1/25 Monogram Slingster Dragster

[Greg Myers]

Actually, I would argue that is a large part of the Sizzler's (and the Deuce Sport Coupe, etc.) appeal-- perfect scale accuracy and fidelity be damned, this thing just looks cool and can't be replicated by anything new.

I agree, Much of what we do in modeling is based on our nostalgia.

[GaryR]

I agree, Much of what we do in modeling is based on our nostalgia.

LOL Well then it's nostalgia, not modeling.Guess that dives us into two different camps.And explains the mediocrity in car "modeling">

Why not just collect Hot Wheels???

[Snake45]

LOL Well then it's nostalgia, not modeling.Guess that dives us into two different camps.And explains the mediocrity in car "modeling">

Why not just collect Hot Wheels???

Because I didn't collect Hot Wheels as a kid. I built AMT and MPC and JoHan model cars. 

[Greg Myers]

The many faces of our hobby. Many of us older builders are faltering in the eye site, steadiness of hand and just the will to tackle some of the newer kits with so many parts we fall back to what we know and love.

[Greg Myers]

Me personally, am enjoying a renewed relationship with the original AMT Hot Rods.

[doggie427]

Respectfully Gary,I think the hobby has enough room for all kinds of builders and motivations. People build to please themselves, it was always meant to be fun. Those that wish to take it to a higher level do. I would not characterize them as “mediocre “.

Edited November 9, 2017 by doggie427

[unclescott58]

Darn. Another piece of BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH I like. There is something definitely wrong with me. I keep liking the new stuff that Revell keeps on issuing. Including this one. My only complaint were with the decals. They seemed a little too big for this kit. Other than that, I was delighted with the kit.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Darn. Another piece of BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH I like. There is something definitely wrong with me. I keep liking the new stuff that Revell keeps on issuing. Including this one...

I DON'T recall anyone saying the kit was a bla bla whatever.

There ARE some serious scale deficiencies, and they scream out at anyone who's spent his life around real drag cars, or has ever seen a real quick-change rear end, or at least has some innate feel for relative sizes of things.

The kit IS a curious mix of crisp, well-detailed and well-scaled parts, and poorly-rendered blobs worthy of Palmer.

The kit IS also a great source of parts for building other stuff.

SOME modelers may find the truth about a kit's shortcomings useful, and not feel their "fun" is being threatened, or that their acceptance of it is somehow personal criticism.

I do NOT believe it's detrimental to the hobby to address the truth about kit shortcomings, because these are sold as "scale models" and not presented as "toys". 

Babies and little children play with toys, and most of them haven't developed any sense of the relative sizes of things yet. They're usually perfectly happy playing with a 9" long aircraft carrier and a 3" long airplane in the same scenario. They don't notice anything wrong, they don't care, and they seem to be having mindless fun...so let 'em.

Adult modelers, on the other hand, deserve anything represented as a "scale" model of something to in fact be a scale representation...and that goes for all the parts in the box. (And it's not like Revell hasn't tooled a lot of scale-correct QC rear ends over the years, either. Nobody on staff has to travel to a vintage race car shop and burn time and money measuring a real one. All anyone who had any business designing new kits needed to do was to pull one of Revell's own old kits off the shelf and put a pair of calipers to one of several available vintage QC units. It's just not difficult.)

Measuring accurately is not hard. Nor is doing a little extra research to get things right...if you have some clue about what you're doing. It only takes a little more effort, it's not going to be a financial deal-breaker, and no one is expecting "perfection".

Just please...to the manufacturers... get it pretty damm close consistently.

That's what you're being paid to do. It's not too much to ask.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[unclescott58]

Ace - Bill, I am having fun building these kits. No matter what others say. It's funny, among the members of our local model car club, I hear little to no complaining about this kit, or others recently released. Most people I personally have contact with have been pretty happy with what the model companies are releasing. And feel many of the complaints posted on line are a little ridiculous. 

It makes me wonder? Why do I hear so much complaining on the web? And excitement about the same stuff at our model car club meetings? We do have one rule in our model car club, "Built it. Bring it. Have fun doing both." And we seem to do that. Now if a kit does have a problem, minor or major, it may be talked about. But, the only kits I remember really hearing major complaints about by club members, were the Revell AAR 'cuda, and the roof on their early '69 ('68?) Charger. AMT's new Ala Kart was also not well liked. And I know there were a couple others. But in general, most everything else has been pretty good. And many, if any problems can be fixed. 

I do enjoy talking about model cars. I love hearing and seeing what others are building. What problems they be encountering. And how they fixing them. But, sometimes it feels like I read a lot of complaining, talking about how awful it is the model companies released these pieces of junk. Junk? Which all of the junk one there? How is anybody else having fun one there?

By the way, the word computer blocked out above was c r a p. Why that word was replaced by the blahs. I don't know?

