First a public apology to people who have ordered parts and have been waiting patiently for them. Thank you for your patience. I know this is hard and we all want things right away. I swore I was never going to do preorders again after the figures fiasco a year ago and we did it again this time because there was just no other way to pay for “tooling up” to do these parts. But now we’re in a pinch again and I hate being in this spot.

Some of you don’t know, don’t care (and I don’t blame you) that my life has been a bit hectic lately. New job, cross-country family weddings,  and (primarily) personal health concerns have kept me from being as involved as I should have been and have been in the past here and I apologize for that.If you’ve not gotten an email answered or a part or an order delivered - I’m not snubbing or purposely ignoring you. I keep everything on file for reference and will get orders out as soon as we can.

So here’s the info and updates that everyone is looking for about products:

1. Insane Detailing Parts: Are about 90% ready and here and shipping out slowly over the next few days. Doug did his work in good time and got them to me and they look amazing. I need to find appropriate packaging and get them all out. With the exception of the detect-a-scopes which are taking a while longer due to my supplier issues with China. We are working on a more local fix for that but if you’ve ordered detect-a-scopes - your order will be delayed a bit longer. Everything else is going out momentarily.

2. Shirts: They are still at the printer as I had to redo the artwork for them and haven’t been able to yet. These should be done within the next 2 weeks and shipping out as well.

3. Upgrade Parts Set #1: This is the bad news area. Because of our problems with our China supplier, we cannot yet fulfill these orders. I am working on another supplier for some parts but it may be a while yet. Maybe a month. I apologize again for this. If you can hold out - great. If you can’t - just email for a refund.

4. Figures. Painted figures are officially sold out. I have a few unpainted sets left. But they arestill on the ordering page because I haven’t had time to take them off. Please don’t order them as I just have to refund you. I am trying to get to thge ordering page fixes this week as well.

That’s about it. I apologize again and hope we will be back with new things and better ideas soon for how to produce this stuff but it’s just one person here with a few outside designers so if you can’t cut us some slack - that’s fine, just ask for a refund.

Thanks for understanding and your patience.

-Scot

Some things to update everyone on.

 1. Figuratively Speaking. The new batch of finished (painted) V2.5 figures from China are now sold out. Which means that for the forseeable future - we are completely sold out of finished figures. I did find a few V2.0 sets left over from the next to last run and those will be squirreled away for a while to someday reap the benefits of Supply & Demand. (“It’s a Mister Death, about the reaping…”) But for now - that’s it. Kaput. Finis. We do have a few more sets of unfinished figures which are going fast via ebay and other outlets, but when they’re gone - they’re gone too. “But couldn’t you just paint the unfinished figures and sell those?” Yes, but we’re not going to. (see update issue #2) “Can’t you just call China and order more?” Yes, but we’re not going to. Our experience has shown that we are far too small to focus on more than a few items at one time, so for the short term, we’ll be working on the upgrade parts with our other partners and trying to get them all out over the upcoming weeks. We had a couple other figure ideas but they are on hold for now.

2. Where the hell are the parts I ordered 3 weeks ago?  There’s good news and bad news there. All of the parts that were featured in our newest “catalog” were marked as “Preorders.” Some of you understood what that means and have been here before. These things aren’t manufactured and sitting around. We’re too small for that. They are pre-ordered, then we have them made, and then we ship them. The good news is that we are expecting almost 90% of the Insane Detailing amazing parts in next week and we will be sending them out asap. The bad news is that our own upgrade sets (#1) are taking a while longer. A few of the pieces are coming in from overseas. As always - if you can’t stand waiting any longer - just ask for a refund and we’ll happily give it. But please don’t email asking about your order and then get upset if you don’t hear back. We always post updates HERE, not individually and I apologize but we just can’t possibly  break that pattern. I’ve said it before - I can either answer every single email or I can work on the parts. If you can’t roll with that - you probably shouldn’t be ordering from us. Preorders are always cheaper than when the items actually come in to stock and go up and, in this case - some items will never go up as an “in stock” item. They will always be preorders or will sell out as preorders. Sorry - that’s just the way it is. Some things will never change.  (Oh Bruce Hornsby, you wrote my life…)

More info including a pretty cool announcement from Insane Detailing coming later this weekend.

Our thanks to everyone who participated in the Super Elite Batmobile Giveaway. The lucky recipient of the Big Bat Package of Fun described below from PMB and Replicarz is: (drumroll please…)

Brian Jones from Sycamore, Illinois!

Congratulations Brian!

Brian has been contacted and says he never wins anything and is very excited.

As an added surprise bonus - You’re ALL Winners!  That’s right, we have decided to award a $5 coupon to anyone who entered the giveaway good toward any purchase over $60.00 at PMB! (good toward any new $60.00 or more purchase from this date forward, not an older purchase or preorder that hasn’t been shipped yet) If you are in this category (and yes, we have the list) and are buying something in the future - just let us know so we can apply your coupon. Or just wait until we send a real coupon code out later.

Thanks again for participating. We are working on preorder items and should be updating this page with parts info soon.

_____________________________________________________________________________________Our great  friends at REPLICARZ have made it possible for us to give away a FANTASTIC set of Batmobile goodies worth over $400.00 that some lucky person will be thrilled to get. Here’s the rundown:

• 1 Hot Wheels 1/18 Super Elite Batmobile, MIB! Graciously supplied by REPLICARZ!
• 1 Hot Wheels SDCC Edition 1/50 Batgirl Cycle gift set MIB
• 1 Hot Wheels 1/50 Batboat MOC
• 1 PMB! 1/18 Crimefighter Figure Set (unpainted)
• 1 PMB! T-shirt (sizes are limited)

How it works. This NOT a raffle or a sweepstakes. We are giving these items away completely free. However, we will be picking numbers from our new database. We will collect names to draw, (completely at random based on a numbered system and a true random draw) and pick a recipient on April 15th.

