Tamiya M18 Hellcat

Why is this model only available from Japan or Europe? All US websites still have it as
“Pre-order” when it’s been out for 2 months!

It’s available right now at Great Hobbies , ready to ship from the Stratford store. Not sure why US sites don’t have it, but we’ve got them in Canada.

Sunward hobby’s in Canada is sitting on 30 + according to their website, just ordered 2

Luck of the draw, sometimes l see kits available in America that aren’t even available in Japan at the time.

Just because sample kits had arrived to reviewers months ago it doesn’t mean that the commercial shipments were sent with them. Here the kit arrived into the shops around last week.
Also the USA west coast ports had been reported having serious unloading capacity problems at the end of last year, which could have the fallout even now.

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Hong Kong stores released this kit on 12/10/21 and have been selling it since then. All the US stores still list it as pre-order. I suspect there are 10,000 M18 kits sitting on a container ship off the coast of San Diego.

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Logistics.
US ports have been a mess for over a year.
It’s not just plastic models either. You need to come out of your hobby room and take a look around.