Mark

I've always wondered what advantage there would be in buying a Hobby Town franchise as opposed to just opening a hobby shop on your own. We had one in my area which plodded along for ten or fifteen years, until it changed hands and the new proprietor went 100% RC. It closed about six months later. Hobby Town (the main company) did advertise once upon a time, but minimally even then. The purchasing power they offer apparently isn't much judging by their pricing or selection. If you don't gain anything with either of those things, why bother buying a franchise?

Different manufacturers did things differently. Monogram (maybe Aurora too?) did wraps that were folded and glued together, not really shrink wrap. AMT, Revell, and Jo-Han did do shrink wrap, and each brought it in at different times. MPC kits were wrapped from day one, though I have heard that some early kits were not wrapped. It might depend on the box...often the boxes that are made of cardboard with printed paper applied to it weren't wrapped while printed cardboard boxes were. Unless the kit in question is from unopened stock, it should have a store price tag on it in most cases. Having that should be more convincing evidence that the wrap is original...I've never heard of anyone faking up a department store price tag. I have a number of sealed kits, but don't go out of my way looking for them. It's been a while since I bought one. The ones I have, I picked up cheaply enough that nobody would go to the trouble for the amount involved. And/or, they do have price tags that would indicate they were simply bought and set aside.

Jo-Han, the smallest of the "promo big 3", probably did more "non-kit" promos than AMT or MPC. Most are AMC products, like Rambler four-door sedans and wagons. The '65 Rambler Classic four-door sedan and '66 Ambassador hardtop would be a couple more one-shot promo deals that weren't offered as kits. On the flip side, Jo-Han did very, very few showroom stock car kits that were not first issued as promos. The '69 and '70 Rebels would be two, though those were extensive alterations of the existing '67-'69 Ambassador. AMT and MPC did do more annual kits not based on promos, as they were larger companies and could take a swing at something if they felt it could sell enough copies as a kit alone.

If the auto manufacturer wanted X number of promotional models, AMT/MPC/Jo-Han (pick one) would produce them, regardless of whether or not they could wring another year out of it through minor alterations. There are numerous promos that were produced for one year only of a particular generation of a car, and on top of that there are a bunch of them that were never even produced as kits...the promo order was enough for the kit company to turn a profit.

The early issue (pre-Ertl) Double Dragster kits always used the Trophy Series tires.

The wrap shrinking (or not) over the years will depend on storage conditions. More consistent temperature, humidity, etc. would let it stay pretty much the same, where an attic or garage where things change would cause the wrap to shrink and shrink again over time. I have some kits that still look new, but they have been kept in closets as opposed to attics or basements over the years.

The gray color and high gloss of the T turtledeck would point to it being a Revell Parts Pack item. One of the hoods in there is a '51 Chevy piece.

That's in Australia...I have an Australian book with a picture of that same car on the back cover.

The '34 pickup engine has more plated parts than most flathead engines, but is not 100% plated parts. The optional Thunderbird 390 engine is all chrome however.

I stopped at one store here late last week...no car/truck items, all Revell...Scooby-Doo, Star Wars, and beginner stuff intended for kids. I wonder if they had to dump the Star Wars items...licensing period ended for Revell?

I doubt UPS observes the holidays. At work, we even got mail yesterday...mailman was out delivering packages only, but he said he was a bit behind so if he saw activity at businesses on his route, he'd stop to deliver regular mail.

AMT '61 Ranchero. The original single exhaust is the one that runs down the passenger side of the car, the other mirror image one was added when AMT reworked the stock kit into the street machine version in 1977. There should be a fuel tank behind the rear axle, but there never was one on this chassis.

PS is meant to be applied to the inside of a clear radio control car body. It has to really bite into the clear polycarbonate material, so the paint itself will be much hotter than paints designed for use on styrene. Using the PC paint on styrene will require a very good barrier between the two, and also a clearcoat.

The number of grille bars, and even the fender height, could have been a running change as thosr cars were built from panels stamped on crude tooling compared to the Big Three, or even independent automakers like Nash or Studebaker. Most articles about these cars mention crude tooling, like the sedan roof being made from seven panels welded together, leaded, and hand finished. All that came back to bite Hupp and Graham later on, when they tried to build lower price cars using bodies built from the Cord tooling. They couldn't build them to the desired price with all of the hand work involved.

