Tomy is crowdfunding a 20-pound lighted 1/350-scale die-cast replica of the starship Enterprise, NCC-1701. The goal is to get 5,000 backers at $599 each. That sounds like a lot, but when Quantum Mechanics did some 1/350 lighted ships a decade-ish ago, they were in the area of five or ten grand, IIRC.
Perhaps not the most obvious relevance for a forum on secret aircraft projects, but this appears to be a quality bit of craftsmanship. And such is always to be lauded and shared. And if it succeeds... who knows, maybe their next project will be a one-hundred pound 1/32 scale die cast XB-70. Kinda unlikely, but less unlikely if the enterprise does well...
https://startrek.tomy.com/
To me it looks pretty good. Not perfect... the saucer separation line is weird, but it might be less obvious on the production units and can doubtless be fixed up easily enough.
View: https://youtu.be/w0BBP_9Wncc
So far, they're about 2 days in and have 380 of the 5,000 orders they need to proceed. About a month left to go. I don't know if that's good progress or not; I would have expected a large percentage of the orders would have come in right at the get-go.
Perhaps not the most obvious relevance for a forum on secret aircraft projects, but this appears to be a quality bit of craftsmanship. And such is always to be lauded and shared. And if it succeeds... who knows, maybe their next project will be a one-hundred pound 1/32 scale die cast XB-70. Kinda unlikely, but less unlikely if the enterprise does well...
https://startrek.tomy.com/
To me it looks pretty good. Not perfect... the saucer separation line is weird, but it might be less obvious on the production units and can doubtless be fixed up easily enough.
So far, they're about 2 days in and have 380 of the 5,000 orders they need to proceed. About a month left to go. I don't know if that's good progress or not; I would have expected a large percentage of the orders would have come in right at the get-go.
