Profile Aircraft Kits from the 1970's - Anyone got info on them?

The carrier film was very thick and wouldn't allow detail to show through no matter how hard you pressed down on the decal while it was drying. On the upside, they were flat finish which was good for military aircraft. But they were so thick that they looked like peel-and-stick markings used on toys. Airfix's decals were so bad that they would drive kit reviewers into fits of rage during the late 60's and early 70's in Scale Modeler magazine, and might well have had something to do with the development of after market decals due to their complete unusability on the finished model. People who tried to use Solvset on Monogram decals back then were in for a surprise also, as it dissolved their pigments.

Particularly the two-in-one box kits that contained only national markings...minus swastikas of course.

Pat

As in, a 'customised' airplane? Yup! The SM.79 came with psychedelic decals and custom parts. As Tom says below, the parts were good to fill up the spares box, chromed or not. I used some of those props on vacforms and other parts have been used in a lot of places MPC probably never considered. I'm guessing MPC tried that as a way to entice kids to buy more airplane kits that they wouldn't have otherwise.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

One of those 9.5%-ers.

"We all live in a trimotor torpedo bomber, trimotor torpedo bomber, trimotor torpedo bomber. As we fly across the Med, we suspect Il Duce's dead. But we fly on anyway, in our Sparviero, come what may." :-) I'd been trying to forget that period of model kits, but now it returns. Yes, I saw one of those goofy SM.79's at a grocery store back then. "Hey, you Mod Modelers! Dig this Fab Fascist Fun Flyer!" The Vietnam War had made military models about as salable as rusty razor blades, and the model companies were trying anything and everything to keep from going bankrupt. It hit some sort of apex here:

Pat

I remember that. Maybe that's why the B-17 decals were opaque, they tried something different to do them thinner. I think some worked, some didn't. I remember a tip in one of my first mail order catalogs, Miniature Aircaft, from Indiana, maybe? Anyway, the tip was something like, "If you're having trouble getting MPC decals to stick to your model, mix a few drops of Elmer's Glue in the water."

Pat typed out:

A friend in the secondhand kit biz had me check his for any missing parts. It was surprisingly detailed for a kiddie kit.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Those were handy for using up some of those extra decal sets. :)

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

First time I learned that trick it was from our Richard Marmo in his column in the short-lived (hope I remember this title rightly) "Popular Aviation". He was reviewing Monogram's 1/72 Skyraider.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

It wasn't a kiddie kit to begin with, you get your hands on one of those and you are looking at a particular and fascinating part of American history - the after-effects of the Werner von Braun articles in Collier's magazine. "Solaris" was originally the "Helios" Moonship that used a nuclear upper stage to land a astronaut crew on the Moon, protecting its crew module from the radiation of its engine by dragging it along behind it from around 1,000 feet ahead via cables:

I learn something new almost every time I log on here. Thanks!

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

The "Space Pursuit" one had the Krafft Ehricke Convair space shuttle design in it: