Any review, info, experience with Pyro's Ark Royal kit?

I think I bought one when it was new, or nearly so, for about $2.00.  I don't remember much about it; I don't think I ever got around to building it. 

As I recall it was part of a series of extremely simplified kits that clearly were intended for the kids' pocket money market.  It had only a handful of parts - and, as nfafan noted, injection-molded "sails" cast integrally with the yards.  I seem to recall that it also featured rather bizarre interpretations of the turret-like structures that show up in some contemporary engravings of Elizabethan galleons.  I don't think Pyro's rendition of them would stand up to modern scholarship.

I'd be inclined to regard the kit as an interesting relic of a bygone era in the history of the hobby, but hard to take seriously as the basis for a scale model.  My Halfzeimer's-afflicted memory may, however, be faulty.  Take all this with a large grain of salt.

To my knowledge there's only been one reasonably believable representation of an Elizabethan galleon in plastic:  the old Airfix Revenge.  (The Revell Golden Hind and Mayflower were excellent kits, but too small to meet the definition of the word "galleon.")  It was about 18" long, appeared in the mid-seventies (I think), and has been off the market for a long time.  It couldn't have been labeled highly-detailed, but the basic shapes conformed to those illustrated in the Matthew Baker Manuscript, our best guide to what the ships that defeated the Spanish Armada looked like.  For anybody with a particular interest in ships of that period, that kit would be worth tracking down.

I have the Lifelike Revenge and its small like the Pyro Ark Royal. Is the Airfix Revenge a lot larger and from different molds? Thanks, Paul

Publius

I have the Lifelike Revenge and its small like the Pyro Ark Royal. Is the Airfix Revenge a lot larger and from different molds? Thanks, Paul

Oh, yes!  The Airfix kit, as I remember it, is about 18" long.  It was originally released, as I recall, in the late 1960s, and for that era it was an excellent kit.  I think it was about the fourth or fifth in the Airfix "Classic Ships" series (the other early ones being the Endeavor, Sovereign of the Seas, Discovery, and Great Western.  I'm pretty sure the Endeavour was the first one; I'm not sure of the sequence after that.)

By modern standards the Airfix Revenge looks pretty basic, with relatively few parts.  But inless my memory is even more shaky than I think it is, the basis for a serious scale model is there.  One modification that I'd certainly consider if I were building it concerns the guns on the lower deck.  Like all other Airfix sailing warship kits, this one provides "dummy" gun barrels that plug into holes in the sides of the hull.  In this particular case, there aren't many guns on the lower deck (I don't remember exactly how many); cutting out the gunports and installing full-length guns (from the aftermarket or the spares box) wouldn't be a huge undertaking.  For that matter, cementing all the portlids shut wouldn't hurt the look of the ship much.

Caveat:  Airfix made two versions of the Revenge.  The one I'm talking about is the big one.  The company also, quite early in its existence, made a tiny Revenge that was, if memory serves, about 5" long.  It was a part of a series that included tiny versions of the Victory, Shannon, Golden Hind, Mayflower, and maybe a couple of others.  They originally were sold in plastic bags with paper headers, and hung on racks in the stores alongside the Airfix 1/72 aircraft kits.  I frankly wouldn't bother with that kit.  But the big Revenge certainly could, with some work, be turned into a first-rate model.