Tires, and why are they "rubber", anyway?

[62rebel]

The recent threads on tire melt got me thinking... There's been a lot of changes in what kit makers gave us for tires over the years, some good, some awful....  My Dad regaled me with stories of plain hard plastic wheels, cast metal, and even wood (I think he was pulling my leg there)...  I personally recall all kinds of tires over the years, hard vinyl Palmer tires that bruised your fingers getting them onto the wheels, Monogram hard plastic tires with flat spots, wrinkle wall slicks that only looked right on one side, Johan double name tires, and AMT's egregiously awful two piece tires from the late seventies.... Some of my favorites were the venerable Firestone Supremes and MPC's great G series. Unfortunately, those have an unpredictable habit of shrinking and hardening as they age. Lindberg's issue of Armstrong tires in the exAMT 1934 Ford pickup are an odd duck, but work well for some builds. Revell's tires, with a few exceptions, gave me fits. They were difficult to mount and never seemed to fit together well, and some of their kits still cleave to these things... Their recent offerings have been better, except that they rarely if ever have sidewall details. Round 2's pad printed slicks and other tires have been a welcome respite from the same old stuff. Tamiya tires, as well as Heller, have a habit of splitting in two. I haven't had this issue with Hasegawa tires. Moebius tires are fabulous, little gems all their own.

[Modelbuilder Mark]

Some of the REALLY early kits were wood. Lots of hits and misses with ties over the years,  I just wish the new ones were branded.

[Matt T.]

I would think this goes back to factory promos. Mold it in color, chrome bumpers & hubcaps, black tires, assemble. 

[Howard Cohen]

I seem to recall the first time I saw 'rubber' tires in a kit in the 60s, I was thrilled Wow, I didn't have to glue the tire halves together and paint the tires  Lettering the sidewalls was a little tricky but I managed. And you could flex a rubber tire over a solid wheel without having to glue it in place  

Over the years, tires started to melt, in some cases. I have a few that have melted but only those I kept in a box. The tires on my finished models are good...where is that horseshoe?  I do have a couple of models that I got out of collections where the tire and wheel have melted together but when I looked at them, each one had a layer of glue on it, so perhaps the glue is what causes the tire and wheel to melt together  

When I get an old model now, I take the wheel and tire and drop them in the Super Clean. That seems to work very well.