Today, something funny happened while I was scrolling through Facebook. I was trying to quickly skip past an ad when I noticed a familiar outline—a 3rd gen Pontiac Trans Am with the words "We've got it." It got me thinking: could this be a 1:8 scale model of the K.I.T.T. car, mostly made of metal, that I could build each month? And it's just $1 for the first month and $13.99 for the next 28 months? I was excited and thought, "Yeah, I can afford this!"
I'll admit, my excitement made me overlook the fine print, fueled in part by a midlife crisis at 42. I pestered my wife like a kid asking for something until she said yes. So, without much thought, I placed my order and kind of forgot about it.
About a month and a half later, a package arrived at my door, containing the first parts—a hood, a dashboard, and a detailed poster showing the model's actual scale. I had seen a guy from the UK building a similar model on YouTube, and he was ahead by about 30 issues. So, I just put the box in a corner, planning to accumulate the parts until I finish the subscription and assemble it all at once.
Another month passed, and I received the second package. Inside were four magazines and sets of neatly packaged parts. But then, I saw the new invoice—$41.98 plus $9.60 for shipping. Each magazine in the box was priced at $13.99. That's when it hit me: this model car would cost me close to $1,720. With prices going up, fitting this into my budget was going to be tough. But I'm not ready to give up just yet. That midlife crisis is going to get me in trouble. I just know it!
So this blog isn't going to be necessarily about building this project from scratch. There are plenty of people doing that already. I want to document the experience of being a consumer and a customer of Fanhome. I'm not being monetized by them, they don't pay me for ads, etc. This is just an honest, unbiased opinion of one guy in middle America.
