Aside from the very simple Constitution, Mayflower, Santa Maria and Barbary Pirate Ship that first appeared in 1952 with dowel masts and paper sails-that were later upgreded to vac forms, Pyro Plastics did in fact base their larger sailing ships on the wooden kits by Model Shipways of Bogota, NJ. First appearing in 1955 these were large well detailed models. They were re-issued many times by Pyro up until the early 1970s when Life-Like purchased the molds. Lindberg began re-issuing them in appx 1979.
In the late 60s, Pyro introduced more historic ships like the Dutch Gouda, the French St. Louis, the British Sovereign of the Seas, and the Portugese Santa Catarina Do Monte Sinai, a heavily armed carrack type ship of the early 16th. Century.
With the exception of the hard plastic sails with the molded on yards ant the grossly overscale injected molded ratlinesand shrouds, these were excellent, well detailed models that can still hold up today. The box notes from the St. Louis even capture B. Landstrom`s description from his excellent work,"The Ship"
The smaller English Galleons-The Great Harry, The Ark Royal and the Revenge were also not too bad-except for the Ark Royal that features a grossly out of scale underwater part ot its hull-and , error of errors-a steering wheel on the poop deck, a feature that did not appear on real ships until the end of the 17th. century, some 90 years after the Spanish Armada.
The small scale Dutch Staaten Yacht is a masterpiece. . I`m surprised that this little gem was never re issued. Even though it says it dates from the 1660s and has the wheel, this is not a major issue since the basic design of these boats remained the same for the next 100 years.
These are all nice models. Should you build one, eschew the sails, make some decent yards and use the Heller loom to do the ratlines and shrouds. This will greatly improve the appearence of the finished models.
In retrospect, Pyro deserves credit for releasing these kitsWether they were designed to be "mass market" or appeal to the serious ship modeler does not matter. They are always being re-released or you can snag one on E Bay for a good price.