Meet the Beetles

[Mr. Metallic]

Over the past 10 years or so I have developed a deep interest in the original Monogram hot rod kits from the early 60's, especially the Little T, Woody Wagon, Little Deuce, and of course, the Blue Beetle. You see tons of survivors out there built in the classic greyish-blue color of the first run and those are great, but i started to notice I was more intrigued by the survivors where the builder had painted the body, they looked so great in other colors too. Then I found out how many colors the Blue Beetle (and subsequent modifications to the basic tooling) that the kit had been molded in. With my current interest in building polished plastic builds I decided to try to build alternative colored Beetles. There are actually 8 molded colors in total including one rare one from Japan. But more on that later.

The first one up was the Red Beetle. This was created by using the body parts from the quite rare Boss A bone version of this tooling. Don't worry collectors, i rescued a glue bomb to make this one. I combined it with real Blue Beetle parts to simulate a fictitious design proposal by Life cereal as a cross promotion between cereal and model kits, so I built alternate color versions of all 4 of the hot rod kits as if a marketing guy had run test shots of the tooling for a design proposal.

 

 

It took me awhile to get back to this project after a couple false starts. I wanted to do the Yellow Beetle next, using the molded in yellow version of the tooling from the 90's. For this one I used many parts from the Blue Bandito retooling done by Revell/Monogram in the late 2010's where they recreated a lot of the parts from the Blue Beetle, with the exception of the Cadillac valve covers, and for some reason slightly smaller bucket seats. Started this a few years ago and then it sat dormant for a couple years. I decided to try my hand at a real wood bed using wood strips from the railroad department of the hobby shop, and a Morgan Automotive Detail pre-wired magneto. Otherwise it is all polished plastic with paint detailing.

 

 

 

Not sure which one I will do next, but there's 6 more colors, and I have a unique idea planned for each version, while still remaining true to the Blue Beetle format. So stay tuned.

[Ragtop Man]

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the colors! The Monogram 'flatbox' series were long overlooked due to their scale and simplified assembly, but these really do justice to the subject. 

Wondering if anyone has reverse engineered a standard A pickup with parts from a stock version of the A (the Coupe/Cabrio come to mind) cos they are such elegant little subjects.

[Dragline]

Love a flat box. Great colors and builds.

[Phildaupho]

Very nice to see. I have to build one of these some day.

[Kah puts]

The way back machine is is working overtime 👍

[karbuildr]

Beautiful builds of a classic kit. Not ever having owned this kit, I had no idea it was molded in different colors.

[Mr. Metallic]

20 hours ago, karbuildr said:

Beautiful builds of a classic kit. Not ever having owned this kit, I had no idea it was molded in different colors.

Well, the actual Blue Beetle was only molded in 2 colors, a grey/blue and a bright blue. Then the tooling was changed to make the Tom Daniel designed Boss-A-Bone kit that was molded in red. Then the tooling was changed yet again in the 70's to make more of a street rod type. It's gone through minor revisions over the years until about 10 years ago when Revell retooled a bunch of the Blue Beetle parts and released it as the Blue Bandito.

[ford fan]

I'm myself very interested in model car kit history & that's interesting indeed !

[PappyD340]

Great looking pair!

[slusher]

Beautiful pair of blue beetles 🪲!  Love the different colors.   I finally found a sealed Revell-o-gram repop of the Blue Beetle from several years back…

[XYHARRY]

Really nice pair of hotrods there Craig, well done. 

[Cosmic D]

I remember building these when I was young and you've done such a nice job - you must have worked eight days a week (not to mention a hard days night) to finish them.

[Mr. Metallic]

23 hours ago, Cosmic D said:

I remember building these when I was young and you've done such a nice job - you must have worked eight days a week (not to mention a hard days night) to finish them.

I see what you did there 😆