[Casey]

Ace - Bill, I am having fun building these kits. No matter what others say.

Then you "get" it. See below quoted post.  

Respectfully Gary,I think the hobby has enough room for all kinds of builders and motivations. People build to please themselves, it was always meant to be fun. Those that wish to take it to a higher level do. I would not characterize them as “mediocre".

[Ace-Garageguy]

Scott, I suppose a lot depends on the particular audience. Some guys who know '57 Fords very well, for instance, spotted deficiencies that could have been avoided very easily had anyone cared to do their work a little more carefully. These were noted on the web, and many of the folks who had the audacity to speak the simple truth were ridiculed and insulted.

I also have been ridiculed and insulted for speaking the truth about real issues. I am rather intimately familiar with many vintage engines, components, and hot-rods in general. For that reason I spot deficiencies pretty much instantly...again deficiencies that could have been very easily avoided by the manufacturer putting in a little extra effort. 

But putting in extra effort isn't a popular thing these days. Play to the lowest-common-denominator is the name of the game, as that's the widest market.

I really wanted to like the Slingster kit, and it was worth the $12 I paid for it as a source of parts. If I'd paid full retail, I'd feel cheated, because there's so much wrong with it.

That's all I've got.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

WHY does anyone who makes an honest appraisal of a scale or accuracy deficiency invariably get tarred with the taking-the-"fun"-out-of-the-hobby brush?

I personally have FUN building scale and period correct models (as do many others) and we're damm tired of having to re-do work that could have easily been done by the manufacturer so that we can have "fun" OUR WAY.

Even mentioning the shortcomings if a kit these days is apparently not politically-correct speech in the car-modeling community.

Is everyone so thin-skinned and fearful of the truth now that to face reality and name it as such is frowned upon universally?

Edited November 9, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[Greg Myers]

I think we need to realize there is a very wide gap in our hobby between those like Bill, that know and understand the workings of an automobile and the other end, which always surprises me, that knowes little and could really care less about the same.

I got into the automotive field many years ago through my learning the whys and wherefores of the automobile through building model cars. Of course the instruction sheets were  much more attuned to learning then than they are today with just pictures.

It always surprises me today when I come across people in the hobby that know little or nothing about the goings on inside the vehicle they build. There is a prodigious builder on this board that constantly wins contest yet admits to knowing little about what he builds and furthermore says he doesn't care.

It really takes all kinds.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Greg Myers
spelling

[stavanzer]

My only complaint with the Slingster is the back of the blower. The Cover Plate is just a smooth blob. I scrounged one from my Big Box 'o Parts. As for Ace's comments, my only reaction is that Revell engineers seem to have deliberately mimicked the design 'ethos' of the Sizzler. That appears to have resulted in the kit being a mish mash of sizes & details. As Ace notes, it is an odd pastiche of the great , and not so great. The Slicks just looked 'Sad' to me and I didn't like the wheels, so I am using some AMT 'small' slicks from one of the recent tire packs and some chrome 5-spoke wheels from the Big Box. I like the kit, but Nostalgia and Accurate are terms in opposition for this kit. Revel Chose One and not the Other. So Scale Accuracy lost out over Nostalgia, in this case.

I wanted one because I'll never have a Sizzler kit, but I can have a Slingster. Simple as that, for me anyways.

[Bernard Kron]

It's four years on and the Slingster kit should have been a classic by now, IMHO, but I fear after the initial flurry it's faded from the scene. This is partially because dragster models are just not that popular. For myself, I build at least one digger per year, sometimes two, all in the Old School FED mode. So the Slingster was potentially an important kit to me. I'm one of those builders who knows a few things about this era of drag cars and build "impressionistic" models, rather than replicas of actual cars, but try to stay as true-to-type as I can where my knowledge will allow it. I built one Slingster, and it was as I had hoped, an odd combination of under-detailed and misrepresented parts but with lots a finely detailed and well-modeled aspects that would provide a strong basis for an accurate depiction of an early ('59-'61) era digger, just before the dramatic California-style ultra-lights swept everything in their path. So, despite my gripes, I really enjoyed building it - the kit responded very well to my kit-bashing approach.

My thinking is that the kit faded precisely because it can be so rewarding straight out of the box. It's typical, in my view, a Revell's philosophy in designing its kits - Revell kits tend to be fairly narrow in scope and force you to build their vision of the subject. Despite the fact that the Slingster kit was supposedly designed specifically to allow a wide variety of results, competition coupe or digger, blown or injected, Hemi or SBC, it was so narrow in its focus on a brief era in drag racing that it's appeal would be primarily to those of us who are interested in such things. And virtually any competent modeler will get an excellent result from this well engineered and conceived kit. But once you built one the likelihood of ever building anything significantly different from it was really quite small. The frame is too finely made and fragile to survive much modification, and there are enough badly conceived or specialized parts that it's function as a parts kit is somewhat restricted. So, at least in my case, I never bought any additional copies, despite the fact that the resulting build is still one of my favorites on my shelf.

