While growing up at Fort Gordon (Augusta) Georgia during the early 1970s, my parents bought me a Otaki C-5 for Christmas. This came after I had pestered them for a long time to get it for me. As I was only 4 years old at the time, my mother made it for me and it sat in storage in the States for nearly 5 years while my father was stationed in the Netherlands and Heidelberg, Germany. I kept this model until it wound up being broken during the early 1980s. By which time, I had built a second issue of this kit issued by Entex, which was also lost sometime during the 1980s. Jumping ahead, I purchased the Testors release of this kit during the early 90s, which my son wrecked as a toddler (in hindsight, I should have left it hanging from the ceiling). With the new Roden release of the C-5B/C-5M and my turning 50 this year, I have been thinking about buying what would be my fourth kit. I'm leaning more toward buying one of the older kits rather than the new kit.
My question is, does anyone really know why there never has been another release of the old Otaki kit? I have read about rumors of the molds being destroyed but I don't know how true that is. It was a really nice kit for its time, despite the annoying unrealistic front windscreen insert, but that could be easily rectified. If my memory has not yet gone, I recall it also had recessed panel lines-something not commonly seen during the earlly 70s.