Neither the VICE token nor Bob's Repair are planning to use SMTs. I have talked with the head of the VICE token project and he confirmed that they will be forking the Steem blockchain code and running their own separate chain and not using Steem or SMTs in any way.

They are doing an airdrop of tokens to Steem token holders however, so any of us who held STEEM back at the end of December should receive some free VICE tokens when they launch.

Bob's Repair is a bit more complicated. If I remember correctly they are going to be primarily using an ERC-20 token and some Ethereum smart contracts for their primary business but will post user reviews on the Steem blockchain.

In one of the posts on SteemIt.com initially announcing the project I asked if they were going to use an SMT and someone who was associated with the project - might have been Hive account@virtualgrowth - don't remember offhand, said they were not planning on creating an SMT.

Nevertheless, they say imitation is the best form of flattery, so while the VICE token project may have the technical ability to start their own chain, many other projects may not and will hopefully opt to use an SMT instead (when/if they are actually released - i think that was probably a big reason behind VICE choosing to make their own fork).