Win some, lose some: The Fails

[Tinman]

As mentioned in another thread, not every idea for a custom model or even a simple repaint is a winner. Sometimes a color looks so awful to me that I just strip it off and start all over with a different color. Other times, when the pieces are all assembled, the look I am going for doesn't look anything like what I expected. When that happens I often dismantle everything and start from scratch. Sometimes I abandon the project all together. I seldom photograph these "fails" but some i do have photos of.

My biggest "fail" was a model for members of the now defunct MCCH. Some former members of that forum may remember the project. It was after the 2nd or 3rd "gathering" in ABQ and I wanted to take the Matchbox 54b Cadillac ambulance and convert it to a hearse. The theme was the Matchbox Widow's Society and the model was to be obtained by making a donation for site operating expenses. Those who wanted the Code 3 model had to reserve one in their name (so I would know how many to make). Members also donated "core" models that could be restored and customized for this project.

The first issue that came up was that about half donor model's window inserts were damaged beyond use.  In those days, replacement windows were not available. This vastly reduced the number of models that could be converted. However, I pressed on and was making as many usable models as I could. All of the conversions took time as the roof of each model required work to be smooth. I also designed the box and the blister card for the model.

In those days, I was using decals purchased from Steve Flowers and others for my restorations and customs. Labels I could do but I was still struggling to make a decent decal. Soon enough I would learn I needed better software and a better inkjet for decent decals. So, the plan was that the site owner would send all the models to ColorComp for tampo printing. I sent three or four finished models to the site owner for him to forward along to color comp and have some prototypes done. The site owner was to arrange for some mock-ups of the artwork so we could select one or two designs that we liked.

I was buying all the beater ambulances I could get my hands on and members were sending all the ones they could find. I pushed the finished date back so we could get more usable models as we came up about a dozen models short compared to the reservations.  I kept waiting to see the artwork samples and nothing ever showed up in my email. After many requests to see the artwork and/or when would it arrive I was told by the site owner that he couldn't afford to contract for the tampos, that I needed to do that part too.

I was already spending my money to purchase donor ambulances and site members were spending their money to purchase beater ambulances. I was doing all the work on the models, made the box templates and the blister card templates ... all of which took hours to do.  Now I had to shell out the money for the tampo art and printing, then ship them all for printing. It was too much and I was overwhelmed. *The site owner was just wanting to sit back and have me do all the work and absorb all the expenses so that he could collect all of the donations. I would have been far better off if I just made a healthy donation and been done with it. The worst part of it is that when the models became over due, I made a post explaining the situation. The site owner refused to have any embarrassment directed toward himself and edited my post and replaced it with a lame excuse that my health had slipped and I was currently unable to continue with the project and that it would be further delayed.

I was pretty upset by that his attempt to have me do all the work and absorb all the costs had now grown into making me a scapegoat for his failure to participate as originally agreed upon. I informed him if he wanted the project to go any further, I would ship all the models to someone/anyone else and send them my templates for the blister cards and boxes. Shortly, everything was packed up and sent to another person who did custom models.

Nothing happened for about another year and posts asking about the models were deleted from the forum by the owner (including any posts I made about them). One day a box box arrived with everything I shipped out, the second person involved had bailed on the project for reasons similar to my own (citing they couldn't work with the site owner any longer). For quite some time after that, I couldn't even look at another 54b ambulance.

Eventually, Mattel made a Matchbox Caddy Hearse and the site owner had all his loyal buddies buy them up and send them to him. He somehow found the money to have ColorComp tampo print them (with my "Widows Society" logos) and then sold them as site fundraisers. A while back, I came across the big box of that project stuff and put it up on ebay as a lot. A former member of the MCCH and now a current member here bought the entire lot.  All the money from that ebay sale went to a non-profit organization: The Hospice of the Comforter. So everyone who donated a model, their efforts ended with real charity.

The tampos on the model were to be more complex than what's shown on the box. In the lot was one ambulance I had converted to a Caddy pick-up truck or a "Flower Car" as they were commonly known. Ninety five percent of the body work was done and it was laid up in red oxide primer (which made it look like a rusty junk yard relic). Had it reached a finished state, it was to be a one off model to go to someone special. I have a pic of the Flower Car somewhere, just can't find it at the moment.Here is the model on box in the blister card and a pic of the model out of the blister with the box:

[Tinman]

Fails of color and color combinations. I thought the BP yellow and green used on the 25c and the 13d would look good on other models. IMHO, it did not.

