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1 hour ago, Andrew D. the Jolly Rogers guy said:

Well, I was actually getting ready to send back to them 4 tubes of their horrific new-formula white "putty" as a statement of how useless the stuff is.  I'd used their original formula for nearly 30 years and didn't know when I restocked that the formula had changed. 

 

Guess I can save myself the postage now....

 

Put it on EBay. It is a "collectors item" now and worth 5x the cost!

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It's a sad time mainly for the past memories of their success not the recent times since they went to being the Out of sock leader. I remember growing up and getting my dad to drive me to Silver Spring MD to their orignal DC location on Sligo Ave. Then they moved to Wheaton I think. Still worth the trip from Baltimore.  Also remember getting the flyer, and calling the order in and then 1 week later I would have a new model at my house! Shame the new owner's couldn't adapt to the new times.

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59 minutes ago, boom175 said:

It's a sad time mainly for the past memories of their success not the recent times since they went to being the Out of sock leader. I remember growing up and getting my dad to drive me to Silver Spring MD to their orignal DC location on Sligo Ave. Then they moved to Wheaton I think. Still worth the trip from Baltimore.  Also remember getting the flyer, and calling the order in and then 1 week later I would have a new model at my house! Shame the new owner's couldn't adapt to the new times.

 

I used to order every month, literally, throughout the 90's.  

Not just that the new owners couldn't adapt to the new times, sounds like they wouldn't have had a clue in the good old days either, not even if good times were served to them on a platter.

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In the early 90s, the gov shop I worked in had a number of guys building models. We would all pool together  our squadron orders from the flyers to save on shipping.  It was like Xmas once a month when this HUGE box of kits, decals, books, whatever would get delivered and kits would get distributed.....being an intern I never had a huge order, I was always scrounging the flyer for deals. But it was fun to see what every ordered! Good times...

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2 hours ago, gkwan said:

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ouch...that ones gonna hurt.  I think Sprue Brothers ought to open a big chain of hobby shops across the country with a ton of stores. I'm sure it would be very popular!

Edited by The Dude
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On 1/16/2021 at 6:25 PM, MHaz said:

wanted to pay me with a purchase order that would be redeemed up to 90 days after my decal sheets showed up at their door.

 Reminds me of a couple of tech companies we did business with many years ago in prototyping. Multi million dollar tech businesses, they wanted net 90-120 on all invoices. We were a small 4 guy shop, we couldn't afford to extend credit that far out. We refused the work....other shops must have as well, in the end their engineers and designers broke down the invoices and put it on their company cards as a work around. We were shocked at the time....WTF? 120 days? We couldn't pull that BS with our suppliers, they'd cut us off! Some balls...

Edited by Charlie D.
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1 hour ago, The Dude said:

ouch...that ones gonna hurt.  I think Sprue Brothers ought to open a big chain of hobby shops across the country with a ton of stores. I'm sure it would be very popular!


Yes, great to walk through but that would be a horrible idea. It works very well now and stores would be lots of overhead. 

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33 minutes ago, Tank said:

and stores would be lots of overhead. 

That brings to mind a thing from way back when I worked for F. W. Woolworth in KCMO. I happened to be up by the register when what looked to be a grandmother and a younger than 4th grade school age granddaughter were checking out. (wow, imagine that, the 1980s and 90s are now 'way back when', mind blown)

As grandmother was paying the granddaughter asked cashier, "What do you do with all the money?"
Grandmother looked ready to melt in to the floor tiles in embarrassment.

 

I decided to not embarrass her further by drawing attention to that so I took the opportunity to be educational ...

 

Actually, that's a good question to ask, a lot of people don't realize how much it costs to run a store.

You see all the lights up there, just like at your house we have to pay the light bill for the store, the water bill, the gas bill, the lease/rent/mortgage. And then we gotta buy groceries for the restaurant. And then we have to buy more of what you just bought so there will be some for the next people to buy. And then we gotta save money to buy things to sell for Christmas.

And then we need to buy office supplies. And then we need to use some of what you just paid the store to pay everybody who works for the store. And then we also use some of it to pay some of their medical insurance. And then just like your parents and grandparents we gotta pay taxes. And we had to have the air conditioner fixed the other day, that's gotta be paid for.

 

And then the granddaughter was like, "Wow that's a lot of money!"

 

And then grandmother's face looked like it was telling me that she'd never really thought that through and had gained new understanding.

 

EDIT: and speaking of spending a lot of money, one of the gals in the store office, Patty, I think it was, had an aunt who did diesel fuel buying for the Kansas City Southern railroad - when you are buying fuel for several hundred locomotives which each have on the average a three-thousand gallon fuel tank, you are writing some pretty big checks, and definitely shopping for bargains!

Edited by southwestforests
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Just a "thought exercise"...

The masters/molds for couple of aftermarket lines were acquired/purchased and sold under the "True Details" brand.  Off the top of my head, KMC and Just Plane Stuff are 2 examples.   True Details also detail sets that originated with them. (Examples being the F4U-4 cockpit for the Academy Corsair and the F-14A cockpit for the Monogram kit.)

 

If "True Details" = "Squadron", I wonder what happens to that old True Details aftermarket?  Are we likely to see them sold off and someone else pick them up?   If D-Rob had the desire and resources, those things would certainly stuff that fit into the Steel Beach line.

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2 hours ago, Charlie D. said:

In the early 90s, the gov shop I worked in had a number of guys building models. We would all pool together  our squadron orders from the flyers to save on shipping.


My coworkers and I used to do the same thing back in the 80s. 

 

Back when Squadron had their annual open house I would attend and drop a couple hundred bucks. Not on expensive kits but on lots of cheaper kits.  I remember getting a Testors (Otaki mold) 1/144 C-5 for a whopping $10.  Stacks of Microscale decal sheets for $2, $1, some for as little as 25 cents. I’d buy cheap snaptite kits by the armload as gifts for kids in the neighborhood. Good times. 
 

More recently, when they changed their motto to Out Of Stock, I’d order only a couple of times a year and always picked up at the store to save on shipping. Yeah I’m a cheap-fool...

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58 minutes ago, John B said:

If "True Details" = "Squadron", I wonder what happens to that old True Details aftermarket?  Are we likely to see them sold off and someone else pick them up?


I would think is part of the assets pile and would be sold off to payoff the debts, then I would imagine that company would release or sell the molds. Maybe one day those sets would be rereleased.

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As others said, back in the early days of internet it was THE STORE. Despite the shipping costs (I live in Italy) it was one of the few places where you could find almost everything. I must admit that I haven't ordered anything from them in the last 10+ years as other internet/mailorder companies have surfaced in Europe in the meanwhile and it's easier to order from them, but it's sad news anyway....

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