It isn't the manufacturing process, but rather the choice of material. These marks are present in every part where molten styrene enters the cavity in more than one place for a particular part. Plastic of a different color and/or opacity would reduce or eliminate the visibility of such marks.

The primer that was used could certainly have been "hot". But, an otherwise usable lacquer primer will cause those swirl marks to show up if it is not sufficiently shaken prior to application. There's been a general cheapening of these primers in recent years; less "solids" or pigment, more reducer. If the primer isn't shaken thoroughly, you run a good chance of spraying what is essentially lacquer thinner, leaving the solids settling at the bottom of the can. A good shaking (you should be able to roll the agitator around the bottom of the can) and applying the first coat from further away than usual, will often eliminate or reduce these problems.

No, it has been mentioned...the line is a swirl mark at the meeting point of molten styrene coming together from different entry points. Not really a flaw in and of itself, but the hot primer sure did make it stand out.

Again, nothing new...early Sixties annual kits had this too. Years ago, I built a previously unbuilt '62 Fairlane to match my 1:1 car. I painted it with Duplicolor touch-up spray in the correct color. It took a bunch of priming and wet sanding to get similar marks off of the body. I also removed some of the raised lettering on the underside of the hood (carryover from the promo) that didn't pertain to my car...that was fun too. I'm glad AMT left the V8 emblems off of the front fenders of that body...

Resin parts may or may not fit (maybe you have a copy of a copy, which affects fit). For some reason, over the years I have had little trouble finding original Tudor sedan bodies, parts, and kits. I sold half a dozen of them a few years ago at NNL East (all had the unique sedan parts, enough to complete a car) and I've still got a few of them. Since the fender/chassis units aren't always in good shape, I have picked up several of the Woody/roadster pickup kits for parts. The original sedan bodies do fit the later fenders.

The fender unit/chassis, stock parts, and stock engine from the '28 sedan were carried over to the woody/pickup. MPC management didn't really want to reissue the AMT boxed kits in the same form, hence the alterations. MPC also had a habit of reusing parts from one kit in another, so the A fenders/chassis and woody/pickup chrome flathead engine got used in the Barris Mail Truck kit also. Back to the '32 Chevy (which never appeared in AMT packaging), the initial issue with both bodies was later issued as two individual kits before the panel truck got butchered into the Vampire Van. The Vampire Van body does still fit the stock Chevy fender unit, which makes for some interesting possibilities.

That was the AMT '32 Victoria.

My kit has extra letters scattered on the sheet...when mixed with the complete "Firebird" lettering, there is enough there to spell "Turbo Trans-Am". At the time MPC made that kit, Monogram had an exclusive licensing deal with SCCA (owners of the "Trans-Am" name; Pontiac paid SCCA $5 per car to use it). MPC scattered the "Trans-Am" lettering on the decal sheet in a number of kits to work around that.

The Ford roadster pickup was probably intended to be in that Blue Ribbon series (which turned out to be a series of one). I'd guess that it and the Chevy didn't set the world on fire sales-wise. Had they done so, MPC might have issued the Ford as a third entry, with the woody wagon body. It wouldn't have been outrageous to see the Switchers based kits like the Ts and Deuces issued also. The Ford was of course based on the stock kit, with a bunch of alterations: the Chevy engine and Corvette rear suspension, and the repro Halibrand (Mehelich?) wheels which are very nicely done. It's a shame they didn't throw in a different front axle to get the front end out of the sky, even at the cost of losing the working steering. That, and the steep angle of the engine/transmission, are the only minuses in that issue. Ertl later undid most of the "Blue Ribbon" alterations in the Ford, but did leave the transmission hump in the floorboard piece. They also didn't put back the spare tire recess in the front fender.

Revell did a decent job on those multiple piece bodies, both 1/32 and 1/25 scale. It's interesting that, in the mid-Seventies, they dusted several of the 1/25 scale kits (Ranchero, Skyliner, Corvette, Porsche, and Austin-Healey) off for reissue while leaving the '62 Mopars in the tool crib...

The Astro I body/Piranha chassis funny car was the Scorpion. It was issued only once, early-mid Seventies. As for the spy car body on that chassis, the roof may or may not line up with the roll cage and driver area on the chassis, depending on the mismatch a decision will need to be made regarding which piece gets modified to make everything fit.