Mike999

Some eBay vendors in places like Ukraine have a work-around for that: they flatten the original kit boxes and put the sprues in a smaller box for shipping. At least one Ukrainian company, ICM, tends to put small kits in big boxes. Those vendors also warn buyers that they do not put an Invoice in the shipping box. That keeps nosy Customs inspectors from figuring out the real vs. declared value of the shipment. I saw an eBay listing just yesterday where the seller mentioned those 2 things, and laughed. Years ago I ordered some kits from Ukraine and they were shipped with the flattened boxes. It confused me for a minute when I opened the box but it was pretty easy to figure out.

Or more space in the big plastic parts tub. (I currently have 3 of those. For Complete Bagged Kits, Early-Model Parts and Late-Model Parts). I fall for that trick all the time at HL. "I already have 4 of these kits. But it's ON CLEARANCE!!!" Most recently was a Revell '59 Cadillac that had been opened, re-wrapped and put on the HL Clearance shelf. Got it home and nothing was missing. But this was the last "small box" re-issue, where all those parts were really crammed into a small space. The roof posts were bent, so somebody took it home, then returned it for refund or exchange, I guess. Anyway, in that case it was worth the (low) price just for engine, air conditioning parts etc. etc. Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Hmm. Interesting. In the past few years, ITALERI has re-issued 2 of the old ESCI 1/24 Land Rover kits: the LWB 109" as a hardtop rally vehicle (shown above). And the open British military version, released last time as "Land Rover LWB 109" FFR" (Fitted For Radio). The only 1/24 ex-ESCI Land Rover ITALERI hasn't reissued is the basic 109" LWB with raised soft top (shown below). Just last year, ITALERI updated its very old 1/35 scale Land Rover III as a Spanish "Guardia Civil" version. For the first time since the 1970s, it had some new parts: optional left or right hand dashboards and a new hardtop. I'm guessing REVELL planned to re-box the new 1/35 scale kit and changed its mind. And got the scale wrong in the announcement, which sometimes happens. That kit didn't seem to be a great seller. Not long after its release, it was selling at a deep discount from some American internet vendors. But I am just guessing and don't have any insider info. It would be nice if ITALERI or REVELL would re-issue more of the ex-ESCI 1/24 Range Rover kits. Especially the British/Dutch Police kit, which had optional dashboards and chassis parts for left or right hand drive. For future reference, here's a link to the Revell-Germany Fan Board, where 2018 releases are being discussed: http://s13.zetaboards.com/RevellAtions/topic/9085571/1/

Welcome, neighbor! I'm also in the Upstate, near Clemson

Another MPC variation on that Jeep, circa 1978. This one can't decide what it wants to be, with Army "Ordnance" markings and a recoilless rifle, but also a chrome bumper/fog lights, modern wheels/tires, aftermarket bucket seats etc. (With a Thompson sub-machine gun resting on the driver's seat, no less!). It looks something like the vehicles called "technicals" these days. Or maybe a parade car for the dictator of a small developing nation...

Even way back in the 1980's, this kit was very rare and often went for >$100. I remember seeing them in the classified ads of That Other Model Car Magazine. (And for all my complaints about eBay and old-kit dealers, it sure is a lot easier to find rare kits nowadays.) Can one of our local historians give us some background on this kit? Like why it had such a short run and has never been re-issued?

Marhaba! Were you in Jeddah? I lived there from late 1989 to early 1992 and often went to a hobby shop...the only real hobby shop I ever found there. It sold Tamiya and Revell paints, tools etc. It also had many old kits still on the shelves. I had better luck buying kits in the toy stores, which were numerous. ESCI sold a lot of kits to toy stores in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia! Many were still gathering dust and I bought quite a few of them at a discount, after some haggling with the managers. For some weird reason, I also remember the first time I saw the Revell '69 Shelby GT-500 was in a Saudi toy store.

Here's an old thread with lots of info about the kits: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/7226-yodel-american-police-series/?tab=comments#comment-50440

Thanks, nice to see that card. I don't remember ever seeing one, and my friends and I went thru a lot of Trophy kits when I was a kid. I have an original AMT '32 Ford Sport Roadster and '40 Ford Sedan in the stash right now. Neither kit has a card like that. Recently sold an original '40 Coupe and it didn't, either.

