2023-Estes Discontinues 5 More Kits

[turbofireball]

I was in my local hobby shop yesterday, and they told me that their main distributor notified them of 5 more discontinued Estes kits. They are:

#2169 Dragonite
#2452 Athena (still available in the #5304 launch set)
#7283 MAV (currently in the Estes warehouse sale)
#7297 Mars Leaper (we all knew that would happen)
#7301 Green Eggs (surprising, but still available in the #1718 bulk pack)

In good news, Estes is asking distributors to place initial orders for #9722 So Long, which generally indicates release by late February or sometime in March.

 

[Hobie1dog]

constant change, welcome to the world of marketing

 

[neil_w]

constant change, welcome to the world of marketing

It's not marketing, it's running a business.

 

[Rob Campbell]

Estes needs to sell a minimum number of kits to keep them in production. I am looking forward to the "So Long". With a name like that, it should remain in production for decades as we have to constantly replace them.

 

[Back_at_it]

Nothing really to be missed in that lineup. Athena was a nice rocket but kinda plain.

Lets see what they give us as replacements.

 

[SecondRow]

Dragonite is a solid beginner rocket for little kids. No glue necessary, it snaps together. They almost can’t screw it up. Both of my kids loved building theirs. And it’s a great flyer. I hope Estes replaces it with something similar.

 

[SolarYellow]

I was in my local hobby shop yesterday, and they told me that their main distributor notified them of 5 more discontinued Estes kits. They are:

#2169 Dragonite
#2452 Athena (still available in the #5304 launch set)
#7283 MAV (currently in the Estes warehouse sale)
#7297 Mars Leaper (we all knew that would happen)
#7301 Green Eggs (surprising, but still available in the #1718 bulk pack)

In good news, Estes is asking distributors to place initial orders for #9722 So Long, which generally indicates release by late February or sometime in March.

I thought about getting an Athena because it's basically a blue Alpha III until I realized the BT comes glued to the fin can. I'd totally buy one if the BT was separate.

I don't understand how Estes publishes videos where they actually recommend that TARC teams buy a Green Eggs kit, which is ineligible for TARC competition due to being a kit.

 

[BEC]

The Athena RTF is a very nice ready-in-five-minutes flyer and it's had a pretty good run — at least ten years. I've flown the heck out of several of them.

Green Eggs surprises me a bit, though it was available as a bulk kit before the single-kit packaging. That one has become one of my favorites for all kinds of workhorse duties and I was sad that my first one was destroyed by a D12 CATO on its 36th flight last week. The replacement kit/motors are due to arrive from Estes today.

Not too surprised about the MAV. It's kinda cute but after a couple of flights there's not much more to do with it. It goes well on C12-4FJs. And there's the easy-to-break-off footpads thing. (There's another thread either here or on YORF for someone looking for a spare fin with a footpad.)

Yeah, not surprised about the Leaper. I've seen a couple fly, and I left the last one on clearance at my local Hobby Lobby there....even more than the MAV a one-trick pony.

I don't have any direct experience with the Dragonite. I guess I'll have to try one before they go away.

 

[Hobie1dog]

It's not marketing, it's running a business.

so marketing is not an integral part of running a business then?

 

[Scott_650]

With the Green Eggs - and the HL Olympus I assume - being discontinued I wonder if we’ll see a BT-70 based pay loader eventually. The underuse of the BT-70 tube by Estes is, to me at least, surprising. You’d think a 2” diameter would be a natural size for a “big” rocket from Estes.

With the MAV and Leaper gone are we seeing the beginning of the end of the Destination Mars product line?

 

[neil_w]

so marketing is not an integral part of running a business then?

It is, but choosing to discontinue products is not a marketing decision per se.

 

[BigMacDaddy]

Wonder if we will see HL clearances on Dragonites...

 

[Hobie1dog]

Time to hit the "Ignore thread" button.

 

[PDawg]

Im surprised they have as many kits as they do, but I guess they must sell enough to keep them in production. I wouldn’t mind seeing fewer kits and lower pricing, we need to attract more young people to this Hobby.

 

[SolarYellow]

With the Green Eggs - and the HL Olympus I assume - being discontinued I wonder if we’ll see a BT-70 based pay loader eventually. The underuse of the BT-70 tube by Estes is, to me at least, surprising. You’d think a 2” diameter would be a natural size for a “big” rocket from Estes.

Yeah, Estes seems to be almost completely away from BT-70 and rapidly heading that way with BT-65. But that's weird, because it leaves BT-60 at 1.64" and BT-80 at 2.6" and with the discontinuation of PSII in 2- and 2.5-inch sizes, nothing in between. I kinda like their 2-inch stuff and would like to see more of it. But if having the best kits at the lowest prices selling the most numbers means they focus on 3-inch for the big stuff, I'm OK with that, too. Just hope they keep BT-80 stuff around.

