Daddyfink

Just messin' with ya! Congrats!

Corn Dog, Hot Dog, different, yet the same! I get'cha! Didn't the Revell 59 Vette have a top? Or is that too far off? I really want to take a whack at doing the Mazmania Vette out of this one. Square wheel wells and all! Good luck, I look forward to your progress!

Will this be a Street Freak or a Gasser?

Just try to work on something whenever I can. Maybe get to build and use one of Mark Johnson's resin 1/16 Hemi engines!

Very cool! Thanks for being a good Ambassador for our hobby!

Here are a few weird ones in my collection and one my friend Craig found at a kit show recently that blew my away! And the really wild one, at least to me!

It went from guys putting cars together for fun with leftover parts that where considered not "clean enough" for a show quality car or resto to some just cobbling anything together, giving it some "Patina", aka RUST, and calling them Rat Rods. Oh yes, anything in primer and not finished is being called a Rat Rod. When someone purposely goes out of their way to make a "Rat Rod", you know the jig is up.

Who cares! This fad is done!

Sorry, yes, he HAS part of the damaged tooling. And just in case some don't know about the train crash, there was a shipment of tooling and other items heading to Monogram from Aurora and it had a pretty bad accident. Apparently tow trucks had to be used to yank some tooling out of the mud! There was always speculation that the tooling was that of the Aurora Racing Scenes, but, it was not, apparently. Hence, they may still yet exist in the Monogram/Revell vault. There was a rumor started a couple of years ago that they where going to clean up the tooling and re-release the kits, but, that came and went and Revell even changed ownership.

The Aurora tooling story was told to me by Tom West. Yes, the same person who designed them. Some of the tooling for the 417 Hemi was destroyed when it was used improperly during production and not repaired, he as part of the tooling that made the engine block and it is fragged! From what he told me, the train crash messed up tooling that no one really cared about at the time. The Knights, haunted house type stuff and John Kennedy, the kit, not the Pres. The tooling was taken over to Monograms facility and the shop guys where told to go over it and pick out stuff that was still viable. The rest was scrapped for the value of the metal. From what he knows, some of it was scrapped out the back door for its value and the profits shared with some of the engineers who gave the blessing to scrap the stuff. So, the tooling still may exist or it may have been scrapped. He did tell me that they never got back the tire molds from Canada where the tires where being produced. So, those may also still exist. As for the Sizzler and School bus tooling, I went off the tales I have heard. So we are in the same boat with that one. Maybe next time I will share the story on the Tony Nancy Double Dragster tooling. That one is cool!

Well, the Monogram 55 got turned into the Tom Daniel's Bad Man gasser. Parts from the Sizzler ended up in the School Bus, also a Tom Daniel's kit and most of the Aurora molds where back door'd by Monogram employees when they took over the Aurora inventory. Yes, I would love to have some more of the Racing Scenes stuff in my collection.

I think the Accurate Miniatures McLaren had to be right up there with the most confusing! I spoke to Tom West about it once and he told me that they where perfect when he drew them up, but, the guys at Accurate got a hold of them and totally boogered them up! He also told me about how Aurora also totally messed up their Racing series by not following his directions. So sometimes it is just how the instructions get re-done down the line.

Seeing my little build in a magazine was really cool! Had to show it to the lady sitting next to me on a flight from New York! She said it was nice and went back to reading her novel. I was jazzed and still am!

For a tool this old, I am just glad they can re-issue it! This is a simple fix for those that want it more correct, but for the rest, it does not matter. And honestly, once it sits on the shelf, who is really going to know or care?

Back in their boxes. I have no area to display them in, yet.

The Monogram Stinger has wrinkle walls. Other than that, I do not know.

That looks like a handful! Nice!!

It is hard to look now that I really don't have much to look for! Weird, I am running out of stuff to buy!

Reminds me of the Aurora "Train Wreck" story and its molds. Jo Han did some really neat stuff, but, it is a really niche market today and if any of those kits where really hot, I am sure one of the current kit makers would tool up a new one. I can only wonder what would have happened if they went into the Hot Rod or show rod realm. What could have been.

Helping my friend sell of her Dad's collection I have now seen the sellers side of things. She gets some of the weirdest questions, requests and suggestions. eBay should not be that hard or complicated, but some people have nothing better to do than to make things difficult for everybody. As a seller, good look with the nuts and as a buyer, Caveat Emptor! Buyer Beware! I have been buying off ebay since they came on line and I am happy with it still. My wallet on the other hand.... Jesse C.

That is very cool! Now I need to get back to my project!

Who cares if it is accurate or not. It is fun to build and a great slump buster, even straight out of the box! I remember building a total glue bomb when I was a kid and I was very glad the last time it got re-issued that I could finally build it a bit better. So have fun!