Congrats! Know you've been looking for one of these, from the other thread about the bumpers/grilles. One thing about that kit you've probably noticed already - the front seat is hollow and needs a back added to it from sheet plastic. Other than that it's a basic curbside that looks pretty good when built. Almost worth buying just for that box art. I love those old boats too, and remember when these dinosaurs roamed all over California in various police markings. The CHP used the Dodge Monaco. The Los Angeles P.D. used the Plymouth Fury and IIRC, so did the L.A. County Sheriffs Dept. No wonder they were all over the place. According to this great article from AllPar, in 1978 Plymouth had 80% of the American police car market. This is a history of Mopar cop cars from the beginning, with good coverage of other makes like AMC, too: https://www.allpar.com/squads/history.html

More 1950's nostalgia, updated with lots of parts and photo-etch in 1/35 scale! I've been waiting YEARS for this one. The MIM-23 HAWK missile ("Homing All The Way Killer") started development in 1952 at Raytheon and went operational with the U.S. Army in 1960. The HAWK has since been used by countries all over the world, including Israel and most of its enemies. When I worked in Saudi Arabia long ago, I often saw HAWKs and their Tracked Carriers. I also saw HAWKs in Taiwan when I went there for business. An old friend served with a Marine Corps HAWK unit in Vietnam, saying "We didn't have very much to do." The Marines used the HAWK until 2002, when it was finally replaced by the Stinger missile. If you're a geezer (like me), at some point in your kidhood you probably built a HAWK missile kit. Renwal did a 1/32 HAWK launcher and radar trailer, reissued not long ago by Revell. Adams did the launcher/radar trailer in 1/40 scale, adding the nifty little Tracked Carrier for the missiles, and released all 3 in one box as the HAWK Missile Battery. When Adams went out of business, its HAWK kits were re-issued by Snap and Life-Like. Now AFV Club gives us a state-of-the-art HAWK and its launcher, with over 200 parts including neat details like movable wing trailing-edges. It has an option for building the MIM-23A or B versions. 4 different versions are included: US Army during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; US Marine Corps in the First Gulf War; Israeli Defense Forces; and Republic of China (Taiwan, where AFV Club is located, so they didn't have to go very far to find a real one).

Sprue Bros. had a sale over the weekend and I picked up a few military kits. I've had my eye on this one for a while: the Rhinemetall "Rheinbote" (Rhine Messenger) 4-stage rocket, also known as the V4. It was the only long-range ballistic missile used in WWII. The Germans fired over 200 of them into Antwerp, Belgium during the winter of 1944-45, causing minimal damage. No wonder - the Rheinbote had no guidance system, so the missile was just manually aimed toward the general direction of the target. If that mount looks familiar...it was adapted from the base of the famous 88-mm gun. From my (little bit of) reading, that's possible. But Rheinbotes were usually fired from the same "Meillerwagen" trailers used to transport V-2 missiles. Like most Bronco kits, it's very well detailed with lots of tiny, fiddly parts. Including 2 sheets of photo-etched metal parts.

Sounds like a coil would be better for the '60s. From Wikipedia: "MSD Ignition was the first company in the world to experiment with Multiple Spark Discharge for the ignition system of internal combustion engines in 1970. The idea was first proposed by a group of engineers working on the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico...After a great deal of research and development they were able to introduce the first multiple spark system using capacitive discharge and put it on the market under the name Multiple Spark Discharge (MSD)...Shortly after coming onto the market, the new ignition system was also shown to work particularly well in racing applications in 1976."

ICM is also doing some nice Model T kits in 1/35 scale with full engine/chassis detail: a 1917 U.S. Army Ambulance, the Australian Model 1917 Utility Truck shown below, and an Aussie LCP (Light Car Patrol, a 2-seater with Vickers machine gun). Years ago, the Polish company RPM released 2 Model T kits in 1/35 scale: a Motor Machine Gun Service (MMGS) car with Vickers and a supply truck. For many years they were the ONLY 1/35 Model T kits available. Otherwise we had to modify an old PYRO or AIRFIX/MPC 1/32 scale Model T. With the ICM kits available, the RPM kits can be left on the store shelf (or eBay). They were pretty bad: no engine and little chassis detail, thick flashy parts that had to be carved down balanced by very thin small parts that broke on the sprues, and usually some short-shot parts. Ugly! Idea for a militarized Model T in either 1/24 or 1/35 scale: some Model T's in Europe and the Middle East were fitted out as "tenders." Repair trucks. These were unarmed 2-seaters and carried a big load of tools, parts and spare tires for repairing Model T's in the field. They looked like the Utility Truck below, without a top or windshield.

I can't remember where I read this, but I've been laughing about it for years. Pretty sure it was in a crime novel, maybe by Carl Hiaasen. One character was a police detective who had spent his whole career, since he was a patrolman, riding in Chrysler cop cars. He thought they were uncomfortable and hated them. He had planned for years to write Lee Iacocca a letter, telling him just how much he hated his cars. But he could never get past the greeting of his letter - which always came out as "Dear S###head."

