Glencoe's Corsair

http://secured.titanichistoricalsociety.org/shop/tek9.asp?pg=products&specific=jqhopoj8

 

review here

I'm pretty sure it's a reissue of a 1950s-vintage kit from ITC.  Virtually all of Glencoe's ship kits have ITC ancestry.

ITC (Ideal Toy Corporation) was a remarkably adventurous company - more progressive in its subject matter than the vast majority of plastic ship firms of today.  Its line included a Spanish-American War battleship, a WWI subchaser, the yacht Atlantic, a Coast Guard surfboat, and several others that the competition wouldn't have touched.  The ITC airplane kit line was similarly unusual for its time.  I suspect sales of those kits were less than spectacular.  That probably explains why Ideal got out of the scale model business after only a few years.

The last time I saw that Corsair kit was when a friend of the family was working on one in about 1957, and I remember nothing about it.  My guess, though, is that it's a typical ITC/Glencoe product:  a basically sound, not especially elaborate kit that, with considerable work and perhaps the addition of some aftermarket and/or scratchbuilt parts, would be an eminently respectable basis for a serious scale model.  To my knowledge no other company makes anything of the sort.  And nowadays $25.00 isn't a lot to pay for a decent ship kit. 

I have one of the original ITC kits I bought many years ago at a swap meet. I picked it up because I've always wanted to build a model of a yacht like the Corsair; they were so cool looking!  Unfortunetly during a move five years ago, my model went "On the rocks" I saved everything in hopes of  restoring her, and was overjoyed when I discovered the Glencoe kit, as this meant I could do a complete rebuild, correcting mistakes I made on the original model, and detailing her better now my skills have improved. One thing I noticed between the two kits is on the glencoe one, there is a big hole in the skylight that goes atop the main cabin just astern of the stack!  Someone told me that Ideal got their moneys worth out of the ITC molds by later using them to make motorised toys or motorised kits, and that hole was for the on/off switch. I've seen this on their other ship kits, and in fact had a toy USS United States as a kid. Of course this does not bode well if you plan to build a static model. In my case I can just salvage the unmarred skylight from my "wreck", but for the rest of you, you'll either have to find an aftermarket part, or make your own. I am considering doing resin recasts of the part if enough interest warrented it, and if I did would apreciate pointers on the best stuff to use to make the mold, and the best resin to use.

Another thing about the Glencoe kit is that they've eliminated the anchors!  According to a slip of paper in the box, according to "experts" these anchors were fictitious and thus they chose not to include them. (Okay guys, then explain what those things hanging off the bow in period photos are supposed to be?)   In this case you could probably find a scale aftermarket anchor that looks better then what the ones in the ITC kit did. In anycase, I'm excited to see this kit again, and can't wait to get her on the "Assembly Dock".

There's another review, with photographs of the parts and sprues, here - http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/glen/kit_glen_corsair2.shtml

I've bought this kit in order to convert it to the Spanish-American War gunboat USS Gloucester. The modifications were minimal - little more than the addition of armament - so it should be a fairly straightforward project.

Having finally received the kit in the mail, I'm actually quite impressed - it's a lot better than I expected a kit from a 50-year-old moulding to be. Apart from the omnipresent flash and mould lines, the parts are quite nicely detailed and all of the deck fittings + components appear to be represented. It looks to me like you could build a very good model of the Corsair II out of the box without much more than (a lot of) cleanup work and the addition of rigging, glazing, etc. (unlike, for example, the Glencoe/ITC Oregon which needs a lot of extra detailing)

As I'm intending to convert it to the USS Gloucester, which will require a fair bit more work, I won't be building it for some time, as I have a lot of other projects either under construction.

A couple of questions I have:
- What was the colour of the USS Gloucester's hull? The colour in the photos looks like a medium-to-dark grey to me.
- The kit includes a pair of what appear to be old-fashioned muzzle-loading cannon, mounted on wheeled carriages - I assume these are signalling guns?

Interesting what a google search brings up. I just picked this kit up for about the costs described above, ten years ago. I'm pretty interested in building her.

I have the exact same kit I won at IMPS Nationals 10 years ago.  It looks like a simple kit with interesting lines.  It might be fun to paint with oils.  I have been saving it for when I want to build something quick.

I did this kit many years ago, an original ITC example, and found it very disappointing. The parts fitted poorly, especially the hull and deck, and the whole thing looks too toy like for my taste. I've got a Glencoe example which I have not yet built, perhaps it will be better.