Aurora Knights - How Many Colors?

I have the Gold knight on Horseback  the Red knight of Vienna and the Blue Knight of Milan  all made as a child of around 10  im now 62 in July

I also have the Apache Indian on the same horse mold as the Gold Knight .

treasured memories.   

Back when I was a 'younger' kid, I made all four of the individual knights. Over the years, I found them all again on Ebay. As a little 8-year old, I never appreciated the classic and beautiful artwork on the boxes that contained the models. They are all drawings and not photos. The innocence of the times reflected itself into these models. Quality work too! While I was in my collecting mode I also found an earlier 'Blue Knight of Milan'. It's complete name is "Blue Knight of Milan 1520". It's the same plastic model inside each of the boxes, but the artwork is different (also not a photo).  It's like comparing quality comic books from the golden age to the silver age. The older "1520" (Kit # K2-98) is truly a delight. Fun little fact: the Corporate continuity between each of the Blue Knight model(s) is off a little...the line drawings on the instruction sheets for each of the two 'Blue' knights has "1524" on the foot plaque of the base, even the "1520" older version. The older version of the 'Blue' Knights was made in West Hempstead, L.I.,N.Y. while my newer version has a label hand applied to the box that reads "Made in England".

Gear Head 6

.... In this case it proved positive since the Smer tools were often the only ones left for many classic kits after Aurora tools were lost in the apocryphal train wreck (?) after Revell bought the company out in the late seventies.

Actually, it's not apocryphal, it happened in upstate New York.  It was actually Monogram who bought the molds when Aurora closed in the early 70s; the company wanted to prevent anyone else from buying them and reissuing the kits.  Eliminate the competition, y'know.

The molds were loaded onto freight cars and shipped from Aurora's plant on Long Island to Monogram in Illinois.  As the train was passing through New York State, there was an accident and some of the cards derailed, spilling their contents.  As much of the freight as could be was recovered at the site, and loaded on a train again; at that point, some molds were already lost.  When the shipment finally reached Monogram's plant in Morton Grove, the freight was stored but unfortunately, a detailed inventory check wasn't carried out.  In the years immediately following, Monogram added some of the remaining Aurora kits to their catalog, but some of the damaged molds were written off and sold for their scrap value.

Graham describes in his book on Monogram that when the mold inventory was reviewed several years later, molds for some well-known Aurora kits could not be found.  Others still showed signs of damage (eg, caked-on mud, scratches and worse) from the derailment.

Regards,

Brad

...............According to the 1960 catalog on the Aurora website there were originally five Knights. A  Gold Knight on horseback (no location specified), The Black Knight of Nuremberg,  The Silver Knight of Augsburg,  The Blue Knight of Man and  The Red Knight of Vienna. Revell is releasing the Red and Black Knights................ Smer, a  Checkoslovakian manufacturer,  did good knock offs of many Aurora aircraft, ships and figure kits, including the knights, during the fifties sixties and later. U.S. copyrights weren't respected that much in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. In this case it proved positive since the Smer tools were often the only ones left for many classic kits after Aurora tools were lost in the apocryphal train wreck (?) after Revell bought the company out in the late seventies.

OK, I checked in Graham's "Aurora Model Kits", and confirmed, there were 5 produced, with a sixth planned but never produced.  Graham wrote:

"Aurora's first figure kit, the Silver Knight (K-1) made it into the 1956 catalog, and the Blue Knight (K-2) and Black Knight (K-3) appeared in the 1957 catalog.  Aurora added the Red Knight (K-4) and Gold Knight on horseback (K-5) in 1958 and 1959 respectively.  The Green Knight of Landschut (sic) made a shadowy appearance in the 1957 catalog as a "knight to come" but never evolved beyond the pattern stage."

I wish I had those kits again, to try to build them with more care.  They were pretty good, as I recall.

Hope that helps!

I have Thomas Graham's book on Aurora at home (I think he wrote this one-he wrote one each on Revell and Monogram, too).  I can check it tonight and post back.  I think there are 5 or 6.  I built the Black and Silver Knights when I was a kid.

HI ALL also guys the red and blue are going to be rereleased by revell this year i for one cant wait

Aurora had a couple of lines of knights. There were the ones you listed and they also had an Arthurian series. Some of these had chromed out armor for figure and horse. 

All total I think there were 61 figures sets produced by Aurora and these included the sci fi, fantasy, hollywood, and fanciful figures.