• This isn’t a raffle or sweepstakes, technically no purchase is necessary.
• Shipping of the items will be free to all continental US states. If an international  donor is drawn, you will need to pay the actual shipping costs.
• We will close the list on April 15th at which time we will then pick the recipient and announce on April 16th.

Well, looks like Round 2 has done what Polar Lights could not - namely re-releasing the Batmobile model. For those that don’t know or remember - Since many of the original patterns and sculpts for many classic models have been lost or sold or destroyed over the years, Polar Lights (another name for the AURORA Borealis, get it?) had the bright idea of gathering up some really pristine examples of some of the great kits of yesteryear and use them to make new steel molds. I know this because they bought my original Aurora Batcycle when they were scarfing stuff up. They put out the Batboat and the Batcycle and several comic-inspired vehicles. This was not a small or inexpensive undertaking and it, among other things, drove the company out of business.

I knew they had the original Batmobile molded up years ago. Mike Stutelberg, a friend of mine who designed other PL bat-kits and was part of the line’s creative team told me loads of stories from this company during this time period. Many very interesting ones. Seveal test molds (often in white styrene) have been sold over the years on eBay pretending to be “original Aurora test shots” but are actually much more recent Polar Lights test shots. PL weren’t able to afford or acquire the license and it all fell through years ago.

But here we are in 2009, a year after a successful Mattel Batmobile revival and apparently Round 2 has been able to pull it off. Looks like the Batmobile model is up for pre-ordering at several retail spots! Now keep in mind it is a recast of the original Aurora 1/32 car so it’s 7″ long, much smaller than the Mattel diecast. And it was a really innaccurate model. But it remains the number one selling model kit in Aurora’s historyand is a bunch of fun. With any luck, Round 2 will maintain the packaging like PL did and it will be a welcome addition that we can pimp as soon as possible.

Just in time for your tax refund check’s arrival…

These items and more are now open to the public in the Custom Shop. Introductory and Sale prices will last until 4/15.

As we near the date of our upcoming Super Sale (sometime during the week of 3/15) I wanted to remind people of a few things:

1.) We migrated our server today (Yay!) so if there are some little glitches with the new site or how it is behaving - let me know. It seems fine but ya never know.

2) The place to subscribe to our email list for sales updates etc. is not the same as the WordPress registration. It is over in the right hand sidebar under “subscribe to our mailing list”  You can just click HERE to get there too.

3) A little trash talk time. A couple people have sent me links to these Bat figures that heroes Club is selling on ebay. And I just have to spout off a bit. Firstly - I would hope that you folks that call yourselves bat-collectors would recognize that they just recast the Polar Lights Batboat figures. Here are the two sets of figures:

1. Polar Lights Batboat:

2. Heroes Club Figures:

Now, it really doesn’t take too much of a detective to realize these are the same figures. That would be fine too.We certainly borrowed some existing figures to make our gen 1 sets. But here’s the deal. Do the math. the Polar Lights Batboat is a 1/25 scale model. So these figures are (as you can see) much too small for the car. And the ones I saw were cast in a static posed hard vinyl and just look very comic booky, not like Adam and Burt at all. Comic Booky, small, poorly painted and crazy bright. And they did a piss-poor job of switching Robin’s bent arm to boot. I think these look ghastly.

So hey - if you want to chalk this up to trash talk - feel free. We’re going to be all out (for good) of our figures by April so it doesn’t really impact us at all. But if you’re buying these because you think $50 is a bargain - just be forewarned: You get what you pay for.  Not only that but our new run of figures is almost as affordable. (shhhh don’t let that out yet - it’s a sale secret!)

Okay the chatter has made it evident that people are getting restless for some news on what, where, when the new stuff is coming out. So here’s the scoops. (or as much scoop as we can dish out right now)

First off, we are going to be down a few days very soon while we migrate our server. This will invariably cause some glitchiness in the functionality around here. bear with us please and don’t think we’ve shut down if you can’t see us for a bit. We’re just getting bigger, better digs.

Next - we are rolling all new stuff out along with a big blowout blast sale to our registered users  that are on our mailing list. If you got our Super Secret Holiday sale email - you’re already on the list. If not - you may not be.What will be new? Lots of stuff. What will be on sale? Lots of stuff. (seeing a pattern here)

When? Well the folks on the mailing list will be getting first crack at everything 2 days before the gen pop does.This will all happen sometime within the week of 3/15. How does this impact you if you’re NOT on the list? Lots of things will be in limited quantities and could be sold out before we announce it all publicly. So - forewarned is forewarned folks.

What else? Oh yeah. Big promotional giveaway. Who would like a chance at a Super Elite Hot Wheels Batmobile, along with the 1:50, batcycle, batboat and Batgirl cycle 3 pack, along with a set of PMB crimefighter figures,  and a few other as yet unnanounced goodies all bundled together for $5? What’s the chance? Well, like the Highlander - “There can be only ONE.”  so… you know - look for details soon.

DC Artists just can’t seem to stop themselves form using the coolest version of the Batmobile ever in today’s comics. Here’s the newest one from Nightwing: