After reading the posts below about R/M's new owners cutting off distribution to non-brick channels, it seems to me that they are seriously closing the barn after the horses have left. Does anybody out there know what percent of hobby sales in the US are mail order as opposed to brick-and-mortar?
It just seems to me that a fundamentally esoteric business like hobbies and modeling has to move toward a primarily net-centric business model in anything but a very large metro area. You will go broke trying to stock all those little products we all want to make our Fruitbat cockpits perfect. If Revell/Monogram ignore this fact, they will go under too.