Box Top Blunders, Omissions, False Advertisements...

[W-409]

This is my all time favorite. Revell '64 Impala Lowrider box, this is the side picture of chassis. Look the Driveshaft & Rear Axle area...

[Draggon]

That magic driveline is pretty dang funny.

[Casey]

Sweet custom El Camino-- fender skirts, flying buttresses with "glass" inserts, custom front fender arches, side-opening tailgate...

 

So much disappointment inside.  

[Daddyfink]

That is one confused Lindberg kit! So bad that I thought it was a Palmer! 

[Mike999]

Zombie thread resurrected!  Don't shoot it in the head, I like it! 

I think most old-timers know about this gobbling turkey.  But newbies may not, and I'm pretty sure a re-issue of this thing is STILL lurking out there in an ITALERI box.

The REVELL 1/12 scale Ferrari 275 GTB, with box art showing the real car.  But what's inside the box looks nothing much like that.  It looks more like the RENWAL box art, which is where it originally came from.  The horror...the horror...

I just re-read this whole thread because it was fun.  On the first page, way back in 2013, Skip talked about fistfights and near-riots breaking out at Toys R Us over Hot Wheels cars.   That reminded me of the Beanie Baby craziness.  When I lived in Los Angeles, there was a PlayCo toy store near me (a chain long since gone out of business).  PlayCo had a great scale model section and often discounted kits.  During the 1990s, I would NEVER go there on a Saturday morning.  That's when the Beanie Baby Zombies attacked. The store was full of yelling, pushing people and you had to stand in long lines to pay. According to this article in Fortune, at one point 10% of all eBay sales were Beanie Babies. Then the market crashed... 

http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/beanie-babies-failure-lessons/

  

 

[Jordan White]

I thought about this thread the other day when I started working on (or rather fixing the mistakes on) the AMT 1978 Ford Pickup "Super Stones" kit. The box art clearly shows a 133" wb long box truck, and yet the kit itself is (IMO) the ugliest and worst looking of all the configurations, the 140" wb camper/trailer special. You can't make a regular long box or even a short box without a bunch of scratchbuilding, since the passenger bedside has the internal mounted spare tire, and thus the internal bed sides are completely different. At least the Model King issue used box art of the actual kit. After looking at the past kits on Scalemates, it looks like they used the regular long box on all the box tops. However it appears the original release, at least, does show the correct kit truck on one of the box sides.

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by Jordan White

[CapSat 6]

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 3:11 AM, Casey said:

Sweet custom El Camino-- fender skirts, flying buttresses with "glass" inserts, custom front fender arches, side-opening tailgate...

 

So much disappointment inside.  

I would like to see an El Camino like the one on the cover built. It looks like it's part Impala, part LeSabre. Maybe mix the custom parts with an MPC '70 Bonneville and an MPC '76 Caprice? I don't need another project, but maybe somebody else would like to take a crack at that. You're welcome. ;) 

Also, this reminds me of the Lindberg Box Situation they had for their old 1/32 "Dodge Charger" kits. A green '73-'74-ish Charger was shown on the box, but to my knowledge, they never did a 1/32 kit of that car. Those kits always came with a 1/32 '71-'72-ish Plymouth Barracuda in the box. 

I say '71-'72-ish, because while most of it looks like a '72 Barracuda with a flat hood, it has quad headlamps, like a '71. They reissued it in the 1990's, along with this El Camino (and both '90's boxes represented the correct makes & models, IIRC).  

Has anybody EVER found a 1/32 Lindberg '73-'74 Charger anywhere? I know they did a decent '75 (Cordoba-style) 1/32 kit, but I have never actually seen a '73-'74, like the box art showed. My guess is that the actual model never existed.

