I went to the website to do a quick count of the "Coming Soon" and "What's New".
I thought this might give me an idea about the direction Estes is going.
Counting only the rocket products (not the Blurrs cars, air rockets or RC vehicle)
Listed in Coming Soon and What's New pages there are -
10 Builder's Kits and 3 RTFs (Ready To Fly)
Looking across the website (previously released kits):
There are 26 RTF models listed, 12 of those are now on clearance.
Once those are gone, that'll bring the RTF total down to 14.
Almost all the 18 ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) models are still listed at retail.
Only one is on clearance, the Shooting Star.
The E2X (Easy 2 eXecute) models number 34In the builder's kits:
The Skill Level 1 - 22 kits
Skill Level 2 - 22 kits
Skill Level 3 - 7 kits
Skill Level 4 - 2 kits
Skill Level 5 - 4 kits
It looks like the most produced items are the E2X, Skill Level 1 and Skill Level 2.
The number of skill level 5 kits in the catalog has never in Estes history exceeded 4, I think. Looking at skill levels 1, 2, 4, and 5 only, the current mix is very comparable in absolute numbers to what was there in the late 1970s. What differs is RTF/ARF/E2X (those didn't exist then and are now dominant), Pro and Pro E2X (also didn't exist then), and skill level 3 (used to be about 30 in the catalog). Then again there were NO skill 3 (and no skill 5, only 1 skill 4) in 2000. Those have generally been increasing in number since then.
ReplyDeleteHi Rich,
DeleteYou're probably a lot like me, I spend some time going through old catalog information. Thanks for your input on catalog numbers.