1990 Contest annual - then and now

[Jantrix]

Some of the guys in my club earned themselves some recognition in the latest contest annual. Never mind which magazine put it out, for the sake of this discussion, it has no importance. I'm very proud of my compadres. They do fine work. But it reminded me of the year I had gotten my work in the annual. 1990. It seems like yesterday. I'd bought the magazine in mid 91' and it was the woman who would later become my wife (of 20 years now) who noticed that my build had been featured. A very cool day. So nostalgia being what it is..........I dragged that old magazine out and flipped through it. Wow. What a difference 21 years makes.

In the 1990 annual, pro-street was king. It's hard to find a page that doesn't have at least one. The AMT 66 Nova, Tim Burton Batmobile and the Revell Pontiac Banshee were the hot kits. Monochromatic paint was trending big time. I find much of it real ugly now. Weathered builds, which are certainly enjoying some time in the sun now, were pretty scarce in '91. The same for traditional hot rods and the only rats were big block Chevys. All car models sat on four wheels and the only high-riders were for swamp stomping. There were some names there that we are very familiar with today. Jairus Watson, Ken Hamilton, Ross Gibson (I assume it's the same guy) and Juha Airio.

One thing that really jumped out at me the most is the lack of aftermarket goodies. We really made do with what we had back then. Very little resin cast or machined parts. The cottage industry was just getting rolling then and really didn't go much farther then wires, hoses and air cleaners that I can recall. I know a lot of builders that would probably just fold up tents and find something else to do if there was no Pegasus wheels to give their ride that perfect look. Painting also seems to have improved by leaps and bounds thanks to Tamiya, Testors and Duplicolor lacquers. Although I admit I desperately miss those awesome Pactra colors.

But I must say, the most improved thing between now and then...........is the creativity and to a lesser degree, quality of the work. It seems to me that (judging by the work in the annual) there were fewer builders that understood that the shape of a model kit fresh out of the box is only really.... a suggestion. One possible end result. And the reason for this vast improvement?

This forum and others like it. In 1990 our only contact with other modelers was through local clubs and contests. By and large if you had a problem, you fixed it yourself (for better or worse) and if you needed a part.......yep you were buying another kit.

So in closing........nostalgia is a fine thing, but to quote the esteemed Mr. Billy Joel,

"The good ol days weren't always good, and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems."

Edited April 19, 2011 by Jantrix

[Custom Hearse]

I know what you mean... I remember the first contest I entered back in 1982, I had built a 6 wheel van made out of 2 A-Team vans. I hand painted it red white and blue, and surprisingly enough, it won first place. The paint was unpolished, a little bumpy in some spots, the engine had no detail to speak of, no brake and fuel lines(no brakes either... "Jane, stop this crazy thing!!!), the list goes on and on.

Now days, There's polishing kits made to shine that dull paint up, aluminum detailing parts for almost everything you can think of, resin trans kits, and the parts keep coming and coming.

The modeling world has vastly improved, and is now better than ever!

[Erik Smith]

The AMT 66 Nova, Tim Burton Batmobile and the Revell Pontiac Banshee were the hot kits. Monochromatic paint was trending big time. I find much of it real ugly now. Weathered builds, which are certainly enjoying some time in the sun now, were pretty scarce in '91.

(insert song lyric about time going by too fast here)

Man, is that 66 Nova kit that old? I tossed all my old magazines in a clutter buster some years ago - mistake. I remember the monochromatic schemes - they looked so cool then. I saw a real car done that "90s" style at a show last year and thought "okay, now that's ugly". Wasn't Pat Covert about the only one doing weathered builds back then? He had a whole theme of trucks. There were probably others but, as you said, nobody knew because the Internet was useless to commoners back then.

Thanks for the memories.

Oh, and if you don't feel old enough reading and remembering this, the babies born when that 1990 magazine came out are legal drinking age this year!

[Danno]

Dead on, Jantrix.

Nostalgia can be a scary thing ... when there's evidence!

But, it's always interesting. Thanks for spurring the trip down memory lane.

[DanielG]

Oh, you kids! By 1990 it had been 20 years since I last built a model car (I had gotten into aircraft and armour). I was looking at some old cut-outs from Scale Modeler the other day and those builds that looked so good then would not get into a magazine today.

[Art Anderson]

The times, they have changed, for sure! Just looking at the pics I took at NNL-East, of the show itself reminded me of the first model car events I participated in: Bell Auto Supply, a locally owned Mom & Pop auto supply store, downtown, on the courthouse square here in Lafayette. Their first contest, in 1959, had perhaps 300 entries (which would be about par today for a small club show away from the big cities), but by their contest in the spring of 1962, their contest drew well over a thousand model cars.

Difference? Well, for starters, in 1962, there were perhaps 50 or 60 model car kit subjects that had been done, not including the Revell 1/32 scale offerings from the 50's--today, how many possible kits (both in and out of production) can be called upon? THOUSANDS, literally thousands tooled up and produced over the past 50+ years. Aftermarket? Hmmm, some naugahyde upholstery kits (merely small squares of naugahyde, in a variety of colors), an engine wiring kit (we teenagers were just discovering Xacto knives, a pin vise was an exotic tool!), very little more than that. Paints? Well of course, Testors had their wonderful 75-color rack of those little 1/4 oz paints; but they hadn't hit on the PLA formula yet (PLA meant it had a plasticizer in it, which made it go tack free within an hour or so) meaning paints that dried to tacky in about 4 hours. Pactra 'Namel was very much where it was at--they'd started their line of Sof' Spray rattle cans, at the princely sum of 69-cents a can (3.5 oz), and only by the late summer of '61 did they introduce their wildly popular Candy Colors series (Candy Apple Red, Emerald Green, Tahitian Gold, and Emerald Blue (Candy Strawberry, Indian Turquoise, Aztec Copper would come in early '62). Pactra introduced a line of pearlescent paints in the fall of '62, but in bottles only. The price of those paints? Testors 1/4 oz retailed for a dime, the Pactra 1/2 oz bottles were 15-cents.

There was a sea-shift with the coming of plastic-compatible rattle cans, and most of the older guys (in their late teens or early 20's who had perfected the art of laying down perfect enamel paint jobs on model cars with wide flat brushes found themselves being shoved aside by fresh-faced kids who'd mastered spray cans--many of those older builders left the almost adolescent hobby, never to return (which was a big loss, when I look back at it).

Wiring a model car generally got done with common thread from Mom's sewing basket, a few modelers were discovering that carpet thread didn't have quite that fuzzy look of the cheaper thread Mom used to repair our school clothes with. Upholstery? Well, if you wanted rolled and pleated, there was corduroy, available in a range of colors, down at the fabric store--a huge remnant, enough to do dozens of model car interiors could be had for perhaps 50-cents. Just cut it out, glue it down. Add to that some braided trim from the fabric store, use some terry cloth or velvet for carpets and behold--custom interiors!

Putty? Uh well, most of us made do with the likes of Plastic Wood (or Pactra's alternate, their Plastic Balsa--very quick drying, but VERY porous!), or made our own from tube glue and talcum aka Johnson's Baby Powder (Squadron, Tamiya, and the various catalzed putties weren't even on our radar screens back then!). Styrene stock? Hah! Not unless you had the tonneau cover from one of the 3 or 4 pickup truck 3in1 kits, nope, not in the spring of 1962.

Moving fast forward to 2011--how fast, and how far the goalposts have moved. We teenagers of 1962 are now mostly in our 60's, older, moving slower, grayer (or should that read "white-er" of hair--if we indeed have much to show any color at all!), and still building models.

And, the personal contact side of this? 50 years ago, we kids only knew of school friends, kids in our immediate neighborhood who built models--never dreaming that someday we'd be chatting and posting about models all over the world--and with a couple of great magazines to help carry the torch.

Who'da thunk it, huh?

Art

[Jantrix]

Well said Art. Thanks for chiming in.

[rick6343]

I happen to also have a model in that very issue, and take it out now and then to look for ideas. My Junior class-winning model has a lot of flaws and isn't something I'd bring anywhere near a contest today. I like seeing the Pro-street cars, now-dated paint schemes, and the kits popular at the time that one doesn't see very often anymore.

[moparfarmer]

I remember winning a best paint award from the Hudson Bay Company model contest in Winnipeg in around 1962 or 63. I entered a 40 Ford

sedan painted Pactra N'amel and polished with Crest toothpast and Simonize floor wax. White pinwhale corduroy interior and flat white

painted under hood and fenders. Car was black. A friend of mine still has lots of my models from them. Won't sell them back or trade.

Says when he dies I can have them. Times have sure changed................

[Nick Notarangelo]

And also with the advent of the internet all the reference stuff on hand,plus a trove of pics of other peoples builds of the same subject so you can see how to make yours different.

About 20 years ago I was working in the local hobbyshop in my hometown and detail master was just a up and coming thing and using things like photoetch was something completely new or was just barely new.

Now look at your builds and think of what you do now you didn't do then, Even some of you guys who have things in all the mags and shows,from tips and tricks to new paints and glues.

And Art for me it wasn't thread is was fishing line.

[ra7c7er]

The times, they have changed, for sure! Just looking at the pics I took at NNL-East, of the show itself reminded me of the first model car events I participated in: Bell Auto Supply, a locally owned Mom & Pop auto supply store, downtown, on the courthouse square here in Lafayette. Their first contest, in 1959, had perhaps 300 entries (which would be about par today for a small club show away from the big cities), but by their contest in the spring of 1962, their contest drew well over a thousand model cars.

