Model Car Box Art

[jbwelda]

i doubt very much any "truth in packaging" or "truth in advertising" has anything to do with box art. ever been to McDonalds? how does that Big Mac hold up to the photo of it on the walls of the place? it doesnt, not at all. so i dont see how having a photo of a real car on the box would make one liable for any sort of consumer lawsuit based on truth in packaging especially if it is accompanied by a disclaimer that the photo is of a real car, or of a built up model for that matter, even if one did BMF the chrome on it. I think someone is dreaming here and as for all the lawyers in california just waiting to file some lawsuit, they wont if they wont win and in the case of model box art i would have to guess that the chances of winning some sort of lawsuit based on consumer protections would be about 1 in 100 and youre not going to find a lawyer to take that case on unless youre paying him up front regardless of outcome. lawyers just arent that stupid contrary to the opinions of some here.

[Craig Irwin]

It's only been ten or so years ago that AMT issued a 57 Chevy Hardtop model with a Sedan on the box art, I know a couple of guys that were pretty upset with that one!

[Art Anderson]

It's only been ten or so years ago that AMT issued a 57 Chevy Hardtop model with a Sedan on the box art, I know a couple of guys that were pretty upset with that one!

More than a couple Craig! A lot of us called AMT Ertl in person on that one. In July 2004, I found out why that happened:: RC2, then the owner of the AMT brand and tooling, put product development into the hands of a lady (trust me, Mary tried, and she was cool!) who had absolutely no clue as to cars! This is a perfect example of what happens when corporate management comes into ownership of a company about which they neither know nothing about, nor do they care--if they even know enough to care! Don't press me further for my opinion--I don't relish being banned from these forums!

[Monty]

I don't remember the specifics, but weren't there several cases (at least) of a built-up box art model (a photo of what was supposedly in the box) that included parts (like custom wheels) that were not in the box? Wouldn't a photo of the parts trees on the side of the box have shown the buyer exactly how many sets of wheels were actually in the box? Or whether there was a "custom" intake setup included? Or custom seats? Or whatever? I don't see why you would argue against showing a buyer what he's buying!

Here's the most recent example that I can think of.

This model cannot be built as depicted on the box art by using only what you find in the kit. I bought one, naively assuming that it would have MPC's Cragar SS wheels and that the decal sheet would have two or three different colors of stock Mopar stripes (black & white, possibly red). There are no Cragar SS wheels and no stock Mopar stripes. The kit did have some nice Centerline-type wheels, but the decal sheet was mostly made up of ugly blue & green custom/street striping.

Assuming someone like Keith Marks even made correct GTX decals, they'd probably cost at least $10.00 plus shipping, so I wasn't terribly happy with AMT/Round2/whoever.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Monty

[Rob Hall]

A couple others AMT goofed about 10 years ago IIRC was a reissue of the '76 Nova street machine that showed a stock Nova on the box and a '69 Charger Daytona--both showed builds on the boxes w/ wheels that weren't included in the kit.

[Longbox55]

In the case of the Nova, the ENTIRE KIT was different!

[Dragline]

Monogram showed their kits for many years. it's why I bought a great many of them

Bob

[Art Anderson]

Interesting, but I believe "urban legend".

Thanks Art for pointing this out, It seems the "Truth in packaging Law" was passed in 1966 By Lyndon B Johnson.

I noticed that there are some new releases that use Box art on the front of the box.

Polar lights recently released the 33 Willys Ohio George Gasser with this on the front

OK, on the premise that a Federal law was passed, and signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1966, it STILL took another 10 years for model companies to embrace the idea of putting pictures of a built example of the enclosed kit on the boxtop. As has been pointed out in several posts in this topic, most of the Japanese manufacturers stayed with box art illustrations, ranging from simple, to the almost iconic Tamiya box art paintings. I don't seem to recall any complaints made audibly about either that, or the switch to photographs.

I would submit, that any lawyer looking into virtually any model car kit produced today, would be hard-pressed to find any discrepancy between the boxtop and the contents inside, unless the kit in question was an Xmobile instead of the advertised Ytireburner. As long as an illustration shows the content of the kit box correctly, and does not show a feature or features that cannot be built from the kit inside--then I rather doubt any lawyer would even take up a case alleging fraud.

As an interesting sidelight: Who among us complains if we open up a newly reissued AMT kit from out of the prehistoric past, only to find a number of parts "re-included" when sections of sprue were un-gated? Of course, with any old tool suddenly reissued, there can be errors made--most of them I've seen were tires that didn't fit, although a few instances of kits having completely wrong chrome trees in them, but even those have been rather rare--and when called on the error, the manufacturer has diligently tried to rectify the situation.

