Honestly, I'm skeptical of the "these old kits will help pay for new kits" theory of these re-pops. I'd like to see the sales numbers. I suspect the thinking is closer to "we have these molds, and people on eBay are selling the existing vintage kits for $20-30, so we could be getting that money instead of some hoarder selling their stash on eBay." It's just using an existing asset (the mold) to make something they hope someone will buy. Is making a new kit necessarily dependent on re-popping old kits? I doubt it. Bandai didn't have to start with re-pops of 40 year old kits to start its line of new kits. If Round 2 wanted the Star Wars license but didn't have ownership of the old AMT molds would they really only be able to make 50% less new kits than they would make by first selling re-pops? If R2 thinks it can make money on the kit, they'll make the kit. Re-pops probably help in that it lowers the financial risk of each individual kit because there's far lower R&D and tooling costs, but it probably has more to do with creating a "line" of products to bring to market than the re-pops themselves being so wildly successful that they cover the costs of new kit tooling. I dunno. I look at re-pops like the "Tomorrow is Yesterday" Trek kit -- where R2 just took a dusty Lindbergh jet model mold, added it to their existing mini-Enterprise mold, and put it in a new box -- and it makes me sad. I'm sure the R2 employee who came up with that idea got kudos from his colleagues for finding a way to kill two existing assets with one stone, but there's also something darkly cynical about it. It's a "these suckers will buy anything" mentality that makes me feel like deep down the company thinks we're all fools. And they're probably right.