Difference? Well, for starters, in 1962, there were perhaps 50 or 60 model car kit subjects that had been done, not including the Revell 1/32 scale offerings from the 50's--today, how many possible kits (both in and out of production) can be called upon? THOUSANDS, literally thousands tooled up and produced over the past 50+ years. Aftermarket? Hmmm, some naugahyde upholstery kits (merely small squares of naugahyde, in a variety of colors), an engine wiring kit (we teenagers were just discovering Xacto knives, a pin vise was an exotic tool!), very little more than that. Paints? Well of course, Testors had their wonderful 75-color rack of those little 1/4 oz paints; but they hadn't hit on the PLA formula yet (PLA meant it had a plasticizer in it, which made it go tack free within an hour or so) meaning paints that dried to tacky in about 4 hours. Pactra 'Namel was very much where it was at--they'd started their line of Sof' Spray rattle cans, at the princely sum of 69-cents a can (3.5 oz), and only by the late summer of '61 did they introduce their wildly popular Candy Colors series (Candy Apple Red, Emerald Green, Tahitian Gold, and Emerald Blue (Candy Strawberry, Indian Turquoise, Aztec Copper would come in early '62). Pactra introduced a line of pearlescent paints in the fall of '62, but in bottles only. The price of those paints? Testors 1/4 oz retailed for a dime, the Pactra 1/2 oz bottles were 15-cents.

There was a sea-shift with the coming of plastic-compatible rattle cans, and most of the older guys (in their late teens or early 20's who had perfected the art of laying down perfect enamel paint jobs on model cars with wide flat brushes found themselves being shoved aside by fresh-faced kids who'd mastered spray cans--many of those older builders left the almost adolescent hobby, never to return (which was a big loss, when I look back at it).

Wiring a model car generally got done with common thread from Mom's sewing basket, a few modelers were discovering that carpet thread didn't have quite that fuzzy look of the cheaper thread Mom used to repair our school clothes with. Upholstery? Well, if you wanted rolled and pleated, there was corduroy, available in a range of colors, down at the fabric store--a huge remnant, enough to do dozens of model car interiors could be had for perhaps 50-cents. Just cut it out, glue it down. Add to that some braided trim from the fabric store, use some terry cloth or velvet for carpets and behold--custom interiors!

Putty? Uh well, most of us made do with the likes of Plastic Wood (or Pactra's alternate, their Plastic Balsa--very quick drying, but VERY porous!), or made our own from tube glue and talcum aka Johnson's Baby Powder (Squadron, Tamiya, and the various catalzed putties weren't even on our radar screens back then!). Styrene stock? Hah! Not unless you had the tonneau cover from one of the 3 or 4 pickup truck 3in1 kits, nope, not in the spring of 1962.

Moving fast forward to 2011--how fast, and how far the goalposts have moved. We teenagers of 1962 are now mostly in our 60's, older, moving slower, grayer (or should that read "white-er" of hair--if we indeed have much to show any color at all!), and still building models.

And, the personal contact side of this? 50 years ago, we kids only knew of school friends, kids in our immediate neighborhood who built models--never dreaming that someday we'd be chatting and posting about models all over the world--and with a couple of great magazines to help carry the torch.

Who'da thunk it, huh?

Art

Incredible story. From what I have heard in your story and from other older modelers around my area a lot has changed.

When did Testors first make PLA paint? I have a few old jars that I thought were from the early 60's but the testors bottles say PLA on them. Many of the older builders around here used Ross hobby paint I see those bottles a lot when I find boxes of old models at estate auctions. I have a bottle of Pactra namel Flat Insignia Blue that is still liquid and when I shake it it starts to mix. Best thing about it is the 15 cent price on the label.

Edited April 20, 2011 by ra7c7er

[styromaniac]

Art -

Pretty spot on rendition of what the hobby was like "back in the day"..when us baby boomers were taking our cues from the real life 1:1 customizers & drag racers we could only read about in a few publications found at the drugstore or maybe the library if you couldn't afford the subscription.

One thing we had going for us was the car craze was so widespread back then you could pick up kits just about anywhere...not just a hobby shop but five & dimes, hardware stores, you name it. Merchandizers everywhere were getting in on the act. The tough part was as you so eloquently described...the "tools of the trade". There just wasn't many ! Any of you old timers remember the AutoWorld Auto Cutter? ( aka Ungar Woodburner? ) About the only way to section bodies and chop tops. Like cutting butter...yeah.

I like to call those days in the early 60's "The Golden Age of Car Modeling"..due primarily to the widespread popularity of the hobby with the big nationwide contests sponsored by Revell/Pactra & then Revell/Testors.( pack up your model car in popcorn..not styrofoam mind you..it didn't exist! I mean real popcorn! But hold the butter please!)

I thought I'd revisit those "Golden Days" and I found & purchased a few old Car Model/ Car Model Science magazines and refreshed my memory. It occurs to me that while there may have been some wildly original ideas here & there and a few nice paint jobs..realistically ...90% of the builds back then were just plain ######. They don't hold up to today's standards...which given the plethora of kits, tools,and shared knowledge on the internet..might be called "The Platinum Age" of car modeling.

[DanielG]

I can remember cutting bodies apart with a paring knife heated over an alcohol burner. Then one of my buds came up with a razor-saw, what a marvel of technology!