After waiting for what seemed like an eternity for several delayed shipments, it would appear as if lots of new product will finally be rolling in by month’s end. From AFVs of WWII, you can look forward to nabbing no less than nine new 1:43 scale tanks, thereby substantially enlarging your collection of mid-sized combat vehicles. The nine new vehicles include some heavily asked for favorites such as a Panzer IV medium tank, M26 Pershing and even a ponderous Matila infantry support tank. We’ve move the nine new vehicles to our Product en Route section, even though they are slated to hit the highway on Monday.

The same distributor who stocks the AFV line says that several new Panzerkampf tanks are right behind the AFV shipment, the most important of which is their 1:72 scale M1A1 Abrams painted up in a NATO standard woodland camouflage scheme. Its an important release since it pairs up quite nicely with their NATO standard M1070 heavy equipment transporter. So, we’ll be kneep deep in armored fighting vehicles by week’s end and will work tirelessly to get out all of the pre-orders over the next weekend.

In other news, our principal distributor says that both the June and July Hobby Master shipments are scheduled to arrive at their facility in Atlanta this week. Quite likely the July shipment will be received first then the June container. Strange? Not really. In this day and age there really is no rhyme or reason why this sort of hodge-podgery [sic] is happening — basically it all comes down to when customs gives the go-ahead for a container to hit the road. Furthermore, Hobby Master products, which are produced in Bangladesh rather than mainland China, takes a bit longer to transit both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They then have to navigate through the Panama Canal rather than land at any of the west coast ports because their port of entry is in Savannah, Georgia, which is closer to their ultimate destination in Atlanta. So, its also entirely possible that one ship could arrive before the other, making forecasting for their arrival that much more difficult to determine.

Moreover, with lots of holiday shipments beginning to arrive for many of the big box retailers (Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, etc.), we’ll take these shipments any which way they come just as long as they arrive within time for us to actually promote and sell the product for the upcoming holiday season.

Many of the remaining manufacturers seem to be in limbo there is really no point in discussing them at present. As far as our move to southwest Florida goes, our newly built house is still progressing, albeit well behind schedule. Without cabinetry and countertops its a shell at present, so there’s no point in discussing when we will actually take possession of the home until we have a clearer idea as to when the missing components will arrive and get installed.

Note: We will begin processing any pre-orders we’ve thus far received for the AFV line beginning this week. As always, we would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain from contacting us about your order. If we keep our head down and concentrate we can get everything out within a couple of days. Interruptions always slows down this process. The Panzerkampf shipment will then be addressed once we have a better idea as to its arrival time.

We decided to end our Dog Days of Summer sale one week earlier than originally indicated in order to make some administrative adjustments and prepare for our annual Labor Day Sale. Considering the sale began on July 7th, I don’t think anyone is going to quibble about the shortened length of time we set for the sale. In the future we will do our best to make these announcements before the sale needs to be cut short.