see a Mud Blaster or a Super Sabre re-re, and would definitely buy both... but they are both somewhat less coveted in general, so despite it being seemingly easy to create, it still involves a huge logistical effort and the creation of unique elements like boxes, decals, etc that need to be made in some minimum quantities. If Tamiya suspects that the demand in the market would be saturated by less than the minimum production-run number of units I bet that model gets shelved awaiting the right market conditions in favor of a model that has more heat / buzz in the broad customer base (including, but not limited to the minority of hard core collectors like us).

So - I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Bigwig at this point. A Blackfoot maybe as well, although that is a little less clear cut since there have been Blackfoot variants in production almost continuously as-is.

Thoughts??

[Klausen]

Will definately buy a Super Sabre. One of the cars I dreweled over in the days, but never had. I guess the market for red cva's are pretty hot too. + it will open up for a rere HS II as well

[Terz1]

I'd love to see a re-re King Cab! Would def get one and keep it NIB.

However, I have a theory based on the past few true re-releases (not variants, like a new rainbow Hornet)... could be totally wrong, but maybe there's something to it:

Rough Rider, Sand Scorcher, Egress, Fox, Super Champ, Monster Beetle... if we look for some sort of pattern in the recent choice of re-releases it seems, to my eyes anyway, that Tamiya bases their decision at least in part on the demand in the market (ie, us / collectors / eBay, etc) and subsequent inflated value/cost of parts, etc for certain models. A vintage Monster Beetle nosecone + lights would have sold for $100 last year and no one would have thought anything of it. A set of Fox rear lower arms could fetch $80 easily, NIP wheels $100+. A decent Super Champ body even slightly damaged and not finished, etc $150 no problem.

In the eyes of Tamiya that means: 1) there is pent up demand for certain models, which translates into the expectation that a re-re would sell well; 2) that somebody is profiting from the high prices for these parts and vintage kits, but not Tamiya; 3) I believe Tamiya genuinely values their fan base and considers what would please the Tamiya-loving community to be a factor in their decisions.

So, if we look at it from this perspective I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bigwig re-release, for one. Expediency alone would argue against this, since the Bigwig has so many unique parts not shared with other models, would probably take a lot of effort to get right, and be of limited value for future re-releases. Expediency would argue strongly in favor of a Mud Blaster next, since now - literally - every part needed to produce a Mud Blaster with re-re parts has been produced (other than decals, obv). You could make a similar case for the Super Sabre, which really only needs the body and a handful of parts to fashion out of the re-re Boomerang.

However, despite the ease of creating these re-releases the missing piece is that there isn't really a huge hunger in the market for Mud Blaster or Super Sabre parts. Nothing special anyway. On the other hand, a Bigwig sub-chassis can go for $80-100 easily. Moon Craft wheels in the same range. I've noticed in the past year or two a general depression in prices for all these parts, reducing nominal prices somewhat, but I think this is due to general economic factors - it's a buyers market, a natural swing, not reflecting a change in the relative demand for certain parts vs others.

I think that Tamiya on a business level place a lot of emphasis on their re-release decision on something that is linked to their observations about the secondary market for these parts: what is the risk that if they produce a re-re it won't sell well and they will be left with a huge glut of unsold product. Any release they do needs to be done in sufficient numbers to make it worth doing at all... and Tamiya wants to ensure that whatever the minimum number of units is that they need to produce to justify a release will sell well. Then they probably decide whether and how many additional production runs to produce to meet the demand seen.

I personally would LOVE to see a Mud Blaster or a Super Sabre re-re, and would definitely buy both... but they are both somewhat less coveted in general, so despite it being seemingly easy to create, it still involves a huge logistical effort and the creation of unique elements like boxes, decals, etc that need to be made in some minimum quantities. If Tamiya suspects that the demand in the market would be saturated by less than the minimum production-run number of units I bet that model gets shelved awaiting the right market conditions in favor of a model that has more heat / buzz in the broad customer base (including, but not limited to the minority of hard core collectors like us).

So - I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Bigwig at this point. A Blackfoot maybe as well, although that is a little less clear cut since there have been Blackfoot variants in production almost continuously as-is.

Thoughts??

I quoted it so it's near the top of the page because I think what you've said makes a lot of sense. It would be smart of tamiya to check places like here and ebay to see which vintage parts are selling and selling for big money. Like you said it makes sense because it shows the market is already there for that product. I think places like tamiya club would also give them an idea which kits would be well accepted.

I'd love to see a bigwig rere but after a nissan king cab or hilux monster racer (if you're listening mr tamiya ).

[Chooch]

Ok, I was bored and went and did it anyway...

Let's hear it...

[Chooch]

Anybody else got their re release MB up and running yet??

(Or am I the only freak??)

[moffman]

Anybody else got their re release MB up and running yet??

(Or am I the only freak??)

Yeah I've got mine up and running but like I've bored people last weekend when I built it seem to have a vibration in my gearbox which is baffling me?,I put it to one side for now and I'm hoping this weekend when I take it over the park it works under load so to speak!

[moffman]

Ok, I was bored and went and did it anyway...

Let's hear it...

Seriously cool looking! Tamiya could do that it looks more In proportion than the pumpkin does add a good looking colour!, I like it mind you is the cage needed? It's not that wild is it?

[Terz1]

I think tamiya should do a pick a chassis, pick a shell combo packs and a diverse mounting kit/system which allows you to fit any body to any chassis (I know seasoned tamiyaers can fit anything to anything, fitting kit for the new ones).

That pumpkin looks great on that chassis. I'd buy one.