The best heritage model kit company was ______ , because_______. Rate the oldies makers!

[Wickersham Humble]

My favorite 'heritage' model company was, by a tic, AMT/SMP; because when they released their promo-based one-piece body kits, I was at the point of giving up planes, armor, ships and so forth because of the seeming limitation to my Jr. Hi. 'creativity' and I'd discovered Kustom Cars and Hot Rods.  The Revell and other kits I'd had were multipiece build-up types, and just too frustrating for a kid who was used to instant-gratification builds of one day, or even one sitting!  However, these products got me fueled into a new genre, and I'm still doing that type 65 years later!  OC, I went back in the 'eighties and did a number of Revell and other build-ups, when my patience had gotten a bit longer.

Second choice would probably be Monogram, for their variety of rods and racers; a bit basic at first, then well detailed as newer kits evolved; a good company with a lot of commitment to we young car modelers.  As I get ancient, their 1/24 scale seems a tad easier to handle, and I enjoyed a build of a repop 'Slingshot' dragster last year.  I'd love to have a (re)buildable 'Sizzler' kit now; I nearly wore mine out in '61-63 stacking the many optional parts on and trying to decide how to finish it; thing is, I don't now recall how I built it, or what happened; I have a number of bits in my spares box, unexplicably!  I'm rebuilding my 'Green Hornet' from the day, and finished a Model A tub Mod Roadster using the body from the one I built in '62, still with the turquoise Candy paint and decals.  

Third, Revell; they try so hard!  The '56 Ford and Buick built-up kits basically defeated the 11-year old me, back when, but I still have some bits and decals!  The '62 MoPar promo-style kits were fun, but engines, etc. were underscale and rims/chassis kinda strange.  The original F100 kit was terribly warped, and the '55 Chevy hardtop too; doors glued shut!

JoHan follows, mostly because we saw so few here on the left coast, and when AMT/SMP went to opened hoods with reasonably scaled engines, etc. in '61, they took longer to follow suit.  Their wheels were wonky, back then, but had cool wheel covers included.  My little section of 1960-61 MoPars make great subjects for engine transplants, but their styrene was sooo brittle! Nice an thin, though.  Our 88-cent Store here in Chico had JoHans for that price, much lower than the $1.39+ of AMT.

Lindberg, Srombecker, Palmer, ITC, and others; I tried them all.  Auroroa cars were never seen in our stores.  One last mention: Hubley; often pretty neat promo-style bodies of neat subjects.  I ordered four '60 Corvair kits by them with Nabisco box-tops and fifty-cents; their fate is unremembered. Well, that's my take on it. What do you think? Wick

[stitchdup]

I like the old monogram kits. Its probably because i didn't know of them until i returned to building and also because they have more of the cars i like such as a 36 3 window and the 2 37s and in the same scale as my other stuff. Besides that when a 1/24 karmann ghia is near the same size as a 1/25 62 chevy it just looks odd in the display to me. I do like the amt and revell 1/25 kits but i am much more likely to trade them than my 1/24 stuff. 

I also like the lindberg 40 ford even though it gets put down loads, its an easy kit to chop up and the thicker plastic is much more forgiving than the revell kit to work with. 

But there is an exception if its an unusual vw kit, then scale or brand loses all importance 

[Mark]

The mail-order Corvairs were SMP, not Hubley.  Though they were kits, they weren't the customizing kit but rather the promo in unassembled form.  There were a few differences: wheels, headlights, and taillights were simplified compared to the 3-in-1 version.

[Marley]

I would add MPC to the mix, especially for their wild customizing options in the late 60s and 70s. Their clear instructions and consistent 1/25 scale made kitbashing much easier. 

[Wickersham Humble]

I never knew SMP to make wheels/axles like these, but I think Hubley did.  Yes, having bought four in the fall of '59,  I knew they weren't customizing kits.  I never saw an SMP 3-in-1 kit of the 'Vair.  I still have the '62 (?) AMT version, Monza.  I have a few parts from one of the '60s; headlites, etc.  Durn four-doors, anyway.  Wick

[Mark]

It's the same kit, just the promo version.  The '60 promo and kit were four-doors.  '61 promo was again a four-door; '61 kit was a convertible body with separate hardtop but still had the lower four-door rear wheel openings.  '62 kit has a correct coupe body, '63 was a convertible, '64 went back to the coupe.