But if you haven't built it, and are intrigued by this era of dragsters, I highly recommend it, either OOB or subject to some creative kit-bashing. It is an excellent kit from either perspective.

Oddly, I never posted to this thread once I had built the kit. Virtually all my comments were made prior to actually buying one. Any thoughts I had were shared on my Drag Racing Models thread. So here are some pics of what I did. As I said, it was mofdfied to address what I viewed as some of the kit's weaknesses, but it still looks essentially like an OOB build, which I believe is the nature of this kit. Also below is  the links to my thread for anyone who might have any further interest.

W.I.P. and Completed Result: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/86790-my-slingster-1960-vintage-dragster-completed-with-final-pics/#comment-1173626:

Edited November 9, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[unclescott58]

It's now four years on and the Slingster kit should have been a classic by, IMHO, but I fear after the initial flurry it's faded from the scene. This is partially because dragster models are just not that popular. For myself, I build at least one digger per year, sometimes two, all in the Old School FED mode. So the Slingster was potentially an important kit to me. I'm one of those builders who knows a few things about this era of drag cars and build "impressionistic" models, rather than replicas of actual cars, but try to stay as true-to-type as I can where my knowledge will allow it. I built one Slingster, and it was as I had hoped, an odd combination of under-detailed and misrepresented parts but with lots a finely detailed and well-modeled aspects that would provide a strong basis for an accurate depiction of an early ('59-'61) era digger, just before the dramatic California-style ultra-lights swept everything in their path. So, despite my gripes, I really enjoyed building it - the kit responded very well to my kit-bashing approach.

My thinking is that the kit faded precisely because it can be so rewarding staright out of the box. It's typical, in my view, a Revell's philosophy in designing it's kits - Revell kits tend to be fairly narrow in scope and force you to build their vision of subject. Despite the fact that the Slingster kit was supposedly designed specifically to allow a wide variety of results, competition coupe or digger, blown or injected, Hemi or SBC, it was so narrow in its focus on a brief era in drag racing that it's appeal would be primarily to those of us who are interested in such things. And virtually any competent modeler will get an excellent result from this well engineered and conceived kit. But once you built one the likelihood of ever building anything significantly different from it was really quite small. The frame is too finely made and fragile to survive much modification, and there's enough badly conceived or specialized parts that it's function as a parts kit is somewhat restricted. So, at least in my case, I never bought any additional copies, despite the fact that the resulting build is still one of my favorites on my shelf.

But if you haven't built it, and are intrigued by this era of dragsters, I highly recommend it, either OOB or subject to some creative kit-bashing. It is an excellent kit from either perspective.

Oddly, I never posted to this thread once I had built the kit. Virtually all my comments were made prior to actually buying one. Any thoughts I had were shared on my Drag Racing Models thread. So here are some pics of what I did. As I said, it was mofdfied to address what I viewed as some of the kit's weaknesses, but it still looks essentially like an OOB build, which I believe is the nature of this kit. Also below is  the links to my thread for anyone who might have any further interest.

W.I.P. and Completed Result: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/86790-my-slingster-1960-vintage-dragster-completed-with-final-pics/#comment-1173626:

I like your review above. To me it seemed critical and honest, without really putting the kit down. A very nice review.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I see pretty much instantly that Bernard corrected the things that are most jarringly wrong with the kit... he's used larger rear tires that would have been appropriate for this class of car in this time period, and he's replaced the silly undersized scoop with something that doesn't make the engine look like Zippy the Pinhead. He's also used different valve covers; after measuring the hemi in the kit, I see it too is underscale for the Chrysler Firepower it's most likely supposed to represent (the Chebby looks a little small too). He's used a larger diameter front wheel as well, something closer to Revell's own 19" wires that came in just about every vintage Revell digger, rather than the acceptable but on the small side 16.5" kit fronts. Granted the PE wires make a huge difference in the initial first impression, but just supplying 19" plastic wires in the kit would have made me happy.

If the Slingster had only gotten the three big things right...rear tire size, quick-change modeled and scaled correctly, and a decent sized blower scoop on correctly-scaled engines...frankly, I would have waxed poetic about what a great basis the thing was for any number of vintage dragsters, and a spectacular source of kitbash goodies. I could have lived with the other deficiencies, as I have enough stuff in stock to correct most of them easily.

And the kit designers only had to look on their own shelves to get the correct measurements. The Miss Deal Studebaker funny car has one of the best old-school Chrysler hemi engines ever done. The Ivo Showboat has 2 QC rear ends...and the Ivo kit's parts are jewels. All the old Revell dragster kits have the right front and rear wheels, and tires. What would have been so hard about LOOKING at what they'd already done, 50 years ago, when they still were capable of measuring with a ruler?

