Palmer model kit history?

[ewetwo]

On 4/22/2018 at 12:24 PM, Tom Geiger said:

As mentioned, Palmer box art is interesting and fun to collect.  Many years ago in the hobby you'd see them at swap meets for $5 or $10, so I started to collect them...

I have the body and the front grill of this falcon.. Been looking for the other parts but no luck. Frame rails. Wheels. Back bumper. I watch Ebay to see if the parts come up and I've seen some of the Palmer kits are getting expensive. A Dodge went for over $100. 

 

 

[Tom Geiger]

Yes, back 20 years ago I was buying Palmers for the box art and was paying $5 to $10 apiece for them. 
 

Lately the asking prices have become costly, I guess people are collecting them for the nostalgia aspect, much like collecting old toys.

[Mike999]

20 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

Lately the asking prices have become costly, I guess people are collecting them for the nostalgia aspect, much like collecting old toys.

I poke around eBay a lot and sometimes see Palmer kits for outrageous prices.  eBay has some well-known old kit dealers/sellers and in general, they don't seem to do that. They know what the kits are worth.

The nosebleed prices usually seem to come from Ye Ole Anteek & Junque Emporiums.  The wanna-be American Pickers.  They're sort of like those well-meaning aunts who bought us Palmer kits for our birthdays.  They don't know much about model car kits, and see one kit as not much different from another.  So when they see an original AMT '62 Falcon selling for big bucks, they believe their Palmer '62 Falcon should be worth the same price.  Maybe even more, because the box art is so exciting!

Edited May 21, 2020 by Mike999
omit

[Tom Geiger]

43 minutes ago, Mike999 said:

The nosebleed prices usually seem to come from Ye Ole Anteek & Junque Emporiums.  The wanna-be American Pickers.  They're sort of like those well-meaning aunts who bought us Palmer kits for our birthdays.  They don't know much about model car kits, and see one kit as not much different from another.  So when they see an original AMT '62 Falcon selling for big bucks, they believe their Palmer '62 Falcon should be worth the same price.  Maybe even more, because the box art is so exciting!

EBay gives sellers a bunch of free listings every month. So it costs them nothing to go trolling for suckers!

[Oldcarfan27]

Some time ago, I saw more Palmer's with their universal wheelbase and then it dawned on me where they were targeting their market:

Slot cars!!!

The generic chassis, roughly 1/32 scale, molded in interior and general indifference to accuracy. Slot car racers wanted quick bodies to race. Half the time they'd bash them up and break them anyway, so they would need another replacement, quick and cheap!

Notice that Palmer Plastics closed right around the time the slot car fad died out.

Just my speculation. 

[unclescott58]

19 hours ago, Oldcarfan27 said:

Some time ago, I saw more Palmer's with their universal wheelbase and then it dawned on me where they were targeting their market:

Slot cars!!!

The generic chassis, roughly 1/32 scale, molded in interior and general indifference to accuracy. Slot car racers wanted quick bodies to race. Half the time they'd bash them up and break them anyway, so they would need another replacement, quick and cheap!

Notice that Palmer Plastics closed right around the time the slot car fad died out.

Just my speculation. 

The big slot car fad faded out well before Palmer did. And I've never seen one of their kit bodies use as slot car. Their regular kits, not the reboxed Pyros, with the multi piece bodies would never have held up to the riggers of slot car racing. I had a few Palmers in my day. I always remember getting them for gifts from well meaning older relatives, and parent's friends, who knew nothing about models. I alway built them, and displayed them with my other models. The old I kind of I had today was their '73 Thunderbird. A terrible kit. But, a post '71 AMT Thunderbird, none the less. 

There is one on eBay for $65. Way more than I'm willing to pay. But, check out that cool box art! 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by unclescott58

[unclescott58]

Check this one out. A '71 Thunderbird popin a wheelie. Very realistic. 

 

[Mark]

Palmer sold out to another company around 1975.  The new owners changed the box art to photos of assembled models for their 1976 kits.  That's what drove the stake into Palmer!

[SfanGoch]

Pyro Plastic Corporation acquired Palmer in 1970. Pyro was sold to Life-Like in 1972 and, in 2005, the parent company Lifoam Industries, LLC, chose to concentrate on its core manufacturing business and sold the model railroad division to Walthers. Palmer, incidentally, also reboxed Pyro kits.

[SCRWDRVR]

 

[Jimmy Razor]

On 4/20/2018 at 6:47 AM, Mike999 said:

Here's a Palmer discussion at The Other Model Car Magazine.  One poster mentions that Palmer mostly made plastic food containers, and model kits were only a side job.

Comments from poster Jimmy Razor:

"I am a regular contributor at scalemates.com, and have additional insight into Palmer.  Like AMT and MPC, Palmer offered a series of "annual" kits, featuring cars from the current model year.  Specifically, these are the "bad" kits.  Palmer's outdated molding process meant multi-piece bodies with shallow interiors.  The individual parts were poorly-engineered with terrible fit and often with inaccurate shapes.  Again, these were "junk" models, only of interest to nostalgic collectors.

Not all offered by Palmer was "junk," though.  Through a mold-sharing program with Pyro, Palmer offered a budget version of Pyro's "Table Top" series.  These were a selection of 1930's through 1950's cars in approximately 1/32 scale.  Price was kept at 29 to 60 cents through the omission of clear or chrome parts.

Although these "Budget Pyros" were basic by today's standards, they were fairly accurate in their overall shape and detail. Engineering was fair-to-good with decent fit, in spite of multi-part bodies.  The primary weakness of these kits was aging molds leading to excessive flash.

I built about a half-dozen of these Palmer cars in the early 'seventies, and really enjoyed them.  Most were later reissued by Life-Like and Lindberg, and remain available.  An experienced model builder can make these basic kits look rather nice."

http://cs.scaleautomag.com/sca/ask_scale_auto/f/11/t/125685.aspx

 

[Jimmy Razor]

Thank you for reposting my comments from elsewhere.  The history of Palmer is far more interesting than the models themselves. An evolution of Premier, one of the earliest American plastic kit makers, Palmer remained popular for over a decade, relying upon marketing in dime stores and pharmacies. They were an incredibly prolific manufacturer, often creating the same car in different scales each year. As noted, their annuals were very poor with sub-par engineering and fidelity of detail.  The 1/32 scale 1930's and 1940's cars were much better, being mostly sourced from Pyro.  The 1940 Ford Tudor Sedan was an original mold, though it appears to be a copy of AMT's version of the same car.

Towards the end of their run, owner Pyro was sold to Life Like.  Palmer attempted to continue as an independent, going through a few rebrandings.  Around 1971, they tried to compete with AMT and MPC 1/25 scale annuals with their own "initials" brand, PMC.  These were of a higher quality and the molds were used for Lindberg reissues in the 1990's. Around 1973 and '74, the Palmer name was briefly dropped and the brand became Winneco. This iteration not only continued the 1930's and 1940's cars, but also reboxed 1/72 scale tanks from Japan.  In their final year, 1974 - '75, the final rebranding ",Palmer Hobbies," was in place.  It reissued most of the classic cars and added a line of 1975 annuals. By the Bicentennial year, Palmer was history.  Most of their molds ended up with the aforementioned Lindberg, who continue to reissue vintage Palmer to this day.

[Oldcarfan27]

Good thing they did, with SAE gone so would have been your insights!

[Mike999]

19 hours ago, Jimmy Razor said:

Thank you for reposting my comments from elsewhere...

You're most welcome!  Glad you found us.  And thanks for the extra information.  

If you have the time and inclination, maybe you should write an article with all your Palmer/Pyro info and post it here.  I'd love to read it.

[iamsuperdan]

Wow, so there's a market for the Palmer boxes?

There were a couple of kits for $10 at a local antiques market a couple of years ago. Thought about grabbing them, but heard so much about the poor quality, I passed on them.

The box art was pretty cool. One was the Cougar XR7, can't remember what the other was.

[abysss]

So I just discovered recently the existence of these Palmer Plastics model kits. I noticed they also with PSM as their logo as seen in the boxart below, but can't be found when searching for PSM 1/25, at least that's my experience.
I was immediatelly captured by their box art. I see they really put the extra mile in making the cars look as slick and low as they could, sporty so to speak, some epic even. I love their box arts. There were especially two box arts I fell in love with, The King Of The Road stingray corvette from the late 60s and the "Blow Your Mind" Vette. I wanted to get these kits, but to my surprise they were nowhere to be found, I guess they are both pretty rare. But I was curious how they might have looked, based on their box art.

And while I couldn't find any information about the King of the reoad kit, apart a small box art picture posted on scalemates, I managed to find a picture of what's in the box of the "Blow your mind" vette on worthpoint. I thought the kit parts on the sprues and the body looked pretty decent. But this was pretty much the only Palmer Plastics model of which I have seen the contents of the box. So reading this thread I was totally unaware that these kits were so trashy, also as we see in the video.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few words and the 2 boy arts I love so much, and also another one I find cute.

the contents of the box, can be seen here: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/blow-mind-corvette-funny-car-1960s-25-474773116

 

 

And just today, when searching for the worthpoint page I found something precious, right on this forum, someone restored a Blow You Mind vette, and did an outstanding job on it, I might add. It looks very nice, except minus the rear are too big for my taste.
So, if you might have missed this post, here is the link http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/155998-yes-its-a-palmer71-corvette/

Edited January 16, 2023 by abysss

[junkyardjeff]

I have a 72 Mercury Monterey I might try to build when I get bored and see what I can do with it.

[ewetwo]

I have a Corvair I  “rebuilt”. And 2 Ford Falcons. A sedan and a convertible. Only the falcon convertible box. And Tempest box and a few Tempest parts.. And an untouched 1965 impala convertible kit with the box.. Don’t know if I’ll ever build the last 3 I mentioned. 

[Carmak]

On 1/15/2023 at 9:02 PM, abysss said:

So I just discovered recently the existence of these Palmer Plastics model kits. I noticed they also with PSM as their logo as seen in the boxart below, but can't be found when searching for PSM 1/25, at least that's my experience.
I was immediatelly captured by their box art. I see they really put the extra mile in making the cars look as slick and low as they could, sporty so to speak, some epic even. I love their box arts. There were especially two box arts I fell in love with, The King Of The Road stingray corvette from the late 60s and the "Blow Your Mind" Vette. I wanted to get these kits, but to my surprise they were nowhere to be found, I guess they are both pretty rare. But I was curious how they might have looked, based on their box art.

And while I couldn't find any information about the King of the reoad kit, apart a small box art picture posted on scalemates, I managed to find a picture of what's in the box of the "Blow your mind" vette on worthpoint. I thought the kit parts on the sprues and the body looked pretty decent. But this was pretty much the only Palmer Plastics model of which I have seen the contents of the box. So reading this thread I was totally unaware that these kits were so trashy, also as we see in the video.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few words and the 2 boy arts I love so much, and also another one I find cute.

the contents of the box, can be seen here: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/blow-mind-corvette-funny-car-1960s-25-474773116

 

 

And just today, when searching for the worthpoint page I found something precious, right on this forum, someone restored a Blow You Mind vette, and did an outstanding job on it, I might add. It looks very nice, except minus the rear are too big for my taste.
So, if you might have missed this post, here is the link http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/155998-yes-its-a-palmer71-corvette/

There is an old joke: Do you know who the highest paid person at Palmer is? The guy that does the box art.

The point is that the box art was better than the kit in the box. Often Palmer kits are caricatures that are of no particular scale and can be hard to recognize. 

The "PSM" kits are actually fair kits. I think they started in 1970 and many of the tools from that era were still around a few years ago and sold as Lindberg kits.

 

[abysss]

Yes I've read somewhere along the way that some of the palmer models were later sold as Lindberg kits. But I also saw some old AMT kits that have cover art like Palmer's or very similar.

like this one

Edited January 20, 2023 by abysss

[Little Cars Garage]

On 12/1/2020 at 3:23 PM, Jimmy Razor said:

Thank you for reposting my comments from elsewhere.  The history of Palmer is far more interesting than the models themselves. An evolution of Premier, one of the earliest American plastic kit makers, Palmer remained popular for over a decade, relying upon marketing in dime stores and pharmacies. They were an incredibly prolific manufacturer, often creating the same car in different scales each year. As noted, their annuals were very poor with sub-par engineering and fidelity of detail.  The 1/32 scale 1930's and 1940's cars were much better, being mostly sourced from Pyro.  The 1940 Ford Tudor Sedan was an original mold, though it appears to be a copy of AMT's version of the same car.

Towards the end of their run, owner Pyro was sold to Life Like.  Palmer attempted to continue as an independent, going through a few rebrandings.  Around 1971, they tried to compete with AMT and MPC 1/25 scale annuals with their own "initials" brand, PMC.  These were of a higher quality and the molds were used for Lindberg reissues in the 1990's. Around 1973 and '74, the Palmer name was briefly dropped and the brand became Winneco. This iteration not only continued the 1930's and 1940's cars, but also reboxed 1/72 scale tanks from Japan.  In their final year, 1974 - '75, the final rebranding ",Palmer Hobbies," was in place.  It reissued most of the classic cars and added a line of 1975 annuals. By the Bicentennial year, Palmer was history.  Most of their molds ended up with the aforementioned Lindberg, who continue to reissue vintage Palmer to this day.

I'm really late to this conversation (!!), but I am curious to know what verifiable evidence there is that the 1940 Ford tudor from Pyro was based on the 1/32 AMT version of the same car? Most of the parts DID NOT INTERCHANGE -- I was a prolific builder of the Table Top Series in the late 60s-early 70s.   I would also like to know more of the claimed relationship between Premier and Palmer, as they were both doing kits concurrently from 1959-1963.  I don't believe there is any connection other than the horrible quality and accuracy of the two manufacturers with all the promo-based single piece bodies released by AMT, Johan, Revell, MPC and Monogram at this time.  Thanks 

[bobss396]

My local stationary store sold them. I had a few and at least one motorized kit. They were awful, this us around 1963 or so.

Pyro kits were a lot better. The ones I had were 1/32 scale. My brother had the Jersey Bounce kit, I traded it to him for  Hardy Boys book I got in an Xmas gift exchange in 4th grade or so.

[deuces wild]

Palmer also had the Lindberg Exterminator double engine kit in 1/8 scale with all the accessories.... I do have the manual and wiring diagram laying around somewhere....?

[Bugatti Fan]

The consensus on here is that Palmer kits were poor to say the least. 

Their box art was quite impressive whoever the artist was. I had forgotten what the Palmer logo with the micrometer looked like until it was posted up in this thread. It was a well designed logo, credit where it is due, it only the kits lived up to the logo's suggestion of accuracy using the micrometer for the capital 'P'.

I guess that the kits get bought as collectables or out of curiosity these days.

There was a kit of American origin that I can remember a friend of mine owning. It was of a small English Ford 100E saloon car.  Was it a Palmer kit ?    Maybe someone reading this knows ?  Interested to know about it as my Dad owned one way back and started to teach me to drive in it. Very basic car. Side valve engine, three forward gears only, manual clutch operated car.

Edited November 3 by Bugatti Fan

[alan barton]

I'd like to offer some more information on the relationship between Palmer and Pyro 1/32 scale models, and others.

I have been building model cars for nearly sixty years and I have set myself an ambitious target of obtaining one example of every styrene hot rod model ever made in any scale by model kit manufacturers around the world.   and so far I am doing pretty well. I'm sticking with the traditional definition of a hot rod, being based on a car built up to 1948 and my list includes both hot rod kits and kits of vintage cars that would typically be hot rodded.  So a 34 Plymouth sedan is fine, a 32 Duesenberg maybe not so much.

Thanks to great mates in the USA including Dale Daugherty, Tom Geiger, Tom Martin and Craig Stanford, I am very close to achieving my dream.  As of this writing, I have only one more 1/32 scale hot rod kit to find, the Aurora La Salle Hearse with a Curse.  I  have close to 100 built 1/32nd scale rods in my collection and this is where my interest in Pyro, Palmer and other manufacturers kicks in.

These photos show three versions of essentially the same model.

The Blue coupe is the Pyro 32 Ford 3 window.  It's based on their roadster kit with a poorly fitting 3 window coupe roof slapped on top but it is what it is.

Next is a maroon Palmer 32 Roadster.  Almost identical to the base model of the Pyro coupe but somewhat cruder in execution.  Before I did a lot of bodywork, the body exhibited noticeable drag marks down the doors, as if the body had been pulled from the mould while still molten!  The door lines weren't vertical or straight. The louvres on the hood, particularly the right hand side, looked like a stick had been dragged through wet sand to form them - very low-rent indeed.

The yellow and black model (unpainted) is made in Japan by UPC.  I would suggest that they got hold of a Pyro model and then made an entirely new tooling for it.  It incorporates all the slightly awkward proportions of the original Pyro but is a much cleaner crisper mold all over.  The hood louvres are crisp and well executed, a huge improvement on both the Pyro and Palmer items.  The finish on the plastic is much finer.  The hood is now removable whereas the first two are moulded to the bodyshell. It has a seperate 4 banger under the hood.  The wire wheels are chromed and have separate tyres.

In short, they are all close cousins but I don't believe they are triplets!

 

 

On 10/31/2024 at 10:36 PM, Little Cars Garage said:

I'm really late to this conversation (!!), but I am curious to know what verifiable evidence there is that the 1940 Ford tudor from Pyro was based on the 1/32 AMT version of the same car? Most of the parts DID NOT INTERCHANGE -- I was a prolific builder of the Table Top Series in the late 60s-early 70s.   I would also like to know more of the claimed relationship between Premier and Palmer, as they were both doing kits concurrently from 1959-1963.  I don't believe there is any connection other than the horrible quality and accuracy of the two manufacturers with all the promo-based single piece bodies released by AMT, Johan, Revell, MPC and Monogram at this time.  Thanks 

Dave, living on the opposite side of the planet to you guys, I am not in a position to provide documented proof ( like plans, memos or contracts) of the relationship between the AMT and Palmer 40 Tudor but I do have both of them built as you can see here and my gut feeling is that the Palmer multi pieced model is a direct copy of the AMT kit. 

The fact that it is a three piece body shell and that the overall length of the Palmer is a couple of mm shorter is proof that it is indeed a different mould but the attention to detail is so similar it couldn't be an accident.  As you look a the photos of the black AMT and the blue Palmer, note things like the identical shape of the rear windows and trunk handle, the delicacy of the crease running back from the peak of the windshield frame, the pattern of ribbing on the running boards for starters.  Upside down, every single detail and the method of parts breakdown of the chassis and floorpan is identical - other than the aforementioned shorter length.

Considering that some manufacturers cant keep proportions of similar cars in their own range identical, I can't imagine that Palmer got this close to the AMT kit without measuring directly off the AMT kit.

I find this detailed analysis and investigation of our modelling history to be extremely interesting ( if not significantly nerdy!) so would love to hear your thoughts on my observations here.

Cheers

Alan

Edited November 6 by alan barton