Just regarding the Thumb Latch catchers, I can imagine you could make a really good one these days, so long as they were not made to a piddly budget. It has to be said that todays plastic (again, not the budget shite) is far superior to what they had in the 80s. You could effectively make an extremely tough, slightly flexible yet strong thumblatch catcher, with the steel inserts.
Ok, pipedream over.
