(q) building guide

Revell was doing actual space stuff, Monogram and Lindberg weren't doing much in sci-fi as I remember. hth

Keeper (of too much crap)

Lessee...

There was (besides the obvious) Hawk, Frog, Peerless/Max(?), Renwal, Matchbox, Tri-ang, ITC, Air-lines, AHM, Otaki, Jo-Han, IMC, MPC, ESCI...

There are probably plenty that I missed, but these are the names that I know of that have passed into History since then. Does anyone know of other brands that are no longer with us? (It doesn't matter whether their molds are being used today by another company or not, I'm just interested in whether it was around in 1968.)

I'm pretty sure all of these went TU before 1968.

As I remember, Matchbox didn't produce plastic kits till the seventies. Pyro can of course be included in the list (moulds now owned by Lindberg.) Cheers,

Keeper (of too much crap)

It's possible. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing these brands in stores as late as 1969-70 at a hobby store in the Severance Mall in Cleveland, but they could simply have been unsold/unsellable stock.

In the later sixties, no, but Monogram was a contributer in the 1950s with the Willy Ley stuff (TV Orbiter, Passenger Rocket, Orbital Rocket and Space Taxi) and some of them were reissued in the sixties, I think. All Lindberg did, IIRC, was the Flying Saucer, and the Orbital Rocket, Lunar Lander, Space Station and Shuttle Rocket. The Saucer and the latter three were reissued in the sixties, I think, as the "Mars Probe" series (and still later as the "Star Probe" series) Strombecker did the Krafft Ehricke/Convair Series in the late fifties (never reissued until Glencoe and that not all 8-( ) but some were still available in the sixties if you got lucky.

-- John ___ __[xxx]__ (o - ) --------o00o--(_)--o00o-------

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written - Henry Kissinger

Pyro's molds made a brief stop at "Life-Like" before Lindberg got them. And Airlines was an American distributer of Frog models. I was seeing them sold in a local hardware store in the seventies, but it was unsellable stock (Bought three Wapities for 25¢ each, but the Fairey Deltas and Vickers Vimys were already sold out!) -- John ___ __[xxx]__ (o - ) --------o00o--(_)--o00o-------

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written - Henry Kissinger

I don't remember encountering Matchbox kits until '71 or so. How about Eldon? I've seen some kits from them in a matchbook-shaped container.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Wow! Now *there's* a name I haven't seen in about 30+ years! I used to have a ferryboat made/imported by them. It was about 24-30" long, pre-assembled styrene, came with; IIRC; six plastic cars and had little snap-on wheels so that it could be rolled across the floor if there was no water in which to float it. Nostalgia rules!

;)

I remember those; they weren't 72nd scale, more tiny. Not much of a party. I sunk my investment in Revell (and a few Renwall Aeroskin.) Cheers,

Keeper (of too much crap)

I still have the remnants of one here plus some, if not all of the cars. The whole upper 'deck' has disappeared but the hull was handy for transporting tanks when my army men invaded the dirt mound in the back yard. ;) IIRC, the grey polyethylene troop transport was an Eldon product also.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

They were 1/72 scale. Ex Fuji molds which were, in turn, copied and modified slightly from the original Revell kits.Wheels all had a spoke effect that didn'twork too well.

Tom

I stand corrected. I remember them as being way small; musta been the "matchbook" presentation. Cheers,

Keeper (of too much crap)

Yea, it was a pretty cheesy way to sell kits. They had a line of vehicle and artillery kits that were packaged the same way. Unassembled 1/87 Minitanks.

BTW, back to the original question about spacecraft, etc. circa 1968. The Creating Space book by Mat Irvine is the best work on the subject by far.

Tom

Keeper, I think that you might be refering to the old AHM models. The box claimed that they were 1:72, but they were much smaller, anywhere from 1:87 to

1:100. I got burned on a couple looking for kits to bash. They originally came from Bachmann (Plasticville) molds. These had been sold in Train stores for H-O layouts, and were built up and pre-painted. The AHM were unbuilt, unpainted.

-- John ___ __[xxx]__ (o - ) --------o00o--(_)--o00o-------

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written - Henry Kissinger

Some of the kits were sub-1/72. I remember some that were similar to those tiny paired kits from Lindberg like the F-84F and a Piaggio type. Eldon's were singles.

I wouldn't want to store those for any length of time in those matchbooks. I'd think they would get crushed.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Ah, no, the Eldon kits came in a distinctive "Matchkit" packaging. The Eldon kits were Marusan and Fuji molds. I dug out my copy of the KCC narrowly avoiding a crapalanche. The WWI kits were 1/72 regardless of my memory (damn crs) but some of the other kits in that line were various scales; Marusan being famous for never using the same scale twice. Thank you Airfix! AHM has done a lot of repackaging over the years, most of their product line was slated for the train hobby where scale isn't as big a deal. So they flagrantly misadvertised the scale on the box. Remember Aoshima's line of kits? While they all said 1/72 a lot of the US Navy kits were around 1/100, great if you're a

1/96 scale ship builder. hth

Keeper (of too much crap)