There is a lengthy Wikipedia on the "Truth In Advertising" issue--well worth reading.

Art

[Art Anderson]

A couple others AMT goofed about 10 years ago IIRC was a reissue of the '76 Nova street machine that showed a stock Nova on the box and a '69 Charger Daytona--both showed builds on the boxes w/ wheels that weren't included in the kit.

Rob, and yes...

Those were glaring errors on the part of not only the folks at Racing Champions-Ertl in Dyersville IA, but also a serious lack of management expertise and oversight at RC2's headquarters in Oak Brook IL!

Racing Champions, when they bought out Ertl, which included the AMT kit line, let go way too many people who truly knew and understood what was in all that AMT and MPC tooling, replacing them with lower level folks (albeit very good people!) who had little if any understanding of just what was in all that tooling (nearly 3000 different tools by their own claims. In 2005, after RC2 had laid me, along with all but 4 of the staff of Playing Mantis, I was offered a small retainer to help AMT/Ertl come up with reissue assortments, not a one that came to fruition due to their lack of even basic knowledge (the product manager at that time was a very nice lade, whose expertise was in their doll and action figure line (go figure that one out!!!). They supplied me with complete tool lists, but they had no idea where those tools were, what condition they were in, so on and so forth.

It's little wonder that glaring errors in packaging VS the product inside happened--it truly was a case of the "blind leading the blind", and I dropped out of that after 2006, just not interested in dealing with that sort of indifference. It was even worse at RC2's Chinese manufacturing campus--those people simply would not listen. Communication (VERY essential when dealing across cultural and language barriers, especially with the ill-informed folks in Dyersville) is essential if anything is to get done. Little wonder that Learning Curve (which is what RC2 is known as today) were probably more than happy to wash their hands of all that tooling, which is now owned by the former owner and founder of Playing Mantis, Tom Lowe, founder of Round2.

This is not to attempt to address inaccurately mocked up and tooled models--every model company that has ever existed has had their share of those over time. Dave Metzner at Moebius took a pretty big risk, for example, in posting up pics of the tooling mockups of the first of the Hudsons and the '55 Chrysler C300. The comments of course came quick, thick and fast--but everyone on this set of forums has seen the ultimate result--both cars came out looking pretty darned good, if you ask me! And in the bargain, the box art does not misrepresent any of the three car kits (or for that matter, the International Lonestar) one bit--what you see on the boxtop is what you get in the box. Sure, little effort was given to show all the pieces, but for the reasons I mentioned earlier--a box art showing all those parts, along with renderings of the real thing or photo's of the built up model would have been so "busy" as to perhaps make those kits a much harder sell than they needed to be.

Art

[sjordan2]

This week I received an older Testors/Italeri kit of a Mercedes 540K (recently shown in under glass by Erik Olijnsma - The Creative Explorer), which has one of the best solutions I've seen:

There is an outer box with a large beauty shot of the built kit on top, plus many built detail shots on the sides and bottom, all in color. The box opens at an end flap, and you pull out an interior box with the kit contents.

[Art Anderson]

This week I received an older Testors/Italeri kit of a Mercedes 540K (recently shown in under glass by Erik Olijnsma - The Creative Explorer), which has one of the best solutions I've seen:

There is an outer box with a large beauty shot of the built kit on top, plus many built detail shots on the sides and bottom, all in color. The box opens at an end flap, and you pull out an interior box with the kit contents.

Of course, Italeri kits come in much larger boxes than say, a standard AMT, Moebius or Revell kit. Bigger box, more room for information on it, but bigger boxes take up more space on hobby shop shelves, which can be a tradeoff.

Art

[sjordan2]

Of course, Italeri kits come in much larger boxes than say, a standard AMT, Moebius or Revell kit. Bigger box, more room for information on it, but bigger boxes take up more space on hobby shop shelves, which can be a tradeoff.

Art

The same packaging concept could be applied to any size box (and is used by thousands upon thousands of products). The idea is that using all of the outer part of the box provides a larger canvas for more color pictures of what's in the box and how you can build it.

This is accomplished in one run through the press on one side of the box. Box assembly might add a small cost, but this is so common that I don't think it would be a big deal. If cereal boxes can be printed this way, so can model kits, which are going to have a 2-part box anyway. I'm sure many other model kits have already been done this way.

But, then again...maybe some kit companies DON'T want you to have that much information on the box.

Edited October 4, 2012 by sjordan2

[moparmagiclives]

I got an email from revell, I'm betting the foose cars will look nothing like his drawings.

[Longbox55]

I got an email from revell, I'm betting the foose cars will look nothing like his drawings.

That's ok, the real car doesn't look like the drawing either!

