The story of Revell and the Missouri is kind of interesting.
My memory about such things is extremely unreliable; I'm relying here almost entirely on Dr. Thomas Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.
The story of the company's founding is kind of complicated. It issued the first product under the Revell name - a lady's compact - during World War II. The first model kits to appear with the name "Revell" on them actually originated with another firm, Gowland: a series of antique cars (the "Highway Pioneers") and a group of tiny sailing ships in bottles. The cars, in particular, were a big hit, and made considerable profits for the company. The management decided, after considerable debate, to start developing scale model kits of its own design.
At this particular time (the early fifties), American warships of World War II were popular subjects in the public eye. The year 1952 saw the debut of the TV series "Victory at Sea," which everybody who had a TV set watched. Several small hobby companies (including the newly-formed Monogram) were selling balsa wood warship kits; the more sophisticated ones offered cast lead-alloy parts. The Navy was selling simplified sets of "official" plans to people who wanted to work from scratch, a few books about warship modeling were on the market, and the firms that had made the thousands of "recognition models" for the navy during the war were now selling them to the general public (sometimes finished, sometimes in kit form). The guys running Revell figured the time was right to try out the concept of the plastic warship kit.
There's some room for argument about just what was the first plastic warship model. A few years ago FSM carried an article about the Gato-class submarine kit that was initially released by a model railroad company called Varney in, if I remember right, 1948 or 1949 (and, in a slightly modified form, is still being sold under the Lindberg label). I think Lindberg's grand old Essex-class carrier was at least in the planning stages when Revell was working out the details of its new warship line. (I wish Dr. Graham would give us a book about Lindberg, to go along with his works on Aurora, Revell, and Monogram.)
At any rate, though, the very first Revell kit (ship or otherwise) designed and produced in-house was the Missouri. It was originally issued with the kit number H-301 in the summer of 1953. Partly because of skilled marketing, it was an instant hit with the public. (From the management's standpoint, it had to be. Revell consisted at that time of about half a dozen guys, who had invested all the money they had in the project. If the Missouri didn't sell, they'd go bankrupt.)
The designers ran into a big problem when they discovered that the U.S. armed forces had no interest in helping them. (Sculptor Dave Bulone is quoted in Dr. Graham's book as remembering that "the military wouldn't give us the time of day.") The kit was designed entirely on the basis of published photographs and the tiny drawings in books like Jane's Fighting Ships. The underwater hull lines of just about all commissioned American warships were still classified, so the designers invented a simple, flat-bottomed, boxlike underwater shape for the Missouri and hoped for the best. The purchasers apparently didn't mind (or notice).
Over the next couple of years the Revell ship line expanded into a small fleet. Another subject much on the public mind was the brand new, super-high-tech, nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus. Three model companies, Aurora, Lindberg, and Revell, got into a race to get the first Nautilus kit on the hobby shop shelves - without having any idea of what the real thing looked like. The Revell Nautilus hit the market later in 1953. In the following year came a PT boat, a Fletcher-class destroyer, a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser, and the flagship of the fleet, a Midway-class carrier (complete with air group). From then on throughout the fifties, modelers could figure on getting a new Revell ship every few months.
In 1955 the company figured out a marketing tactic that it later used repeatedly (and sometimes more than a little deceptively): the reissuing of a ship kit under the name of another member of the same class. The Revell U.S.S. New Jersey was, of course, a slightly modified version of the Missouri kit. As the New Jersey it was given a pair of helicopters, rather than the floatplanes and catapults of the Missouri. And, for some strange reason, the New Jersey came with instructions for painting it in an elaborate dazzle pattern - similar to the one that the Missouri had worn during her trials. (The Missouri, of course, lost that scheme before she sailed for the Pacific - and no other battleship ever wore it. And the New Jersey didn't get helicopters until after the war, when all dazzle schemes disappeared. Oh, well...in 1955 purchasers of plastic kits didn't worry about such things.)
The old battleship kit eventually was released with the names of all four members of the class (Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin) at least once. Dr. Graham's book lists and dates all the reissues prior to 1980, when his coverage (at least in the "revised and expanded second edition" I have) stops. He says it "may be Revell's all-time best-seller."
To my knowledge the kit has only undergone three changes during its 56-year career. In addition to the swapping of catapults for helicopters (some reissues included one option; some the other), Revell issued a version with an electric motor and provisions for batteries, etc. in 1954. And a 1961 reissue under the Missouri name added a 1"-diameter reproduction of the plaque that's mounted in the ship's deck on the spot where the Japanese surrender was signed. [Later edit: I just took a look at the instructions for the current version; they're available online via the Revell Europe website. They show one more change. In the original kit and the first several reissues (the ones I built when I was a kid), the modeler was told to flatten the mounting pins of the 16" turrets and the aircraft crane with a heated knife or screwdriver. (I still remember the smell of burning plastic in the kitchen.) The "new" kit contains plastic retaining discs for that purpose. I don't know when those were added.]
Otherwise it's the same old, 1953 kit. Revell has promoted it as a "new" product so many times I'm not sure anybody could count them (especially if the reissues in foreign countries are included). As a scale model it is, by the objective standards of 2009, pretty awful. But it's easy to understand why so many modelers (especially Olde Phuddes like me) retains so much nostalgic affection for it.
Since 1979 (when Dr. Graham's coverage stops) the Revell label has appeared on at least two other Iowa-class battleship kits. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think the 1/350 version was originally produced by Otaki; Revell issued it (I think) in two guises - in WWII configuration as the Missouri and in more-or-less updated Vietnam-era configuration as the New Jersey. (My senile brain may be at work here; I'd be interested to hear other folks's recollections on that point.) And Revell briefly, sometime in the eighties, offered a 1/720 Missouri as part of its "constant scale" line. I never got around to buying that one, but I suspect it was a great deal more accurate than the poor old 1/535 fossil.
Revell, of course, eventually got access to the molds created by Aurora and Monogram. Aurora did an Iowa-class battleship in 1/600 scale (lots of warship modelers forget that Aurora was one of the pioneers in the "constant scale" concept) in the early fifties; it was, if memory serves, of about the same quality as the old Revell one. And Monogram made a brief foray into plastic warships during the seventies - including an Iowa-class battleship. I don't think I ever bought that one either, but I suspect it was more accurate than the old Revell one - if for no other reason than that, by that time, accurate plans of the real ship were widely available.
Assuming all those old molds exist (maybe some of them don't), Revell has plenty of options if it wants to issue a model of an Iowa-class battleship. But it continues to crank out re-releases of that old stalwart from 1953. (I think the company was promoting it as a "new" kit, in a new box, just a few months ago.) One wonders whether the current management of Revell understands what a low-quality product it is by modern standards. Or maybe, just maybe, the nostalgia factor is at work. If I were thinking about building a model of an Iowa-class battleship, or picking out one to give my grandson for his birthday, I have to say the Revell version would be the very last one I'd consider buying. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine the American plastic kit industry without it.