[CapSat 6]

It’s MPC for me…those were the biz for me, growing up in the late 70’s and early 80’s. 

 

[StevenGuthmiller]

Johan for me!

Mostly because of the cool and unusual subject matter.

(Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler, Desoto, Cadillac, and AMC).

Sadly for me, the majority of the really cool “flat box” stuff was long gone before I even began modeling 50+ years ago, and they’ve proven to be much more difficult to find, and much more expensive than most of the vintage AMT stuff.

 

 

Steve

[Wickersham Humble]

All the JoHan I have is stuff I bought for 88-cents, as noted, and among the first I 'restored' after taking all my kits out of storage after the Army in 1970.  Unique, if rather fra-geel-ay, in my opinion.  And those generic chassis, with the funny 'torsion bars' and fat axles!  True promo roots!

Wick, at 80

[Bills72sj]

Born in 1961. Started modeling in the late '60's through the mid 70's. Only built cars and they were pretty easy to put together. As a teen, they were getting too easy until Movin' On TV show switched me to building semi's. Henceforth, my favorites are/were AMT and MPC due to subject matter. I really like the subjects Johan put out but the only one I ever built was the twin engine Haulin' Hearse.

[Falcon Ranchero]

Even though I haven't built one yet, JoHan is my favourite. The types of cars they had available were different than what other model makers had at the time (like a '60 Plymouth model kit, for random example). Also the curiosity I have towards JoHan kits; having not built one yet, I am quite curious as to how they differ from the kit brands I have built, like AMT/MPC or Revell/Monogram. Had a '68 Eldo JoHan kit in my hands at the junk shop once but with a $300 price tag I had to let it go. But it definitely hightened my curiousity of building one. Have a '60 Plymouth wagon on it's way in about a week or so, and it'll be the first JoHan kit, and it's a grail kit of mine too (though the '60 annual hardtop is the holiest of grail kits for me).

But I do admit though that I like AMT/MPC. When I first started building, I had a string of Revell/Monogram kits going, and hadn't built an AMT yet. The '77 Coca Cola Ford Econoline Van became my first AMT, which actually almost put me off AMT kits. Whether it was lack of experience or just the way the kit went together (probably the former), I had quite a hard time with it. But I generally liked AMT's seemingly wider variety of kits, so I continued to build AMT as well. Had a great score of a 1965 issue 1959 Lincoln kit, all complete, for $20 this past January, which was awesome; I have to admit the AMT kits I like are basically the ones you can't really get anymore: '62 Galaxie, '65 Thunderbird, '59 Buick, etc... But I like how AMT was also a promo company so you got quick, detailed curbside kits that look extremely nice once built up and detailed, requiring very little effort. Though I do like an engine under the hood as much as the next guy.

[Rob Hall]

5 minutes ago, Falcon Ranchero said:

Even though I haven't built one yet, JoHan is my favourite. The types of cars they had available were different than what other model makers had at the time (like a '60 Plymouth model kit, for random example). Also the curiosity I have towards JoHan kits; having not built one yet, I am quite curious as to how they differ from the kit brands I have built, like AMT/MPC or Revell/Monogram. Had a '68 Eldo JoHan kit in my hands at the junk shop once but with a $300 price tag I had to let it go. But it definitely hightened my curiousity of building one. Have a '60 Plymouth wagon on it's way in about a week or so, and it'll be the first JoHan kit, and it's a grail kit of mine too (though the '60 annual hardtop is the holiest of grail kits for me).

 

The '60 Plymouth wagon was the first Jo-han kit I ever built, as a kid in 1978.  A weird detail about that kit is it doesn't have inner fenders..open the hood and the front tires are visible. 

