2008 marked the 10-year anniversary of this site's launch, and with it came a couple of
newfeatures to help celebrate the event. But 2008 wasn't just a milestone here:
Hollywood-Diecast.com celebrated its fifth anniversary,
PvP celebrated its 10
th anniversary, and the LEGO brick celebrated its 50
th anniversary as well!
We also saw the passing of famous personalities including Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider, Boyd Coddington, Stan Winston, George Carlin, Dick Dean, Don LaFontaine, Jerry Reed, Paul Newman, Michael Crichton, Bettie Page, and Eartha Kitt. A little more "close to home" for some of us, Bob Paeth also passed away in mid-October.
2008 wasn't just about "events," though. There as quite a bit of good TV/movie car news:
Knight Rider made a successful return to television,
Jericho got its second season, and several "car movies" hit the big screen including
Speed Racer,
Iron Man,
Wanted,
The Dark Knight,
Death Race,
Quantum of Solace,
Sex Drive, and
Gran Torino.
In hobby news, the loss of more outlets for our hobby (including KB Toys) was offset by a ton of new releases from around the world: Round2 started rolling out the AMT/MPC/PL stock, Moebius Models released several new and classic Aurora kits, Jada entered the snap-kit field with a bunch of late model tuners, Revell gave us some long-awaited classics like the '68 Charger and '08 GT500KR, and Aoshima produced the Mach 5, KARR, and two versions of KITT. So no matter what your particular interests are, it seems that anyone who builds styrene kits had plenty to choose from. Elsewhere in the hobby,
Scale Auto,
Jada, and
eHobbies.com all launched brand new looks for their respective web sites.
I'm still averaging about one model per month: this year I completed the
Hooper Firebird,
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot Firebird,
KITT (2008 Camaro),
1972 Batmobile,
Jaws Blazer,
Tomb Raider Jeep,
Bourne Identity Mini,
T2 Harley,
Speed Demon Chevelle,
Chase BMW,
1977 Batmobile,
Misfile 240SX,
LEGO Batmobile, and
1979 Batmobile. Technically 14 new models, but two of those were really quick "cheat" projects. Unfortunately, personal issues knocked me out during this last strect of the year, but I'm looking forward to getting back to work as soon as possible, and have plans for a lot more additions in 2009!