[Harry P.]

The same packaging concept could be applied to any size box (and is used by thousands upon thousands of products). The idea is that using all of the outer part of the box provides a larger canvas for more color pictures of what's in the box and how you can build it.

This is accomplished in one run through the press on one side of the box. Box assembly might add a small cost, but this is so common that I don't think it would be a big deal. If cereal boxes can be printed this way, so can model kits, which are going to have a 2-part box anyway. I'm sure many other model kits have already been done this way.

But, then again...maybe some kit companies DON'T want you to have that much information on the box.

Exactly! Every box top, no matter how big or how small, has 5 different panels where graphics can appear.

[sjordan2]

Exactly! Every box top, no matter how big or how small, has 5 different panels where graphics can appear.

On a normal kit box with a top that lifts off the bottom, that's correct. On the box I'm suggesting, it's 6 panels - 4 on the sides, and big ones on the top and bottom, all in color and all printed in one run-through. Having a sprue chart in black and white on the bottom is good for existing kits, but I think this approach is better.

Some makers, even decades ago, pasted a color appliqué on the bottom of the box, like the old Metal Master classic kits (but the bottom just showed other kits in the line, not more detail of the kit inside).

Edited October 4, 2012 by sjordan2

[Harry P.]

Ah, I see... you're talking about those "all one piece" boxes where the lid is actually hinged and doesn't lift off. Yeah, in that case there's even more area to print on... and even less excuses for manufacturers not to show us what's actually in the box.

[sjordan2]

This is what I'm talking about. Opening flaps at both ends on the same one-piece art, which simply folds around. Like I said, more space for graphics, regardless of the box dimensions.

TOP SIDE:

BOTTOM SIDE:

Edited October 4, 2012 by sjordan2

[Art Anderson]

Ah, I see... you're talking about those "all one piece" boxes where the lid is actually hinged and doesn't lift off. Yeah, in that case there's even more area to print on... and even less excuses for manufacturers not to show us what's actually in the box.

Uh, didn't the model car kit marketplace pretty much force manufacturers to kill of those so-called donut boxex?

Art

[sjordan2]

Uh, didn't the model car kit marketplace pretty much force manufacturers to kill of those so-called donut boxex?

Art

How? When? Where? Why? Please explain. That makes no sense - why would the marketplace want less information under the shrinkwrap? What would you do to satisfy the need for more content information on the box as expressed on this thread?

Edited October 4, 2012 by sjordan2

[Guest Johnny]

Why does a guy with probably more knowledge about the subject than any three or ten put together get discounted so badly when he tries to explain what he knows from experience?

[Harry P.]

Skip... Art's talking about those boxes that had a lid that was actually hinged to the box along the side. That sort of "all in one" box was not very popular with some modelers (don't really get why)... but for some reason some people really got PO'd with those boxes.

[Guest Johnny]

Skip... Art's talking about those boxes that had a lid that was actually hinged to the box along the side. That sort of "all in one" box was not very popular with some modelers (don't really get why)... but for some reason some people really got PO'd with those boxes.

They don't hold up well stacked once opened and even unopened. They tend to fall apart because of the way they were constructed and put together unglued.

[sjordan2]

Skip... Art's talking about those boxes that had a lid that was actually hinged to the box along the side. That sort of "all in one" box was not very popular with some modelers (don't really get why)... but for some reason some people really got PO'd with those boxes.

Sorry, I don't know what kind of box you're talking about. Is it exactly the same as the one I just showed, which has a sturdy enough interior box? In any case, it's simple enough to put a wraparound paper wrapper on the typical boxes of today to show more information. It's still going to be shrinkwrapped. And if the box insert is the same as today's normal box bottoms, what's the difference? Sorry, I must be dense, but the box concept I showed above would seem to provide not only the same rigidity and protection as a typical kit box, but more since it wraps around.

In short, it's the same as today's kit boxes with a box top and box bottom, except the top also wraps around the bottom to provide more real estate for showing what's in the kit.

Edited October 5, 2012 by sjordan2

[jbwelda]

the boxes being referred to were used by AMT (at least) a few years ago and they literally resemble a donut box as they are all one folded construction piece of light cardboard. as mentioned the problem was that when the top is open, and even when closed, they really arent stable like two piece boxes we are more familiar with.

and possibly the "model car kit marketplace" forced them to switch back...if so that would be one giant step for modelkind. those boxes were possibly easier to assemble, cheaper to manufacture and/or allowed more printing surfaces but they were lousy for holding and building the kit.

in my experience though, those Testors flat boxes illustrated above were the worst, especially for the fujimi enthusiasts series Porsche 356 kits...once you took out the parts it was pretty much impossible to put them back in.