Small Scale Military Headquarters

Spoke on the phone to two very reputable and well known online retailers and they both said that 21st Century is out of business and that they wont be getting much in their stores in the way of stock. Basically, whatever is out there now is it.

: I miss them this much





well mybe a little less
there will always be on ebay
just cost more

Seriously flyboy, is all that really necessary?

I agree, I won't miss 21st Century much.

no ;p

i wasn't missing them yesterday, i'll tell you. I was doing some custom work on a panzer iv and pressed down on the hull a bit a blam....16 road wheels exploded off the chassis. I couldn't believe how weak and brittle the plastic holding them on was. Extremely hard to repair too.....i had to do a real hack job to get them back on. At that point i was glad they went out of business....lol.

However, overall i am not glad at all and it's still hard to believe they're gone...

I know they have the ups and downs
Nice 1/18 up
not supper good quality control, down
Chinese modeler glue prints,down
well i could sit here all day doing this but.............

I miss them already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be nice if 21st centry toys did make a rebound sometime...but the odds of that happening are slim to none.

I just want to know where is my AT SBD and A-1

VMF115 wrote:I miss them already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be nice if 21st centry toys did make a rebound sometime...but the odds of that happening are slim to none.

I just want to know where is my AT SBD and A-1

King tiger, marderIII, and panzerIII

Best we can hope for is some other company to acquire the molds. If the king tiger molds were done and ready maybe some day it will appear.

Well, one thing is for sure. If it wasn't for 21st, this community that we have wouldn't have existed, and we would have never met. It's been one hell of a ride.

-Ski

P39time wrote:I agree, I won't miss 21st Century much.

Why would you? You got the bbi Thunderbird F-16 to look forward to!

Well said Teamski.

I'm just guessing, but I would think that since 1997 when 21st came on the scene that at least 80% of all 1/18 military items have been made by 21st (not counting GI Joe). If you weren't collecting something that was made by 21st then you weren't collecting very much because there was nothing else there except for a few planes and a tank here and there. I know some will say that they are a serious collector of 1/18 but only BBI or some other brand or just some certain type of vehicle. If you consider yourself a serious collector of 1/18 scale overall,you have a lot of 21st. Thats going to be hard not to miss, especially at their price point regardless of what one thinks of their QC..

digger wrote:

P39time wrote:I agree, I won't miss 21st Century much.

Why would you? You got the bbi Thunderbird F-16 to look forward to!

Well said Teamski.

Little pricey
I loved spending $60-$70 bucks for 1/18 planes

Teamski wrote:Well, one thing is for sure. If it wasn't for 21st, this community that we have wouldn't have existed, and we would have never met. It's been one hell of a ride.

-Ski

Amen, Brother!

I’m not sure how I feel about it. One things for sure they will be strongly missed in the world of 18th scale military toys. It’s kind of funny how fast it all went down. Seems like yesterday they were using their weight to stop Admiral from making their Phantom and now they're all folded up. I guess they had too many eggs in one basket. Sorry to see it happen. I’ll stick with my planes for now. Should still be some new product coming from other companies in the future. If not, 1/48th has always been fun.

One thing is for sure its an end of an era. if trends are to be judge buy time then we might see a rebound of the 1/18th market in about 5-10 years from now....now I am not saying we will have niche markets ..but as whole the offerings will be slim to none...with a few items coming out at a snails pace from time to time... I see 1/72 or 1/148 getting big and filling the gap.

in '97 21c revitalized 1/6 scale military collecting which had been dead for years. Over the next 3 years, competition from Dragon and others forced them to start leaving 1/6 and start looking elsewhere.

In the Fall of 2000 they released 1/18 XD as an exclusive line for TRU. A year later they started up with 32x as a complementary line.

The prices of XD items have always been pretty fair.....you were getting alot for what you were paying for, especially the aircraft, which were an unheard of large size when they were released.

Over the years, the WM deal has spoiled many, many people, so that they think even paying $40 for a huge 1/18 plane is too much. Afterall, WM had them on clearance for $25 or even much less.