It would have been, in my mind anyway, an instant classic. I love this period in drag racing, and see it as part of the golden era when dragsters were as individual as their builders...not cookie cutter duplicates of what everybody else runs. I'd have wanted to build every version of the kit possible, and would have bought multiple kits to do so. 

As it stands, I won't pay much for another one, as my own stash is overflowing with "the right stuff" to build period dragsters. Though the Slingster kit really is a pretty OK parts source, it's a far, far cry from what it so easily could have been.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Ace-Garageguy

[Daddyfink]

Bill is correct on many points, but, I must say this. Collectors where clamoring for a Sizzler and they got a Sizzler. 

Revell replicated it warts and all in a smaller scale and put it our there, we ate it up until we started really looking at it. Now we want better detail and less nostalgia out of it. Is this Revell's fault or the consumers who where asking for it? 

Use it for parts or just slap it together as a slump buster. True, Revell could have made a steak out of it, but we got a dollar cheeseburger, but, I like cheeseburgers too. 

And yes, after looking at my kit and some other stuff, like the AMT Double Dragster, i must concede, the tires are bad. 

[Snake45]

I see pretty much instantly that Bernard corrected the things that are most jarringly wrong with the kit...

There are modelers and there are kit-assemblers. Bernard is a modeler.

[samdiego]

Love this kit. I tried to look past the driver inside the full body and can barely see the QC on mine. I've got plenty of slicks that i could transplant if that bothered me (it doesn't). I'm buying more of them.

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Well well, I'm about on Jesse's page, how about that?  I believe Bill implicitly on every drawback he mentions, but for the exact reasons listed just above, I still hold the Slingster to be Revell/Monogram's best of 2013 - in no small part because of the source material and its history. In my estimation, it was analogous to the new-tool Rommel's Rod and Tijuana Taxi, and I figured accuracy standards to be a little relaxed from the start.  Unlike the Kit That Must Not Be Named or the 'Cuda from the same year, which gave you every reason to expect otherwise.

Thank the Almighty above for those little LIDAR guns.  And BERNARD - exquisite finish and commentary as always!

And with all due respect, one of the biggest root problems in forums like these is that an association is ever drawn in the first place between one modeler's commentary on a kit and how much fun another is supposed to have with it as a result. In any non-hysterical terms, one has NOTHING TO DO with the other.  Imho, people who "get" it understand that from the start.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Chuck Kourouklis

[Daddyfink]

Well well, I'm about on Jesse's page, how about that?  I believe Bill implicitly on every drawback he mentions, but for the exact reasons listed just above, I still hold the Slingster to be Revell/Monogram's best of 2013 - in no small part because of the source material and its history. In my estimation, it was analogous to the new-tool Rommel's Rod and Tijuana Taxi, and I figured accuracy standards to be a little relaxed from the start.  Unlike the Kit That Must Not Be Named or the 'Cuda from the same year, which gave you every reason to expect otherwise.

Thank the Almighty above for those little LIDAR guns.  And BERNARD - exquisite finish and commentary as always!

And with all due respect, one of the biggest root problems in forums like these is that an association is ever drawn in the first place between one modeler's commentary on a kit and how much fun another is supposed to have with it as a result. In any non-hysterical terms, one has NOTHING TO DO with the other.  Imho, people who "get" it understand that from the start.

[GaryR]

I was reviewing the Slingster kit, not people who build models.

I've never been one of the Tom Daniels, unrealistic guys, even in 1964. no Monkeemobiles or Raiders Coaches.

I have always tried at least to build and model detailed, realistic miniature of cars, almost all drag cars.

Went to my first drag race in 63 I think, with my Dad.My older brother was also an evil influence. 

Gone racing a million times since, I know the parts and I know the cars and the eras.I know what is authentic and what isn't. Simple as that.

Revell kits in the mid 60's were THE ONLY really authentic kits.The custom car parts, double kits, SWC Willys, Nancy cars, Mickey Thompson etc cars were detailed MINIATURES, scaled and tooled right. The Orange Crate can't be beat.It's almost EXACTLY like the real thing. 

That's why the Slingster  was such a letdown.The two "nostalgia" funnycars were pretty decent, the Revell kits have gotten more blob like  since.

I really don't care in the LEAST what people like or build, jeeeez, why on earth would I?

But I am disappointed, and no longer purchase new releases. I won't unless they are miniatures of the real thing.I really have no desire to regain my childhood!

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

...Revell kits in the mid 60's were THE ONLY really authentic kits.The custom car parts, double kits, SWC Willys, Nancy cars, Mickey Thompson etc cars were detailed MINIATURES, scaled and tooled right. The Orange Crate can't be beat.It's almost EXACTLY like the real thing. 

That's why the Slingster  was such a letdown....

Agreed 100%. 

[GaryR]