[Falcon Ranchero]

1 minute ago, Rob Hall said:

A weird detail about that kit is it doesn't have inner fenders..open the hood and the front tires are visible. 

That is quite wierd, I didn't know that. But looking at the photo of mine I see that now. Wasn't apparently obvious to me yet. I may have to makeshift inner fenders or something... Or I could just leave it alone. Mine coming in is I believe the 1972 issue "Police Wagon". FB marketplace score that my aunt is going to bring up from southern Ontario in about a week or so. Pretty excited to add it to the collection.  

[Rob Hall]

6 minutes ago, Falcon Ranchero said:

That is quite wierd, I didn't know that. But looking at the photo of mine I see that now. Wasn't apparently obvious to me yet. I may have to makeshift inner fenders or something... Or I could just leave it alone. Mine coming in is I believe the 1972 issue "Police Wagon". FB marketplace score that my aunt is going to bring up from southern Ontario in about a week or so. Pretty excited to add it to the collection.  

Nice.  The one I built was the regular issue, later got the police wagon kit.   I have a glue bomb ‘60 Fury ht to restore eventually. 

[Falcon Ranchero]

1 minute ago, Rob Hall said:

I have a glue bomb ‘60 Fury ht to restore eventually. 

That's totally awesome; I have to admit the '60 Plymouth is my favourite car of all time; about 4 years ago or so I saw a black and white still image online of a 4-door '60 Belvedere from Leave it To Beaver and that was the first time seeing a '60 Plymouth, and I was hooked on the styling and fins, or as Chrysler Corp. liked to refer to them as "Stablizer Fin Designs". Later found photo evidence that my great uncle Jim had a '60 Belvedere 4-door. So ever since then I've been trying to find the Fury hardtop to build my "Dream Car" out of it. But I suppose for now the wagon is close enough.

[Can-Con]

1 hour ago, Falcon Ranchero said:

That is quite wierd, I didn't know that. But looking at the photo of mine I see that now. Wasn't apparently obvious to me yet. I may have to makeshift inner fenders or something... Or I could just leave it alone. Mine coming in is I believe the 1972 issue "Police Wagon". FB marketplace score that my aunt is going to bring up from southern Ontario in about a week or so. Pretty excited to add it to the collection.  

I used the engine and underhood area from an AMT '57 Chrysler 300 on mine. A bit of work but I think it really perked it up a bit.😉

[Fat Brian]

I wish Monogram would have hung around. I prefer 1/24th scale and their later offerings like the 69 Talladega and 91 Ford trucks were very good. 

[Falcon Ranchero]

39 minutes ago, Can-Con said:

I used the engine and underhood area from an AMT '57 Chrysler 300 on mine. A bit of work but I think it really perked it up a bit.😉

That looks great; Though I have built my '57 Chrysler already so I'll have to think of another way...

[Carmak]

Kits manufacturers from the 60’s and early 70’s had very distinct personalities and styles. Each had pros and cons to their style of kit.

Below are my general OPINIONS of each of the big manufacturers of 1:24/1:25 scale American car kits during the first golden era which ended in the mid 70’s.

There are exceptions to everything I say below. These are my general OPINIONS.

 

Revell.

Pros: Kits with many functional features with good detail. Kits of actual show cars and competition cars.

Cons: Cars were not their only kit type. Challenging to build with very fragile parts (early multi-piece bodies). Late 60’s into early 70’s kits design quality decreased.

 

Monogram.

Pros: Easy to assembly kits. Best molded in color kits ever made. Tom Daniels kits. Their “Classics” kits built well and look good.

Con: Cars were not their only kit type. Inconsistent scale choices. Poor proportions on some kits.

 

AMT / SMP.

Pros: Promo based business model allowed for a very wide range of fairly well-proportioned annuals each year loaded with custom and race parts (3in1 kits). Most trophy kits were good subject matter and straight forward to build.

Cons: Promo based chassis and interiors on most annuals. Late 60’s into early 70’s kits design quality decreased (poorly modified re-issues).

 

MPC.