Glad you tracked it down! And as TooOld said, we all learned something.

Same scale as this other oddball Revell-Germany kit, the North Cormorant Oil Platform. Even in 1/200, you need a LOT of room to build and display this one. I've read that scratch-builders bought these to get a good supply of structural-type parts: tresses, beams, etc. This is one of many kits that seem to go in and out of production pretty often. It seems to be available right now. Tower has it for $152.95, and so do some Amazon vendors.

We elderly people also remember when radial tires started to be standard equipment on American cars, in the 1970's. If you bought a Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am back then, you got this nifty plaque on the instrument panel, reminding you that your chassis was set up especially for those new-fangled tires (pic stolen from the internet):

Here's a decal sheet from the original AMT '32 Ford Sport Roadster, kit #332, (with the spare-tire wells in the fenders). The sheet above for kit #132 is marked on the back "PT 1728," which is probably the part number. The Sports Roadster sheet is marked "PT 1728-A" on the back. I found a pic of the back on the internet but had problems grabbing it:

One of my fave Parts Pack engines is the 354 c.i. Cadillac. It has "street" and "strip" options with 2 different transmissions and a separate clutch plate. The street trans is complete with a shifter AND linkage. Details like that, along with separate bell-housings and internal parts, make the Parts Pack engines a gold mine for diorama builders. Or builders who want to add some better parts to an engine. The detail is often well done, just buried under all that heavy chrome plating. Easily fixed with a trip thru the Easy-Off and a Ziploc bag. And I wish they had included stock Cadillac valve covers with the lettering for that 354 (it has generic finned valve covers).

Resurrecting this dead thread because of a current project - the AMT '34 Ford Modified Stocker, with Tobias chassis from the mid-1970's. The same engine/chassis was used in several AMT Early Modified Stocker kits, with different parts included for the specific kit. For those not familiar with the kits: What motor? A small-block Chevy 383 stroker crate motor. Some Modified Stocker box art calls it a "427 Chevy." What's good? Very nice Weiand finned valve covers; separate alternator, in scale for once, not huge; optional front covers/water pumps and air-cleaner setups; 4-bbl carb with fairly nice surface detail and screen detail in the throat. Vertex magneto. Very good separate oil filter and mount, complete with tiny "finger ridges" on the filter. Separate oil pan. Nifty "nest of snakes" racing exhausts. Best of all - NO CHROME PARTS AT ALL! So no stripping needed. What's not good? Ugly "half" starter molded into right side of block (easily scraped off and replaced with the real thing); no radiator hose neck on intake manifold; no fuel pump. All the ugly/missing stuff can be stolen from many modern, better-detailed Chevy engines. Tranny options: none, 4-speed transmission is molded to engine.

A balmy 9 degrees F here. The basement has large windows that let in lots of sunlight and I have a little space heater down there. You can still feel the cold radiating off those walls this morning, and my ears start freezing after just a few minutes. Need to get some 1/25 engine wiring/hosing done, so I plan to move operations upstairs until late this afternoon.

Duh! Sorry about that. My brain must have gone to sleep, not noticing "71" was not "17." I have an original AMT '32 Ford Sports Roadster and checked the decal sheet, just in case. No help at all - that kit has the decal sheet from the '32 Ford Coupe in it! Red-and-white scallops instead of flames and number 16 B/A instead of the 80 A/M shown on the box, etc. Maybe that kit was packed at AMT on a Friday or Monday. Or maybe when AMT ran short, they just substituted whatever '32 Ford sheet was available. Good luck with the search. For the first sheet you posted, Gooche might have made up a "composite" decal sheet of numbers and other markings from various different early AMT decal sheets. But I'm just guessing with that.

I'd guess Kit #132. That was the original '32 Ford Roadster with no spare-tire wells in the fenders. AMT released 2 versions of that kit: the Sports Roadster with the spare-tire wells in the full fenders and the Roadster without them. I'm guessing that because of the "17 A/M" decals (box art below). The flame decals don't match the box art. But sometimes in the good old days, the AMT decal sheet didn't exactly match the box art. Back then, I think AMT always put the Kit Number on the back of the decals. So you could check that for #132 (or whatever). And if those decals are original from 1960, they're in amazingly good shape.

And did Mabel From Accounting appear in another PYRO kit? "The Curler" Surf Tricycle is also 1/8 scale, with TWO figures! "Boy and Girl Surfers," according to the box art. I can't find a pic of the kit contents and don't have this one (and don't plan to get it). Since we all interpret Great Art in our own way, I'll interpret this box art as : Mabel is running because Surfer Dude stole her Curler; she's about to whack him with her surfboard and take it back: