A little bit curious about Revell H.M.S. Bounty 1:110 kits

I find this question extremely interesting.  I got pretty thoroughly familiar with the Revell Bounty some years ago, when I built this model from it:   http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyBounty/index.html .

To my knowledge Revell has only ever made one version of this ship.  It was originally released in 1956 or 1957 (I'm at the office, and my copy of Dr. Graham's book about the history of Revell is at home), and has been reissued so many times I can't pretend to have kept track of them; it's currently in the catalog of Revell Europe (though not the American company).  The Revell Europe online catalog says it's 372 mm (i.e., 37.2 cm) long.  This is the kit on which I based my model - and it does check out to be on 1/110 scale. 

One of the sources I used most frequently was a set of reproductions of the Admiralty draughts of the ship that were published in The Mariner's Mirror back in 1936.  Some of those reproductions were exactly the size of the Revell parts.  (Coincidence?) 

I've never heard of a smaller Revell Bounty kit.  Wojszwillo - is that 23 cm figure based on actual measurement, or is it perhaps taken from the box or the instructions?  Is it possible that one figure includes the bowsprit and the other doesn't?

I know the original, 1950s version of the kit has been slightly modified a few times for reissues.  I believe the very first issue had the quarter badges cast integrally with the hull halves (though every example I've seen has had them molded as separate pieces).  In the original version the "sockets" for mounting the yards were in the lowered positions; in a later version with "billowing sails," those sockets were moved so the yards could be raised.  And, of course, Revell perpetrated one of th bigger marketing scams in the history of the hobby when it sold a modified version of the same old Bounty kit with the label "H.M.S. Beagle."  (That one is also in the current Revell Europe catalog.  It really is an embarrassment to the hobby.  The real Beagle actually resembled the real Bounty only in having a hull, a deck, and three masts.)

If there's a second Revell Bounty out there, I'd be most interested to hear about it.  I confess, however, that I have no intention of ever actually building another one. 

Ok, i will make the photos tommorow - box, parts and instructions. At first look - kit looks very simply, with limited number of parts, but although good detail level for such small kit - for example figurehead is separate part. There is no doubt, that the kit was released by Revell.

I have at home and Revell's Beagle kit - the hull of Beagle is much bigger, than Revell's Bounty's kit i have - i will shot both Beagle and Bounty hulls together. The Beagle hull part doesn't fit to the Bounty's kit even horizontaly (larger part of box), when the Bounty's hull part fits to the box vertically.

It seems, that i have unique Revell's Bounty kit . Good thing for my collection.

Or simply Revell has repacked this kit? But why?

Well, I'll be extremely interested to see those pictures.  I checked Dr. Graham's book; the original release date of the original Revell Bounty was 1956; the kit number was H-327.  It was reissued three times during the period covered by the book:  in 1961 (with the kit number H-326 - yes, a lower number than the original), 1972 (as H-318), and 1978 (as H-338).

A couple of points need to be born in mind here.  First - Dr. Graham's coverage stops in 1979.  (I know for a fact that the kit has been released at least once since then in the U.S. - and probably more often than that.)  Second - the book's coverage is restricted to Revell of the U.S.A.  Manufacturing plants in other countries have issued kits under the Revell label that aren't covered by the book.  (I know of at least three:  Great Britain, Germany, and Brazil.)

I can think of one possible explanation for the origin of the smaller kit that Wojszwillo has.  Quite a few years ago (in the mid-1960s, I think) Lindberg released a small series of sailing ship kits that duplicated Revell subjects on smaller scales.  I haven't seen any of them in years, but I can remember buying a couple of them when they were new.  It was obvious that Lindberg had copied the Revell ones with a pantograph machine (or something similar), eliminating some of the small parts but otherwise reproducing the Revell ones with great accuracy on smaller scales - right down to the little plastic coils of rope lying on the decks of some of them.  I can remember three of them quite clearly:  H.M.S. Victory, the clipper Flying Cloud, and H.M.S. Bounty.  (I think there may have been a Santa Maria as well.) 

Our good Forum friend from Belgium, Michelvrtg, has a website on which he describes all the H.M.S. Victory kits he's been able to find, including that Lindberg one:  http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/LINDBERG_EN.htm .

Michel also illustrates two different Revell versions of the Victory (in six different boxes): http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/REVELL_EN.htm .

All but one of these are in fact reissues of the same kit (which appeared initially in the U.S. in 1959).  The people responsible for marketing it apparently have never been able to figure out what scale it's on, but Michel figures it's about 1/220.  (It's actually, for its size and age, an excellent kit; I'd probably rate it second behind the big Heller version in terms of accuracy.) 

Then there's a smaller kit, of which Michel says: "The origin of this model is unknown (made by another manufacturer, reboxed by Revell.)"

I have a suspicion (it's no more than that; I haven't seen this mysterious little Revell kit, and I last saw the Lindberg one about forty years ago) that the "pirated" Lindberg kit (actually a shrunken, pantographed version of the old 1/220 Revell one) somehow, by means of the intricate relationships between kit manufacturers, made it into a Revell box in Europe.  And now I'm wondering if the "pirated" Lindberg Bounty has done the same thing.

To my knowledge the only "Beagle" Revell has ever released - thank goodness - is the one that was based on the original, 1/110 Bounty.  If I'm right about the smaller Bounty being the old Lindberg one, that would explain why Wojszwillo's "Beagle" is so much bigger.

And if Wojszwillo does have a Lindberg kit reissued in a Revell box, I suspect it is indeed a rare kit.  I'm no expert in the kit collecting market, but it seems like it ought to be worth a fair amount of money.

As I said, I'll be very interested to see those pictures.

jtilley wrote:

know the original, 1950s version of the kit has been slightly modified a few times for reissues.  I believe the very first issue had the quarter badges cast integrally with the hull halves (though every example I've seen has had them molded as separate pieces).

jtilley, 

You are correct that the earliest version had integral quarter badges. The change was probably made as part of the Beagle conversion.

Here is the photos, as promised.

Photos with two decks and two huls - comparision between Bounty from this kit and "usual" Revell's Beagle parts.

P.S.

There are ratlines moulded in black too - have did'nt take the picture.

Planking of hull and deck is reproduced very well on this small Bounty kit, but this is not shown correct in the photos - good as and in bigger so called "Beagle" kit (actually i have bought "Beagle" kit before i read Your recomendations about plastic kits on this forum...).

Earlear i have made mistake with photos posting at this forum.

At the moment i have correct the mistake, please look at the pictures in full view.

Wow.

I've never seen this kit before.  It clearly does have some relationship with the original, 1957 Revell kit (the one that really is on 1/110 scale).  But there are some interesting differences as well.

The most reliable way to establish that two kits have a common ancestry is to look for mistakes and odd features - the sorts of things that two kit designers working independently would be unlikely to do.  There are plenty of examples to be seen here.  The little kit and the original, 1957 one have some inaccurate features in common.  The pinrails molded integrally with the hull halves - the ones opposite the foremast - are spurious; they don't appear on the Admiralty draughts.  But both kit have them.  The strange interpretation of the gunports - raised square "panels" with round holes in their middles - have nothing to do with reality, but both kits have them.  The designers of the original Revell kit messed up the subtle shape of the knee of the head, and that mistake is duplicated in the little kit.

Some other features, though not necessarily inaccurate, certainly suggest common ancestry.  The little capstan bars bundled upd on the quarterdeck, for instance - just like they are in the bigger kit. 

Conclusion:  the small kit is closely based on the larger, 1957 one.  But there are also some interesting differences between them.

The most obvious is that the smaller one has been simplified considerably.  The decorative rails at the bow (which actually aren't well represented in the original kit) are molded integrally with the hull halves.  Some of the deck fittings and other details (including the wheel ropes, which the original kit told the modeler to make from thread) are molded integrally with the deck.  The carriage guns are molded in one piece, rather than with separate carriages.  (The one-piece ones look remarkably like the lower deck guns of the Lindberg Wappen von Hamburg. Coincidence?)  The catheads are molded integrally with the deck; the launch consists of one piece rather than two.  The figurehead bears no resemblance to the beautiful casting in the original kit.  And of course the spars and other rigging components (e.g., the channels and the deadeyes for the shrouds) are greatly simplified.

One of the most interesting contrasts between the small and large Bounty kits, though, concerns the way the deck is represented.  I can't pretend to be absolutely certain on this point (I threw the plastic deck away shortly after I started my model), but I'm almost sure the deck planks in the original kit are represented just like the hull planks are - i.e., with raised lines between the planks but no attempt to represent wood grain.  But the deck planks in the little kit certainly look like they have "wood grain" engraved in them - and actually done pretty well.  In that sense the little kit can claim to have more detail than the larger one.

I can't say for certain that this is the old Lindberg kit, but I think it may be.  It certainly matches my vague memory of that kit's size, and the level of detail and complexity is about what I recall in the Lindberg Victory and Flying Cloud (which I did buy when they were new).  Be warned, however:  we're talking here about vague, 40-year-old memories in a 58-year-old brain. 

That the kit is labeled as being on 1/110 scale is, I'm afraid, just one more instance of people responsible for writing the words that go on kit boxes being almost totally ignorant of what's inside those boxes.  It happens far too often - and, I'm afraid, more frequently in sailing ship kits than elsewhere.  It's interesting that the box has the copyright date of 1985, and specifically refers to Revell's American street address - but says the contents were made in West Germany.

Fascinating stuff.  I'm sure many of us are grateful to Wojszwillo for posting it - and for taking so much time and trouble over the photographs.

Thank You for answer.

OK, so we have a Revell's number here (5424-0389) and i will now recalculate a real scale of this model. Of course, if lenght of hull from so called "Beagle" kit is the same as and from 1:110 Bounty kit.

And I am happy now, that have a unique Revell's Bounty 1:? kit :-)

Hello all,

the small Revell Bounty kit is indeed a reboxed Lindberg kit,
but originally it was mad by PYRO ! The kit came from the series
of small sailing ships which PYRO launched around 1967.
The LINDBERG Ark Royal, Santa Maria, Victory and Cutty Sark
also belong to this series. Most of them (if not all) have plastic sails,
like the bigger PYRO ships too.

Around 1984/1985 Revell of Germany offered some of the Lindberg kits,
beside a few german airplanes of WW II also the sailing ships.
In larger scale they were Wappen von Hamburg /aka Captain Kidds Pirate ship,
Gouda Dutch man o war and Sovereign of the Seas. The last two orginated
from PYRO, with plastic sails. I was told by a Revell emlpoyee that Lindberg had
shipped the molds to Germany. In the Wappen von Hamburg/Captain Kidd kit,
even the Lindberg Logo on the inside from the hull half, was destroyed,
but still visible.

From the small ships series Revell offered the Bounty, Santa Maria, Victory
and the British Bomb ketch, all from Pyro molds which were sold to Lindberg
in the late 1970s. Maybe some more, I have to dig out my 1985 Revell catalog....

Hope this helps.  Greetings to all,

Axel Wolters
Moenchengladbach, Germany    
  

Woxel, do you have one of those old Pyro Bounty kits?  I'd be interested in a side-by-side comparison between that one and the one Wojszwillo has introduced to us.  I'm not in a position to say anything authoritative about the subject, but I don't think they're the same kit.