Pros. Promo based business model allowed for a wide range of fairly well-proportioned annuals each year loaded with custom and race parts. MPC non-annual kits were good subject matter and straight forward to build. Stock bodied Funny Cars are either a Pro or a Con depending on the point of view 😊.

Con: Promo based chassis and interiors on most annuals. 70’s kits design quality decreased (poorly modified re-issues).

 

JoHan.

Pros: Promo based business model allowed for a decent range of the best proportioned body annuals each year loaded with custom and race parts. Their “Gold Cup” kits were well proportioned and second to none for functional features.

Con: Promo based chassis and interiors on most annuals. Slowly withered in the early 70’s with few new kits.

[Rob Hall]

I got into the hobby as a kid in the late 70s...lots of kits then were reissues of '60s kits.  Jo-han was still around, but not easy to find.  My 2nd glue kit was a Jo-han.   It wasn't until the late 80s that I got several Jo-han kits from the X-el era.

My first glue kit was a Revell.  My third an AMT 'Countdown Series' reissue.

I generally didn't like Revell kits before the late 80s merger w/ Monogram.  Only built a few prior to that.  I liked Monogram a lot, especially their '80s kits of '60s-70s muscle cars, '80s cars and contemporary NASCAR race cars.   

I like the AMT and MPC kits (many were reissues) I built, though even as a kid got tired of MPC's molded in color and tinted windows in the 80s.

It wasn't until  about 1985 as a teenager that I got my first 'foreign' kits with a Tamiya Audi Quattro and an Imai De Tomaso Pantera GTS S.  In the late 80s I got more exposure to import kits w/ the Testors Italeri and Fujimi reboxes.

[Bainford]

Interesting to read the personal views on this stuff.

During my early building years (starting at the beginning of the 1970s) my favourites were Revell and MPC. Revell had the coolest subjects and I loved the complex assemblies, even though they frustrated me and I glue-bombed them. I always sought out early Revell kits. MPC was a favourite primarily because they use a very nice, opaque, soft white plastic that was a dream to work with when doing mods and alterations. 

I avoided Monogram at all cost during those early years. Their over-simplified assemblies, lack of finer detail, and lack of scale fidelity annoyed me, and all that Tom Daniels stuff made me think of them more as toys. I didn't start buying Monograms until they began rolling out new tools of muscle car kits in the early 80s. 

IMC kits were not common in this area, or perhaps their hey-day had passed by then, but like the Revell kits, I loved their subject matter and complexity. That included, of course, the Testors 'Those Famous Fords' series of re-boxed IMC kits.

By the mid-70s, my favourite maker, Revell became my least favourite as they changed tactic from complex and fiddley kits to over-simplified, inaccurate kits with generic mechanical assemblies and 'guessed-at' body contours. To this day, that era of Revell tooling is succeeded only by Palmer as the worst stuff that has even been foisted upon the model car community.

Jo-Han was almost unheard of in my area back in the day. I never heard of them until I got my first Auto World catalogue in 1978. I was intrigued, so I ordered the Chrysler Turbine to see what Jo-Han was all about. I was blown away by the detail of the kit, and determined that Jo-Han must me the best, most detailed kit-maker of all time. About a year later a local drug store started carrying a small shelf of Jo-Hans, and I soon learned what jo-Han was really all about. Nonetheless, I still liked the 'feel' of the Jo-Han kits, and by that time, an accurate body and an interesting engine was more important than complexity.

Kits from Lindberg, Pyro, Renwal, and Hawk were largely avoided as low quality and simplified, though they were cheap, so a little lawn-mowing money in my pocket might bring one home.

Heller kits were not common here, and expensive too, so never built one in period. Or, to this day, now that I think of it.

Japanese kits then were simple, battery-powered things, and I couldn't be bothered with that.

[Wickersham Humble]

JoHan redux: One of my 'grail' builds was to combine the '61 Dodge front clip (fenders, hood, bumper/grille) with the '61 Plymouth, and a MCM traded gifted me both kits for the experiment! (See below) I never could get to like, even for pure funkiness, the '61 Plymouth grille treatment; it was even more bizarre than the '59 Chevy 'butterfly' rear end!  Likewise the Dodge rear 'reverse fin' design; either the low ones on the Dart/Pheonix, or the extravagant ones with the big tail-lite on the Polaras; neither looked good and were so far outside the mainstream to seem freaky!  So, I decided to create a 'Plodge' mashup, which I think showed that the Exner style could be tasty, if not mis-mated!

However, we discovered that the '61 body was actually a modified '60 -- fins cut off, and more-or-less bizarre Exner front grille fabbed -- that needed a lot of work; almost a complete rebuild! OC, the Dodge front group mated up perfectly, and made a very decent result.  I had to fake/fab the entire interior, however, but had a JoHan generic frame to convert for an engine, which was a simulated 'B'-block.  I had a JoHan promo/curbside Dodge kit back in '61, and liked the front style very much (also =, as seen on Leave It To Beaver!) but it was brush painted and disappeared in the dark past.  Seemed like the F-86 'Sabre Jet' snout to me!

The Dodge body and Plymouth front end weren't wasted; a talented 15-year-old at the 2023 IPMS Yuba City show accepted it as a challenge build!

Also, still have a radical custom JoHan '60 Plymouth that was inspired (front treatment, mostly) by the early experimental turbine test car of that era; first built by 15-year old me; much repaired over the last 60 years or so, but...

Wick  [Modeling since 1953]

[iamsuperdan]

ESCI.

And I bet I'm the onyl one saying that.

They had some unique subjects that no one else bothered producing. Well, at least until Italeri bought up the old tooling.

• Ford Transit
• Renault 5
• Mercedes G-Wagen
• Mercedes 190
• Toyota Land Cruiser
• Range Rover
• BMW M1

They may have been simple kits, but they look good when built. Body dimensions were excellent. 

[stitchdup]

All of them. Just like every kit is practise for the next one for builders, its also practise for the makers and leads to more advancements from other brands. Without smp or frog or premier kits we might never have got tamiya or mongram

[Falcon Ranchero]

2 hours ago, Wickersham Humble said:

JoHan redux: One of my 'grail' builds was to combine the '61 Dodge front clip (fenders, hood, bumper/grille) with the '61 Plymouth, and a MCM traded gifted me both kits for the experiment! (See below) I never could get to like, even for pure funkiness, the '61 Plymouth grille treatment; it was even more bizarre than the '59 Chevy 'butterfly' rear end!  Likewise the Dodge rear 'reverse fin' design; either the low ones on the Dart/Pheonix, or the extravagant ones with the big tail-lite on the Polaras; neither looked good and were so far outside the mainstream to seem freaky!  So, I decided to create a 'Plodge' mashup, which I think showed that the Exner style could be tasty, if not mis-mated!

However, we discovered that the '61 body was actually a modified '60 -- fins cut off, and more-or-less bizarre Exner front grille fabbed -- that needed a lot of work; almost a complete rebuild! OC, the Dodge front group mated up perfectly, and made a very decent result.  I had to fake/fab the entire interior, however, but had a JoHan generic frame to convert for an engine, which was a simulated 'B'-block.  I had a JoHan promo/curbside Dodge kit back in '61, and liked the front style very much (also =, as seen on Leave It To Beaver!) but it was brush painted and disappeared in the dark past.  Seemed like the F-86 'Sabre Jet' snout to me!

The Dodge body and Plymouth front end weren't wasted; a talented 15-year-old at the 2023 IPMS Yuba City show accepted it as a challenge build!

Also, still have a radical custom JoHan '60 Plymouth that was inspired (front treatment, mostly) by the early experimental turbine test car of that era; first built by 15-year old me; much repaired over the last 60 years or so, but...

Wick  [Modeling since 1953]

Wow that ‘60 Plymouth custom job sure is interesting. Really wish I had the hardtop. Also neat about the ‘61 Dodge with the ‘61 Plymouth rear. I’ve seen an image of a real ‘61 that is the exact opposite; Plymouth front and Dodge rear.