I think the origin of that Lindberg Barracuda grille design was from sketches seen in Hot Rod Magazine back then- I remember seeing a "coming next year" feature for the upcoming '72 cars- there was a sketch of a '72 Barracuda with quad headlamps in it. Maybe that was the plan Chrysler had for the Barracuda until they went opted for dual headlamps in '72? Perhaps Chrysler put that out to Lindberg somehow, and then changed the plan after the kit was tooled up. It might have been last minute cost cutting for a car that wasn't exactly a sales blockbuster. That article also mentioned that the top engine option for the Challenger and Barracuda would be the 400 cube engine, but we all know the biggest engine you could actually get in an E-Body in '72 was the 340.        

Edited December 10, 2019 by CapSat 6

[Don Sikora II]

On 12/10/2019 at 11:30 AM, CapSat 6 said:

I would like to see an El Camino like the one on the cover built. It looks like it's part Impala, part LeSabre. Maybe mix the custom parts with an MPC '70 Bonneville and an MPC '76 Caprice? I don't need another project, but maybe somebody else would like to take a crack at that. You're welcome. ;) 

Also, this reminds me of the Lindberg Box Situation they had for their old 1/32 "Dodge Charger" kits. A green '73-'74-ish Charger was shown on the box, but to my knowledge, they never did a 1/32 kit of that car. Those kits always came with a 1/32 '71-'72-ish Plymouth Barracuda in the box. 

I say '71-'72-ish, because while most of it looks like a '72 Barracuda with a flat hood, it has quad headlamps, like a '71. They reissued it in the 1990's, along with this El Camino (and both '90's boxes represented the correct makes & models, IIRC).  

Has anybody EVER found a 1/32 Lindberg '73-'74 Charger anywhere? I know they did a decent '75 (Cordoba-style) 1/32 kit, but I have never actually seen a '73-'74, like the box art showed. My guess is that the actual model never existed.

I think the origin of that Lindberg Barracuda grille design was from sketches seen in Hot Rod Magazine back then- I remember seeing a "coming next year" feature for the upcoming '72 cars- there was a sketch of a '72 Barracuda with quad headlamps in it. Maybe that was the plan Chrysler had for the Barracuda until they went opted for dual headlamps in '72? Perhaps Chrysler put that out to Lindberg somehow, and then changed the plan after the kit was tooled up. It might have been last minute cost cutting for a car that wasn't exactly a sales blockbuster. That article also mentioned that the top engine option for the Challenger and Barracuda would be the 400 cube engine, but we all know the biggest engine you could actually get in an E-Body in '72 was the 340.        

The Lindberg “Charger” I had as a kid was as you describe, a Cuda with four headlights. Even in grade school I knew that kit was all kinds of wrong! 

[LL3 Model Worx]

Idk if it counts....

But this 69 GTX shows what appears to be a decent set of wide tires... except NO you get some "pizza cutter thin" red lines.... very disappointing.

I can say that some of the decals are cool... and it gives you both  426 and 440 complete engines.

But the tires are the real drawback for me.... if a man wanted to do it box stock the stance is gonna look terrible.

[Jon Cole]

You got to chuckle at the translation fails sometimes.

[Jon Cole]

[Jon Cole]

[Hawk312]

This one from Linberg is decent, but you get the less than appealing V-6 wheels and not the formula V8 wheels shown on the box:

 

The wheels are actually like the ones on this:

 

[Hawk312]

Here is another one with the same issue. The box art shows decent IROC wheels:

 

In reality, you get the same tires and wheels as are on this:

 

[CapSat 6]

14 hours ago, Jon Cole said:

Check out the plate on the front of the "Lanborghini"...it's an old Plymouth promo (used in print ads, etc.) plate!!! 

[Mike999]

Sort of false advertising here, I guess.  This 1/32 scale Fujimi Mercedes "Kommandeurwagen" dates back to the early 70's, when military modelling was really taking off thanks to Tamiya and Italeri. 

But it's just a re-box of an older kit from Paramount, another Japanese kitmaker. Paramount advertised it as what it really was:  Emperor Hirohito's 1935 Mercedes-Benz 770, complete with separate chrysanthemum badge for the grille.

When the opportunists at Fujimi got the Paramount molds, they just printed a decal sheet and...voila!  A German staff car!  Well, most of us didn't know any better back in the '70's.  It's a pretty awful kit, with interior and chassis detail sacrificed for motorizing.  It still goes for big bucks on eBay, and I've seen it super-detailed with a scratch-built interior and engine bay.

 

[Toner283]

On 12/18/2019 at 8:53 PM, Jon Cole said:

Looks like J.J. McClure and Captain Chaos traded in the Transcon Medi-Vac Dodge van for a Lanbo. Lol.

[CapSat 6]

On ‎12‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 12:54 AM, Toner283 said:

Looks like J.J. McClure and Captain Chaos traded in the Transcon Medi-Vac Dodge van for a Lanbo. Lol.

!!!!

Never noticed that before!!!

[Jordan White]

To bring this thread back up, the AMT Chevy Tahoe snap kit has a minor blunder, but an annoying one for me. Basically up to 1995, the Tahoe/Blazer/K1500 had exposed fake lugnuts on the center caps whereas 1996+ they were smooth. The 1995 promos had the correct center caps, and the snap kit which is apparently a 1996 model, also has the correct center caps. However, the box shows the earlier center caps, which are what I wanted since I am making it a 1995 model (since I don't feel like trying to make the Vortec engine that was introduced in 1996). Did they make a 1996 promo that warranted them doing the extra work to change the wheels?

[iamsuperdan]

1 hour ago, Jordan White said:

To bring this thread back up, the AMT Chevy Tahoe snap kit has a minor blunder, but an annoying one for me. Basically up to 1995, the Tahoe/Blazer/K1500 had exposed fake lugnuts on the center caps whereas 1996+ they were smooth. The 1995 promos had the correct center caps, and the snap kit which is apparently a 1996 model, also has the correct center caps. However, the box shows the earlier center caps, which are what I wanted since I am making it a 1995 model (since I don't feel like trying to make the Vortec engine that was introduced in 1996). Did they make a 1996 promo that warranted them doing the extra work to change the wheels?

 

I noticed that too on this kit. DIdn't bother me on the first two I built, but now that I have one to replicate my 99 Tahoe LT, it bugs me. Luckily, I have a 3D file to print off a set of the wheels with the smooth centers.

 

 

[junkyardjeff]

Back in tbe early 80s I built a larger scale 69 Charger that on the box was supposed to be a Dukes of Hazard car so I was expecting a stock Charger with a roll cage but ended up being a race car and was very disappointed but still built it.  When I find it in the attic its going to be thrown in the trash.

[Rob Hall]

1 minute ago, junkyardjeff said:

Back in tbe early 80s I built a larger scale 69 Charger that on the box was supposed to be a Dukes of Hazard car so I was expecting a stock Charger with a roll cage but ended up being a race car and was very disappointed but still built it.  When I find it in the attic its going to be thrown in the trash.

I built that one as a kid also in the early 80s...was disappointing.  I still have it, a bit worse for wear but complete..dug it out of my bedroom closet in my childhood home a few months ago when I was cleaning the house out before putting it up for sale.  Recovered about 150 models that I built from around 1975 to 1990, some mint unbuilt, some build well, some damaged..got them all in my basement, plan to go through them this winter. 

[Mike C.]

In the Revell 1975 Chevy custom van kit, the instruction sheet has a combination intake manifold/ valve covers/ distributor. If you can find this part in this kit, you're a better man than me.

 

[1967RMP]

When the CHP Dodge Monaco came out, I was happy for the new wheels and tires but disappointed that it didn't have the vented hubcaps seen on the box.

 

Speaking of the Monaco, when it first came out it showed an accurate steering wheel and cool radio. Neither were inside.

[Can-Con]

5 hours ago, Mike C. said:

In the Revell 1975 Chevy custom van kit, the instruction sheet has a combination intake manifold/ valve covers/ distributor. If you can find this part in this kit, you're a better man than me.

 

It's on the tree with the seats, bed lower suspension, etc. 

I found it right away, didn't even need my glasses. Maybe it fell off the tree in your kit.