The Pyro "dollar series" sailing ship kits (that's how I came to think of them, at least) were, as you've pointed out, pretty numerous, and all the ones I've seen were designed to a very similar standard.  (I imagine they were the work of the same designer - or of a small group of designers.)  All the kits in the Pyro (later LifeLike) "dollar series" that I ever saw had, as you mentioned, injection-molded sails molded integrally with the yards.  In that respect, as in just about every other feature of its rigging, that little Lindberg/Revell kit gives every sign of having sprung from a different source.  And all the Pyro "dollar series" kits I've ever seen have taken, shall we say, and extremely casual approach to historical accuracy in general.  Such things as deck and hull planks tended to be rendered far out of scale, the imitation wood grain was pretty gross, and some of the hulls were pretty severely distorted. 

That little Lindberg/Revell Bounty, on the other hand, is, making allowances for the simplifications related to its small scale, a really nice scale model of the real ship.  The Lindberg kits we've been discussing quite clearly had their origins in the bigger Revell ones.  (I remember particularly the Flying Cloud, which retained almost all the detail of the Revell one - down to the aforementioned coils of rope on the decks and the roof of the main deckhouse.)  Wojszwillo's photos leave no room for doubt:  the little Lindberg/Revell Bounty was copied (probably with the help of a pantograph machine) from the larger Revell kit.  (In addition to the points I mentioned earlier, notice the jackstays cast integrally with the yards.  The jackstay hadn't been invented in the Bounty's day; the ones in the Revell kit constitute a mistake.  And that mistake is reproduced in the little Lindberg/Revell kit.) 

In any discussion like this we need to bear in mind that kits go through all sorts of different perambulations on opposite sides of the Atlantic.  Dr. Graham's fine book about Revell only covers the American face of the company.  I suspect the sailing ship kits issued by Revell Germany and Revell UK number in the dozens - and I know they've actually originated with at least four different companies:  Lindberg, Heller, Imai, and Aurora.  I don't think I've ever seen an old Pyro kit in a Revell box here in the U.S., but I have no trouble believing that it's happened in Europe. 

I know several of the old Pyro "dollar series" kits have appeared in the USA, fairly recently, in Lindberg boxes.  But I don't think Wojszwillo's Bounty is one of them.  I think the Pyro "dollar series" Bounty was a different kit (though of about the same size).  I am, however, more than willling to be corrected.  Does anybody out there have a Pyro (or Lifelike) Bounty?

Trivial stuff, in the grand scheme of the universe, but fascinating nonetheless.

Sorry for my late answer. I still am searching that modelkit. I am pretty sure
that I have it in my collection, but where....?

As I didnt find any other small ships in that size, I guess, that amybe Lindberg
has issued the Bounty kit as an addition to the Pyro series. Only an idea.
On the other side it seems that Lindberg didnt reissue all kits of this series,
because I never saw a Swedish Gotta le Jon or a Dutch Staten Yacht from
another manufacturer than Pyro. As I have still gaps in my catalogue collection,
maybe these models reappeared just in this period ?

Anyway, I hope to find my Bounty following weekend. I will be back then.

Axel   

Well, my theory (and that's all it is - a theory) is that Pyro issued its "dollar series" (please forgive me for thinking of it that way) Bounty, and Linberg issued its "miniaturized Revell" Bounty, some years before Lindberg acquired the old Pyro molds.  I don't have any evidence to support that theory other than my own, extremely unreliable and slightly senile memory.  I think the small series of shrunken, modified Revell kits with the Lindberg label on them (Victory, Santa Maria, Flying Cloud, and Bounty) appeared a little before the Pyro "dollar series."  But I'm not certain of that by any means.

Anybody out there have a Pyro Bounty?

What a surprise,

exactly in the right moment I found this link:

www.goantiques.com/detail,60s-unassembled-pyro,238657.html

The model is for sale and pictures clearly show box and content.
What I see, that the model has injection molded sails.
I will compare my Revell and Lindberg Bounty at the weekend.

Hope this shows the differences or common parts.

Greetings to all,

Axel

At the first look in the photos PYRO Bounty parts looks very similar (in shape and in quantity of parts, but i can't see, how detailed are these parts) to Revell's small scale Bounty I own - all, except sails.

Please, compare my photos and photos from the link with PYRO Bounty kit.

It looks to me like they're two different kits - though the Pyro designers apparently took a careful look at the old Revell one.

Differences (in addition to the sails):

The details on the forward part of the rails, on the hull halves.

The figurehead (a separate piece in the Lindberg/Revell kit; cast integrally with the Pyro hull halves). 

The shapes of the tops.

The shape of the stand.

The details on the forward part of the deck.

The handling of the fore, main, and mizzen channels.  (In the Lindberg/Revell kit they're separate pieces, with pins plugging into holes in the hull halves.  I can't see any indication of them on the hull halves of the Pyro kit; I suspect the injection-molded "shrouds and ratlines" have some vague representation of the channels molded integrally with them.)

The overall parts count (I haven't actually tried to count them in the pictures, but it certainly looks like the Lindberg/Revell one has a few more).

I wish I could make out the individual deck planks in the photos of the Pyro kit.  It doesn't look like they have the fine "wood grain" detail that the Lindberg/Revell one does, but I can't be sure.

The Pyro kit is completely consistent with what I remember of the old Pyro "dollar series":  injection-molded sails (cast integrally with the yards), minimal parts count, minimal detail (much of it over-scale), and that odd, "marbled" brown plastic.  I have the impression that those kits were aimed primarily at young modelers - and they probably served their purpose well.  The hours and dollars spent building up a collection of those kits would be a great way for a youngster to get introduced to maritime history.

As a basis for a serious scale model, though, the Lindberg/Revell version wins by a considerable margin.  It has its problems (most of them inherited from the larger Revell kit), but the basic shapes certainly seem to be right, and the level of detail ranges from marginal to excellent.  That little kit could be turned into a nice model - though I don't think I'd want to take on the job of rigging it to scale.

In addition to the general awfulness of the Pyro "sails," incidentally, there are too many of them.  Pyro seems to have given her royals on all three masts.  When the Bounty left Portsmouth on her first (and only) voyage as a vessel of the Royal Navy she had no royals.  She did have studding sails, but, according to Lt. Bligh's own account, he "cut them and made a royal out of the canvas."  On my model I put the one royal on the mainmast, which seemed the logical place for it.  (I suspect Pyro's sail plan was inspired by the full-sized replica that was built for the 1959 movie.)

The photos from the antique dealer aren't quite sharp enough (at least on my monitor) for me to be absolutely certain, but it certainly looks to me like the Pyro and LindbergRevell kits came from different molds.

I am lucky that my discovery put a little more light in this mistery.
Referring to the "brown marbled plastic" I can say, that I have a Cutty
Sark from Pyro in greyish/greenish marbled plastic, while my other
kits from this series are in white plastic. Maybe I find my Pyro Bounty
at the weekend.

Axel 

Wojszwillo - If you actually have both kits, you can answer the big question.  Do they share any identical parts?  Are they the same size?

This has turned into a really interesting discussion of a strange, mainly forgotten aspect of ship modeling.  In the grand scheme of the universe it's trivial, but it its own way it's quite fascinating.

No, sorry for my bad english.

I have only "small" Revell Bounty kit (the same kit, about was my question, and which pictures i have posted to the forum) and I doesn't have PYRO Bounty kit.

I will compare number of parts of my "small" Revell Bounty kit with number of parts of PYRO Bounty kit from pictures from the link that gave Woxel59.

I also didnt find a PYRO Bounty kit in my collection,
maybe I even dont have one, I was sure I hade it....

But I discovered two other kits from the same Revell / ex-Lindberg Series
from around 1985: A Victory and a Santa Maria. Both dont have injection molded
sails, so it looks that they also DONT come from Pyro.
These were very famous ships, so many plastic kit manufacturers
probably thought that these models were a MUST for their kit-range.

I will go on digging in my old kit boxes, mabye I will find the PYRO 1 Dollar kits.

Axel