The bottom line is we have been extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to collect such wonderful toys. I hope this scale isn't dead and i don't think it is, at least not totally....there will always been something pop up from time to time, but whether anyone will ever fill 21c's shoes again; well, that's another question...

I miss what could have been... Being a mostly 32x guy, I was looking forward to the upcoming planes that I, and a select few, knew was on 21st's agenda to make and no, I am not aluding to the Mig, or B-25 which were really fantasy projects that probably never would have seen the light of day. I am talking about the realistic 1/32 planes that were in the works like the 1/32 Mosquito and P-38. Not to mention the MkV Spitfire that was pretty much a done deal. For you XDer's the sad reality that the King Tiger will never be has got to be a sad deal.

I will miss 21st, if it weren't for Admiral Toys, no one else would be actively competeing.

I'm still waiting for the RC Panzer III in 1/6 that 21C started as a companion piece to their RC Stuart and then went the way of the 1/18 KT.

Like as been said, it was nice while it lasted. They were getting very nice figs in 1/6 before they dropped 1/6 and their vehicles are still being resold, some in NIB for steep prices. 1/18 NIB stuff will be sold for years thanks to MD sales.

Now to look for the next "good thing".

21C never sold it's molds, they stored them until their warehouse burned down. Maybe now they will sell at least the KT and 88 molds.

I've been complaining for years, at shows, to 21C, that they had a ready market if they re-produced the 1/6 Scout Car, currently selling for $300 to $500 NIB. They just wrote me off as just another plastic addict like one of those pathetic SW fans in the Chewbacca suits......... just because I had my Army clothes on.......

TTT

I've said it before….. the US prices for 1/18th has always been amazingly cheap compared to here in Oz, where the 21stCT aircraft at best used to retail between AU$125 to AU$150 (at the current exchange rate this is US$90 to US$110), however more recently the going price is AU$165 to AU$175 (US$118 to US$126, which by the way is what I payed for my 262’s), the smallest AFV the PaK40 is AU$65 (US$47) and the 88 peaks out at AU$200 (US$145), to give a comparison with other manufacturers the BBI Bf-109G2 and Zero currently retail for about AU$145 (US$105) while as for the BBI jets, well AU$200+ (US$145+) is the cheaper end of the norm.

Remembering also that down here we have the same QC issues at these inflated prices and unlike the Wally World experience, we would have at the very best only have two to pick from.

If these above prices where the norm in the US would 21stCT have even lasted this long! Or would the community be as small as it down here where you have to be truly hard core to even exist. The “I’ll wait until it goes on clearance for US$25 (or less)” type attitude has always pissed me off (mostly through shear envy) and may well have contributed to 21stCT’s demise.

As to the tooling, first up does 21stCT even own the tools? I’m not totally sure they do, if they do and keeping their mercenary history in mind (F-4) they might just break them up to stop the competition from acquiring them, (although logically you’d think someone would at least try and recoup some of the huge investment by selling them on or at least their receivers will!).

All in all the saddest reality is that the speculators will now have a field day, forget the would should have been US$100 price tags for 21stCT planes and brace yourself for US$500 plus prices tags, my suggestion to you is get what ever 21stCT now why you can!

.....then there’s the cynic in me that wants to think that this may all be an elaborate marketing ploy by 21stCT just to ship some product, if so it appears to be working

I'm torn between being sad, upset, and not surprised in the least. As it was a privately owned company, no one may ever really know what happened, but from an outsiders viewpont I'd say they screwed up things royally, or had very, VERY bad luck. Not taking away from all the good products they produced, but the company goals and mission always seemed so 'flexible' as to be non-existant.

And in the back of my mind I suspect they aren't as 'gone' as has been reported.

Ok so no one has actually gotten official information from 21C?

DH

i believe several of the retailers have been officially told that 21c has filed for bankruptcy and is no longer in business. I don't think there is any doubt about it now.

As to the molds: as soon as they filed for bankruptcy they became the property of their creditors. So if they broke them up they'd be getting themselves in hotter water than they're in. Hopefully, they will find a way of hanging on to them so they can perhaps come back in reincarnated form (New Millenium Toys?) and be able to use them once again, someday.