Hello.....
I subscribed to the FineScale Modeler forum because I'm always asking the magazine staff questions pertaining to the vintage plastic models that I remeber from my youth - I'm 56 - by Revell, Aurora, Monogram, etc. Remeber the IMC U.S.S. Halibut? My high school neighbor had one that he would sail at the high school pool. Cool model. He used it to meet girls.
Remember local mom and pop hobby stores where you could buy these kits including Testors paint, X-Acto tools, etc.? I do. I remember building and displaying every one of the Monogram 1/48th scale airplanes including all the options that came with some of these kits, e.g. the Hurricane, Mosquito, P-38, etc., and watched this Company's transition from models with average detail and lots of working features to better detailing and no working features.
I also built a Revell Cutty Sark clipper substituting metal parts for many of the plastic fittings, e.g., davits, pulleys, belaying pins, etc., for the better detail. I spent a "fortune" on this model. Visiting this ship on display at Greenwich, England brought back memories of this model. That was the last plastic model that I ever constructed. (I have on my shelf a wood kit that my girlfriend bought for me but have as yet started assembling - fear!)
Never got into scratch building. All my plastic models were destroyed in a move between homes when my dad's pick-up was struck by a drunk driver, flipping the vehicle, and catching fire. My dad walked away but everything else was a total loss.
Always wanted to build the Nichimo Yamato following some of the modelers' examples on the web complete with all the details but never found the time. Plastic models were replaced by HO-Scale Model Railroading (Union Pacific Railroad) and that, in turn, was replaced by photography and collecting vinyl records.
I have already asked this question of the magazine staff but I'll ask it here again. Back in the Revell catalog of the early 1960's, there was advertised an Army missile carrier, relatively large, with a Redstone or Corporal missile on a retractable launch ramp. The driver sat in an enclosed cab off to one side of the missile. There was an assembled model displayed in the local hobby store and I think that it retailed for the thn unheard of price of $4.98 when most everything else reatiled for a $1.98. (That Cutty Sark model retailed for $29.98, a king's ransom in those days.) The Redstone, Corporal, and Honest John missile models by Revell that I have reviewed pictures of including box art on the web do not match what I'm speaking of here.
Any help will be appreciated.
Respectfully,
Marion Pavan