Life-Like model company?

[ToyLvr]

Anyone out there know anything about the history of "Life-Like" model company?

I've seen a couple of their car kits here and there over the years. A friend of mine just recently acquired one of their ship model kits; I didn't know they manufactured anything besides cars.

[ZIL 111V]

Life-Like was mostly an H.O. electric train co, venturing in styrene kits of H.O. buildings & later (mid 50s,60s, 70s) expanding in a variety of plastic kits, remember having a few 1/32 car kits, but also these kool kits, a few LL kits later landed with Lindberg in the early 80s:

 

 

 

[Dave Van]

As stated Life Like started in the model train hobby.....not just HO but many O scale scenery and accessories. The Chuck wagon and chariot were tooled by Athearn model train manufacture during the plastic kit boom during the late 50's. The Honest John was Renwall and is now owned be Revell. Life Like was just making sure their injection machines were running as much as possible.......do not think they ever cut their own tool for a static plastic kit......buying Pyro and many others molds floating around in the 60's and 60's. 

[peteski]

There is a pretty complete history of the company available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-Like but it only seems to concentrate on the model RR part of the company.  They also produced and sold N scale model railroad items.  As Dave Van mentioned, they did sell al decent range of non-model-RR related plastic kits in the '70s and '80s.  Not sure if all, but at least mostly from other companies molds.

I also found the Lifoam connection interesting. All those Styrofoam coolers were made by their sister company.

[Snake45]

I think they also were the source of a couple of 1/48 airplane kits, Hawker Fury and Gloster Gladiator (and maybe some others). These were issued by Pyro and, more recently, Lindberg. They're very impressive kits for their age and even today are fairly well regarded.