Mark

Did the words "screw bottom" appear anywhere in the listing?

The hot glue peels off. I don't think it leaves a residue, but you will pull it all off before doing the rest of the trimming/fitting work, so you're going to be cleaning the body at least once or twice anyway.

NOS, maybe left there by previous owner of the shop? Those may have been around in certain areas in the Eighties. I went to a couple of Cleveland area toy shows in the early Eighties; one vendor there had cartons of sealed, untouched late Sixties MPC kits. There was no massive selection, but there were several cartons each of what were presumably slow sellers. I don't remember what many of them were, but I think I bought a few including a first-issue '69 Trans-Am which came out in late '69 after the normal annual kits. That one wouldn't have gone for much more than a new current kit at the time, because MPC had a reissue of that same kit out not long before then. He had a pile of those MPC 1/20 scale snowmobile/dragster kits too; I passed on that one. I'd imagine some kits sold better in one area than another, especially if the store doing the selling was in an out-of-the-way place, or charged full retail. I put together most of my collection of Revell parts packs in the mid/late Seventies. That whole thing started when some guy had a booth at one of the local flea markets (which folded a few years ago after a long decline). All he had was Revell parts packs. No kits, no other stuff. If you bought enough of them, they were ten for a buck. He didn't differentiate on them either, to him a parts pack was a parts pack. Who knows, maybe he found them in the trash or cleaned out an old hobby shop and got them for free. I went through that stand pack by pack over a couple of Sundays (should have packed a lunch) and dug out all the different ones I could find, including most of the engines and all but one of the motorcycles. (I didn't find a Harley-Davidson, not one, in all that stuff. My older brother told me I'd never find that one anywhere...it was about ten more years before I did find an original one.) At the time, I didn't have a listing or any other information to determine how many I had or didn't have. I eventually figured that out (some item numbers went unused), I'd found all but four or five of them. The guy with the parts packs only set up there for a few weeks...never brought any other stuff there that I can recall.

What a breath of fresh air...Eighties-style billet is nowhere to be seen (it had its place but enough is enough), not one of those "let's pile all of the rare parts onto one car" monstrosities in sight, and you can recognize what all of these started out as. You might want to say one car should have smaller front tires or another should have a different color interior, but that's just personal preference. Every one of these cars looks like someone had a vision, and followed through on it.

The parts pack-based double kits were probably a "one run, and done" thing. The parts packs themselves ended in '65; that year, the last couple of them were introduced, but all were broomed out of the catalog at the end of that year. My '66 Revell catalog doesn't include any parts packs, or any of the double kits based on them. (I've got two different '63 catalogs, both of which include parts packs.) The double kits not going over big in 1965 is understandable; some of the dragster chassis were obsolete when they first appeared in 1962; by '65 or '66 they were downright Stone Age. To a lesser extent, the Fiat/Bantam/T-bucket type altereds were taking a back seat to gassers and F/X cars by then too, at least with model builders. Slot racing was at its high point around that time too. The Tony Nancy double kit was reclaimed in the Eighties (one chassis was used under the Revellion Dart in the meantime) for the HOT ROD Magazine branded series. One of Nancy's Seventies dragsters was added to make it a triple kit. It was reissued as an SSP item in original-style packaging at least once; maybe as many as three or four times in the last twenty years.

Revell reissued all of their '62 Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge kits as Metalflake versions after the initial issues sank like a stone. I've got a '63 Revell catalog; should look at that to see if those are in there. The "paint it on the inside" deal didn't really work because the bodies were thicker (a LOT thicker) in some areas than in others, and that's not even getting into the chassis mounting posts, molded-in radiator wall, or interior mounting bosses. The Metalflake issues have custom parts. I'm not sure if the original issues did or not. I've got a first-issue Dodge Dart four-door hardtop, but it's still sealed. I haven't looked at it in a long while but I don't recall optional parts being mentioned. One of my older brothers was building models back then; I remember him telling me about one of his buddies trying the "paint it on the inside" method back in the day and being bugged by all the stuff on the inside of the body. Had they been designed with that in mind, they probably could have pulled it off to some extent. I've got an Imperial four-door hardtop kit now; didn't get it for the Metalflake deal but rather because I wanted the four-door to go with the AMT hardtop and convertible, and the Metalflake kit was the first one I ran across. If I'd found the regular issue first, I'd probably have snagged that.

He's got a Ford Econoline van body out now; I just picked one up (he's selling direct on eBay now). It looks like it's mastered off of a diecast one that I saw somewhere awhile back. The castings look good; really clean, nice panel lines, and not nearly as much mold release as on earlier bodies. It measures out slightly undersize (1/25.7 or so), but then again the intended chassis donor (IMC/Lindberg Dodge A-100) is similarly undersize, so everything should fit together pretty well. Hopefully he'll eventually offer a pickup version as well.

Right after I dump HCC, they now have to start doing some decent articles... Thomas Graham has written books about Revell, Monogram, and Aurora. Nothing about AMT (or Jo-Han); from what I have heard he isn't a "car guy". With the founders of those companies long gone, we'll probably never see anything on them in any great detail. I haven't got the Aurora book, but the other two are very good. The old Rod & Custom Models magazine had short articles on several companies also. No real history provided (there wasn't as much of it in 1964!) but some good pictures of work in progress.

I've got a built one (not built by me) and it's really nice. The main thing you have to watch for with JF bodies is that the rocker panels are often further apart than those of the donor kit's body. They tend to de-mold the bodies before they are fully set (probably to save wear and tear on the molds), and they then take a set with the sides bowed out slightly from pulling them off of the core of the mold. This affects hood fit on Fifties cars with taller hoods. Before starting any alterations to any of the donor parts, you need to get the body pulled 100% into the correct shape. If the rocker panels are further apart on the resin body than on the plastic one (hold the two bodies bottom-to-bottom to check), you need to mock up the resin body with the donor chassis and whatever interior, and pull those body sides in. When you hold the resin body with the sides pulled in to match the donor kit body, the donor kit hood should fit either body exactly the same. Don't use rubber bands to pull everything into shape. They dry out, and will often pull other areas out of shape while correcting the areas you want to fix. I stick the body sides to the chassis with hot glue, and let the whole thing set for a week or two. After that, you should be able to peel off the hot glue and the body should stay in the corrected shape. I've done a couple of them ('51 Chevy sedan delivery, a couple of '53 Studebaker bodies) in this way, and in each instance the plastic hoods fit as well as they do on the original kit bodies.

That's what happens when you are working in a narrow driveway, and can't back up ten feet to get a view of the whole thing...

That's not the first issue with the pickup parts; there were three prior to it. The currently available issue (not the Three Stooges one) has everything that's in the kit pictured, plus the coupe body and interior and better tires.

There was a Rod & Custom Sketchpad (not sure if it was in the regular magazine , or R&C Models) where the trailer was turned into a futuristic semi-tractor. The body of the trailer was turned back-to-front and the larger rear half of the bubble left off. The original rear portion of the bubble became a windshield/canopy.

The camper originated with the '65 El Camino annual kit; it was included in one issue of the '59. It doesn't really fit the '59 very well.

It's coming this year, I have seen it listed in a couple of places. Not sure which issue will be replicated this time. The parts in previous issues are unchanged except for one Seventies issue that left out the trailer. The new one will have it though. The 1:1 was supposedly stolen in the early Eighties, and buried somewhere by whoever did it. I don't think it had been shown anywhere since the mid-Sixties.

I remember seeing model kits in Sears around Christmas every year too. One year (probably 1969) I wanted to buy one the day before Christmas. Had to have it, the box art was so cool. My parents told me "you'll probably get a few models for Christmas", but also said I'd saved the money so I could spend it on whatever I wanted. So I got my AMT Chevelle "Surf Wagon" kit that day. I did get a couple of kits for Christmas, but not another Surf Wagon. I don't think I saw that issue again in any of the department stores, and didn't see another one until many years later.

I remember seeing model kits in Sears around Christmas every year too. One year (probably 1969) I wanted to buy one the day before Christmas. Had to have it, the box art was so cool. My parents told me "you'll probably get a few models for Christmas", but also said I'd saved the money so I could spend it on whatever I wanted. So I got my AMT Chevelle "Surf Wagon" kit that day. I did get a couple of kits for Christmas, but not another Surf Wagon. I don't think I saw that issue again in any of the department stores, and didn't see another one until many years later.

AMT only did a couple of windshields with the molded-on mirror that I can think of: the Nova, and the '68 Camaro Z/28. That one was done during the Lesney era. I remember seeing a Matchbox car or two with that detail, maybe Lesney thought it would work in 1/25 scale also. When Ertl took the mirror off of the Nova windshield, they did the same with the Camaro also.

Some guy did taunt an alligator there. After that, everyone called him "Lefty"...

Aren't the Raiders headed there?

I'll check again, but the Jo-Han engine is on the small side and has an axle hole through the block. Too, I'm pretty certain that engine originated with the '63 American, so it would be the earlier six. The later six came in during '64. Excellent engine, I put over 200,000 miles on one...still ran great when the body fell apart around it. AMC still used the flathead (!) version of the older six through '65, but I think they had gone completely over to the later engine for '66.

AMC completed the Jeep deal in mid-1970; they took a year or so to convert everything away from the engines Kaiser had been using. Some Wagoneers (and probably Gladiator pickups also) had already been built with AMC engines, so that one would have been done first. The CJ was probably next to be switched over. The Jeepster (Commando) seems to have been last. '71 still had the V6 engine, '72 got the restyled front end (lengthened a couple of inches if I remember right) so the AMC engines would fit. The MPC '72 kit still had the V6 so it is incorrect in that regard. The postal Jeeps got converted towards the end too. I'm pretty sure the '71 version still had the Chevy II four cylinder engine. Either AMC got a bunch of those engines in the deal and used them up, or maybe the contract required that engine and couldn't be changed. Those early postal Jeeps also had a Powerglide transmission with a small torque converter.

In the late Seventies, my older brother bought a bunch of stuff from an auto parts store. They'd relocated up the street from another location (lost the lease), and the new place was bigger so they could put more merchandise out. He found/bought/resold a bunch of early Sixties kits (they had stuff from the latter half of the Sixties), a couple of Erector sets, tin toys, all new in the boxes. In 1977 I had just started driving and had graduated high school, and heard the guy was closing up shop at the end of the month. He didn't have any kits left, but I bought several Revell parts packs at retail price, and got the store display along with them. I asked him what he'd take for the display, his reply was "buy the stuff that's in it, and I won't need the display any more!". I took that home and stuck it in the basement. In 1989 when I bought my own home, I took everything out of the display to box it up separately for the move. The display still felt heavy considering it was empty. I looked at the back, and there was a flap that opened to the underside of the display. There were twelve parts packs in there that he and I overlooked. Probably a good thing, as I had just about enough money to pay for the thing when I bought it in the first place. I've still got the display, I've only seen one or two others since then.

Not competitive as in "on the field", but rather competitive as in the potential selling price of the team relative to other teams. Now that LA has two teams, which city will be the next boogeyman (the place they mention for a potential move next time someone wants a new stadium)?

My MPC '66 Corvette is gray too. It didn't include a big-block engine, but MPC did include a second set of cylinder heads and valve covers to dummy up the small-block. They're pretty lame. As for molded in color annuals, the MPC '65 Dodges (the full-size cars, not the Coronet sold by AMT) were both molded in gold. Sometimes extremely swirly, brittle gold. I've got a convertible kit with a body that is in three or four pieces, broken along the swirl lines. The convertible I built in the early/mid Eighties didn't have so much swirl in the plastic, and I don't remember having any trouble with that one. I want to stick the second one together with the custom parts. I've got a couple of hardtop kits too, no problems with brittle plastic in either of them. A few of the AMT '63 annuals were molded in color. The Mercury Meteor was molded in light blue (in addition to white), and the Fairlane was molded in light blue, cream, and white. I've heard of Ford Galaxie convertible kits in light blue too, but I've never seen one of those.