[Tinman]

I made this copy of the Lesney employee bus using the vintage Matchbox 5d. No sooner than I put up a pic of the bus than someone let me know that Mattel had just released a much better copy of the bus using their new Routemaster casting (I even went on ebay and bought a Mattel one for myself). I think even Odell made one for his LLEDO line. Oh well, a day late and a dollar short.

[Tinman]

When I was first trying to make decals, there was this fail with a washed out looking logo that had too few pixels.

fail6.jpg (25.7 KiB) Viewed 1655 times

Then came this chop top tourist bus that just never looked quite right to me.

fail12.jpg (35.02 KiB) Viewed 1655 times

This is one is copied from a model a friend made, using another Mattel release. It was just too much work to put into a .99 cent model that no one wanted to pay much more then .99 cents to obtain. I also felt guilty for stealing someone elses' idea and it was super time consuming to hunt down the castings as scalpers were buying them all up for their marked up ebay sales.

fail3.jpg (27.9 KiB) Viewed 1653 times

[Tinman]

One of the worst fails was this model below. The owner sent me a beater and requested this hard to find color combo. I gave him the family and friends discount (meaning I did it for him dirt cheap) and sent it back. A few months later, he's trying to sell it off as the real deal. This was a collector I knew and a member of the forum where I was a member. I asked around with the other guys I new, who were doing restorations, and they all told me had done the same thing with ones they did for him. They too fell for the same line that he wanted it for his personal collection as a placeholder, or he had one as a kid and so on.

The new owner was none too happy to open the shipping box and see drilled rivets on the base. I know because, in those days, you could contact a buyer of someone else's items. Like so many, he just went on to use a new ebay name for his sales and was never heard from again on the forum.

[Tinman]

This one is my favorite "Fail" and I just had to post it.

[misterpop]

Great fails nicely explained ..It takes an honourable man to admit his mistakes.It takes a great liar to never admit he was wrong.......Confusedmus.

[Idris]

I don't really like customs but, every now and again, one comes along which I think is right on the money, and this is one such. A superb little model, Joe!

[Tinman]

Thanks for the kind words! 

I too think it's a really good looking and cool tribute to the original Lesney news van. I copied the idea from Andy McCoy, credit where credit is due! However, this model is a fail (for me) for many reasons.

I don't collect modern Matchbox so have no personal interest in the model other than a conversation piece. It was a fun model to make, but no vintage models were saved in the process. I gave up on finding the popular Mattel Matchbox model and read somewhere that scalpers were cleaning them off the shelves. By the time I came across one in the wild, it was long after all the excitement over the model had passed (a collector of modern Matchbox was kind enough to send me the one I converted).

The model takes decals I have to buy, a headboard I have to resin cast (expensive and time consuming) or that I have to buy and replacement wheels that I have to buy and then paint into a more realistic color gray. I also have to make vintage axles (or use surplus vintage axles) to assemble the model.  All in all, it's difficult to recoup my costs and labor time involved in making one.  I actually had one person message me and say that he "would never buy this model because he could make is own for .99 cents plus a couple bucks of parts."

I could have been rescuing Vintage models for the time and effort that went into making this one (no matter how interesting and sentimental it is). I remember it sat on ebay and finally sold for $25.00 USD. I added everything up and I actually subsidized the cost of this model by quite a bit. When I added up costs for the materials to strip & paint, the headboard, decals, wheels, axles, shipping box, packing materials, paypal fees, ebay fees, shipping fees I was already in the hole. If I had to drive around and find the model it would have added even more labor time expended, (thank goodness a friend gifted me the model), which already put me way in the red on this one.  Nice conversation piece but too expensive to produce. Besides, for me, these soul less Mattel models always feel like a waste of time to mess with.

Here is a Hotwheels Unimog I bought to steal the bed canopy off of. I made it into a Unimog wrecker and haven't found the inspiration to make decals for it. It's probably a waste of some vintage wheel hubs and tires (and decal paper/ink).