Scale Model Plastic Kits - The Hobby

[Stryder50]

Many here are like me, growing up in the 1950's-1960's and building scale model plastic kits of aircraft, warships, tanks/armor, and etc. The smell of polystyrene glue and enamel paints bringing back fond memories.

This is a thread for both those times past and the history up to date of this hobby venture many of us enjoyed then, and also ever since in some cases.

I'll lead off in the next post with an article excerpt and links from the recent issue of Smithsonian Air and Space Quarterly Magazine.

More to follow, of course.

 

[Stryder50]

Air & Space Quarterly

Some Assembly Required​

Posted on Jun 21, 2022

By: Preston Lerner
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Aviation enthusiasts are scouring the country for the vintage airplane kits of their youth.​

Nowadays, scale-model airplane kits are so meticulously detailed and cosmetically accurate you half expect to see them start a takeoff roll and launch themselves into the air. And while manufacturers have always offered kits for the most popular airplanes—think Supermarine Spitfire—they’re now selling kits for aircraft as obscure as the Boulton Paul Defiant.


But with this revolution in quality and choice has come an unintended consequence—a backlash from modelers who are overwhelmed by the new kits. “I’ve actually had an adverse reaction to these fantastic new models that have hundreds of pieces—or even a thousand pieces,” says Alan Bussie, who not only builds vintage models but also sells them. “Now I tend to go back and build kits from the ’50s. They have, like, 20 pieces, as opposed to 120 or 160 or something like that. I tend to pick only simple projects that I can actually get done. Otherwise, they’re going to languish on the workbench forever.”

Paradoxically, even though the 2020s are the best of times for airplane models, the 1950s and ’60s are still considered the hobby’s Golden Age. This was the era when plastic model kits flooded into the mainstream. Enticed by cheap prices, easy-to-follow instructions, and wildly dramatic—if fanciful—box art, an entire generation of American kids without access to video games and the Internet grew up assembling small vintage aircraft in their basements and garages.

“In the early ’60s, Boys’ Life did a survey of Boy Scouts,” says Jeff Garrity as he strolls down a corridor between shelves stacked with model boxes. “What do you like to do for fun? Ninety-nine percent of them built model kits. Ninety-nine percent! Everybody our age built models. What other business has that kind of coverage?”
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Now 65, sporting the white goatee and flowing hair of an ex-rock-and-roll guitarist, Garrity fondly remembers staying up all night with friends, gluing together models two at a time, working on one while the other dried. Today, he runs Rare-Plane Detective (rare-planedetective.com) out of a discreet storefront in an industrial park near Palm Springs, California. “We’re not actually a store,” he says. “We’re a warehouse you can shop at.”




Jeff Garrity, the proprietor of Rare-Plane Detective near Palm Springs, California, is one of a handful of dealers around the country who sell vintage plastic model kits—some of which have soared dramatically in value. (© Jessica Sterling Photography)

Garrity is one of a handful of dealers around the country who sell vintage plastic model kits that are, in some cases, older than they are. Bussie, 58, a pilot and former aeronautical engineer, is the president of Oldmodelkits.com, a website listing page after page of classic models as well as a blog with invaluable histories of the hobby. A third dealer is Jim Pentifallo, who sells old kits through Mustang-Hobbies.com and more traditional fare at his shop in New Jersey—Ridgefield Hobby—across the Hudson River from New York City.
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But it was the technological ferment inspired by World War II that served as the foundation of what would eventually mature into a multimillion-dollar industry. The necessary breakthrough was the mastery of injection molding, which allowed for the mass production of hard plastic parts. In postwar America, plastic models could be found on hobby store shelves bearing company names like Varney, Hawk, Renewal, and Lindberg. But modeling enthusiasts of the day were unimpressed by the early plastic kits because they were so crude, especially compared to the more traditional balsa wood models valued for their quality and authenticity.

The plastic kits might have continued languishing on the top shelves of hobby shops, unwanted and unsold, if not for a handful of visionaries who had an epiphany: marketing the plastic kits as toys would extend their appeal far beyond the tiny universe of aeromodeling geeks.

There seemed to be an endless appetite for plastic model kits during the ’50s and ’60s: cars, ships, tanks, rockets, satellites…even TV characters and movie monsters. “We had a sealed Bride of Frankenstein that went for, like, $1,200,” says Garrity. Airplanes, however, dominated the hobby, especially fighters and bombers. Over the years, the P-51 Mustang alone has inspired nearly 800 different kits. And plastic model kits were sold not just in hobby shops and toy stores but also in department stores, drugstores, and even gas stations.

Before long, three manufacturing giants emerged. “The best, in my opinion, was Monogram,” says Dick Montgomery, 76, past president of the International Plastic Modelers’ Society/USA. “Their fit was good. The molding was sharp. The instructions were clear. And for the most part, the models were fairly accurate. Revell was next on my list, but that was mostly for spacecraft. Aurora was the minimalist. Still, when you look at their old vintage pieces today, they’re well done. It’s just that there’s not as much detail as Revell would put on a model and nowhere near as much as Monogram.”
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Some Assembly Required

Aviation enthusiasts are scouring the country for the vintage airplane kits of their youth.

airandspace.si.edu

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Air and Space Quarterly

airandspace.si.edu

 

[Stryder50]

If you've seen WWII movies from that time period, about aviation themes, you might have seen the (often) black "plastic" models for aircraft recognition purposes hanging from the ceiling of the briefing rooms where the pilots were told about the upcoming mission.

One could say this was the "inspiration" for the post war plastic model kits we had in the 50s and 60s onward.
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Recognition Models: Scale World War Miniatures Used to Tell Friends from Foes - 99% Invisible

Following the 1941 aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics put out a call to action, aimed not at recruiting adult volunteers or teen enlistees but schoolchildren. Across the country, kids were asked to create 500,000 scale aircraft models to help millions of civilians...

99percentinvisible.org

 

[Canon Shooter]

I was a voracious model builder in my youth. I usually built cars and, when I got bored with them sitting on the shelf, we'd take 'em into the backyard and blow them up or shoot them with BB guns.

I went to Orlando today to visit Colonial Photo & Hobby. They're the last "real" camera store north of Miami. They also deal in model trains, RC cars and planes, and plastic models. They've got an incredible selection and, although tempted, I decided to pass...

 

[Dekster]

Seems to me that I heard somewhere Revell sometimes managed to release accurate scaled models of some military aircraft while they were still classified and in development like the SR-71 Blackbird and F-117.

 

[The Irish Ram]

My brother, the perfectionist, got them all the time, so I'd get them too and we'd sit at the table and put them together. I would paint mine in about 5 mins. and it would look great, and my brother would just smile. The next day there would be runs all over it. My brother would paint, sand, paint, sand, paint, steel wool, steel wool, steel wool.. and his finishes were like glass. I still have some of his models.