With their model where the purpose of selling kits is to drive the sale of BP motors that make the real money, their volume needs to stay with BP-compatible kits. It makes sense to stick with mostly BT-60 and below, with the option of 3-inch for big, low and slow for people who want to do that or hotrod them to take APCP power.

 

[CalebJ]

Time to hit the "Ignore thread" button.

Because?

 

[Pappy]

save this list for the next 'mystery item' sale

 

[Initiator001]

With the Green Eggs - and the HL Olympus I assume - being discontinued I wonder if we’ll see a BT-70 based pay loader eventually. The underuse of the BT-70 tube by Estes is, to me at least, surprising. You’d think a 2” diameter would be a natural size for a “big” rocket from Estes.

With the MAV and Leaper gone are we seeing the beginning of the end of the Destination Mars product line?

The issue probably has more to do with the paper tube company no longer wanting to make the BT-65 body tube.
The same issue may affect large scale production of BT-70 tubing.

 

[SolarYellow]

There may be an economy of scale thing going on, where the price goes up exponentially as order size goes down. Estes looks at their usage, figures out how many years' supply they would have to put up as sunk cost to get the unit price where everything looks healthy on that front, then factors in the cost to transport that material over to China and store it there, and it just doesn't make sense to have the diversity of sizes.

Remember that the stuff gets marked up a minimum three times from Estes' landed cost to get to MSRP. A direct dealer/distributor like AC Supply can sell it at 33 percent off. Suppose they are making a gross margin of 33 percent buying direct from Estes, and that Estes is also making a gross margin of 33 percent. Estes' cost on their dock in Colorado is then ~30 percent of MSRP. (Purely speculative, "for example" numbers - the real numbers are certainly different.) That's after shipping it across the ocean, through the unionized ports, putting it on train/truck to CO, and the assembly/kitting factory in China making its money. That's a whole different ball of wax than the little guys in the business selling direct to end users.

Running a business.

 

[kuririn]

Time to hit the "Ignore thread" button.

Because?

He can't respond cuz he's ignoring this thread.

 

[BigMacDaddy]

I am excited to try to catch the Hobby Lobby clearance!

 

[astronwolf]

With the Green Eggs - and the HL Olympus I assume - being discontinued I wonder if we’ll see a BT-70 based pay loader eventually. The underuse of the BT-70 tube by Estes is, to me at least, surprising. You’d think a 2” diameter would be a natural size for a “big” rocket from Estes.

You'd think. ST-20 to BT-70 is a nice size for their E16 and F15 motors. But then IMHO Estes has historically mismatched their motors with airframe sizes.

 

[Scott_650]

Huh, that was interesting. During the vNARCON Manufacturer’s Forum Ellis Langford was asked about BT-65 tubes/kits (I believe by you Bernard) and unless I heard/saw incorrectly Estes isn’t discontinuing the tube or the kits.

 

[BEC]

Yup that was my question, and that's what he said. Which makes me think that, perhaps, only the retail Green Eggs package is being discontinued....or maybe just the distributor the OP's hobby shop works with is doing that. I'm still going to get one or two more Green Eggs kits in my next order from AC Supply.

Ellis did say that the tubes weren't sold separately in retail, which might figure into this parallel discussion on YORF.

 

[gdjsky01]

Not a single one worth owning... unless collecting to sell on eBay for 4x the MSRP and $25 shipping!

 

[Scott_650]

And did anyone else catch Mallory Langford’s entry in the chat about more Designer Series kits coming? She also commented on future availability of BP in smaller quantities - after all the military orders Ellis mentioned are filled I’m sure.

 

[BEC]

My setup didn’t really support monitoring the chat. Interesting…..

 

[Scott_650]

My setup didn’t really support monitoring the chat. Interesting…..

Wonder if the chat will show up in the recorded version?

 

[SolarYellow]

I'm still going to get one or two more Green Eggs kits in my next order from AC Supply.

Ellis did say that the tubes weren't sold separately in retail, which might figure into this parallel discussion on YORF.

I like the Olympus at HL.

Also, it's interesting to me that the BT-65 tubing was available on the Estes EDU site along with the coupler and the nose cone/bay thing as recently as November.

 

[Scott_650]

I like the Olympus at HL.

Also, it's interesting to me that the BT-65 tubing was available on the Estes EDU site along with the coupler and the nose cone/bay thing as recently as November.

A mashup of the Green Eggs and Olympus would be interesting - longer, with TTW fins.