About Lindberg HMS Victory model kit(s)

Michel, your determination to muddle an already marginally senile brain is downright sadistic.  Two days ago I was ten minutes late to class because I couldn't remember where I'd put my glasses or my car keys.  Yesterday I embarrassed myself in front of several students by showing up for class half an hour early, because I thought it started at 10:30 instead of 11:00.  My students and colleagues are starting to wonder.  And it's all your fault.  With all these 30-year-old, highly faulty recollections of H.M.S. Victory kits bouncing around inside my beleaguered skull, how can I possibly function?

Those Revell and Entex skirmishes left me extremely uncertain about my memories of the Lindberg kit that I bought, lo those many years ago.  As I said earlier, I'm no longer at all certain about the comments I wrote a month or two ago, to the effect that the Lindberg version was missing the lower row of stern windows.  I think the culprit was probably the Entex kit - about which I'd forgotten. 

My recollection (for what little it's worth) is that the Lindberg Flying Cloud, Bounty, and Victory all bore striking resemblances to their larger Revell counterparts.  I particularly remember the Flying Cloud, which was virtually identical to the Revell one in all respects except size.  And I remember being tipped off by those beautifully-executed "rope coils."  There's just no other explanation for something like that.  The smaller Revell Victory kit looks about like I remember the Lindberg one looking.  It has a similar parts breakdown, virtually identical proportions - and rope coils.  I won't be surprised if the larger Lindberg and smaller Revell kits turn out to be identical.  But I wouldn't want to bet on it.

The photo on the smaller Lindberg box (the one labeled "1/500") looks to me like the old pocket-sized Pyro kit.  That would be consistent.  Many (in fact almost all) of the sailing ship kits sold under the Lindberg label in recent years have been reboxed Pyro kits.  The big exceptions are, of course, the Wappen von Hamburg/"Captain Kidd," La Flore/"Jolly Roger," and the big, ex-ITC, ex-Aurora Sea Witch.  All the other Lindberg sailing ships that I can recall having seen in the past few years have been old Pyro ones.  If I remember correctly, your Victory web page mentions the old Pyro kit.  I suspect that's the same one that's in the small Lindberg box.  But at this point I wouldn't want to bet on that either.

The number of Victory kits on the market really is surprising.  Just as surprising is the fact that so many of them, in terms of scale fidelity, are so awful.  This afternoon I was browsing a Model Expo catalog that came in the mail recently.  I noticed that one of those continental plank-on-bulkhead firms is claiming that its Victory is "so accurate that it has the same number of hull timbers as the real ship."  That's an outright, bald-faced lie.  I've been fascinated to discover how many Victory kits are (and have been) on the market, but so far I see no reason to retreat from the position I took quite a while ago:  the versions from Calder/Jotika, Revell (the bigger one), Heller (as reboxed by Airfix), and Skytrex are the only ones that, without extensive modification, really qualify as scale models.

Lindberg old kit with the hull about 8" long was also produced by UPC.UPC has on there box 1/400 scale.It is the same model.the old company's passed the molds around.About 5 or 6 years ago Lindberg came out with a new line of ship models they produced the Golden Hind,USS Constitution,and the Flying Cloud along with the HMS Victory.the hulls measure about 5 1/2" long and Lindberg has 1/450 scale on the box.These kits were aimed for the younger modeler to get them interested in sailing models.The parts are fairly simple.The older kit has a lot more detail and not a bad kit.As far as I remember Lindberg never did one the size of Revell's.But I know Revell's molds were used by MPC for a while so maybe Lindberg use them at one time also.Like I said model molds bounced around from company to company.And each company would put a different scale on the box to make it appear different.I believe most of these scales to be off.

Rod

I think (though I'm not sure by any means) that those tiny Lindberg kits to which Millard's referring are reboxing of old Pyro ones.  Pyro did quite a large range of such kits, beginning back in the early fifties.  (They must have been among the very first plastic ship models.)  The earliest ones (I remember the Santa Maria) had wood dowels for masts, and paper sails.  Later entries in the series were all plastic, with injection-molded sails.  I remember building that little Golden Hind several times when I was in elementary school.  Even then I had my doubts about the shape of its hull, which was rather like an oversized walnut, but with a careful paint job (Testor's glossy enamels at 10 cents a jar, of course) it could be made to look pretty classy.  (At least my mother and father thought so.)  Another member of the series was a "brig of war," which was one of Pyro's notorious copies of a Model Shipways kit.

Those tiny Pyro kits kept appearing occasionally for a long time.  I think the Victory was one of the last ones before the company went out of business.  My guess is that all of those little Lindberg sailing ships are ex-Pyro - but I'm not sure. 

I'd be anxious to be corrected on this point, but I don't think Lindberg has issued a genuinely new model of any sort in at least twenty years.  All the kits in Lindberg boxes that I see nowadays are either reissues of old Lindberg kits or reboxing of other companies' products.  Can anybody think of an exception?   

Lindberg made some brand new car kits over the last ten-ish years.  First in a funky 1/20 scale, then in the mainstream 1/24 scale.  A few were really good.  Eventually, that ran out and they reboxed some ancient but wonderful IMC kits from the '60s.  Now they've settled on more active "hoppers" to cater to younger folks, which isn't a really bad thing, I guess.

If that small Victory kit was part of the Pyro line, I missed it the first time around.  I knew of an even dozen kits (memorized from the boxart).  They seemed to be split 50/50 between the ones with wooden dowels for masts and all-plastic ones that had WONDERFUL detail for a twelve year old in 1965.  Likewise, the Flying Cloud was not part of that dozen.  But they do very closely resemble the detail found on the old Bon Homme Richard kit, so Victory and Flying Cloud may have come from the same artisans, just a bit later.

The larger Constellation and Victory from Lindberg showed up several years later than the little ones from Pyro.

That's my reminisences, anyway.

Rick

Pyro HMS Victory has been reissued by Life-Like,

you can see pictures of this model here :

http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/LifelikeMichelvrtg/index.html

On the picture of the instructions, you can see the range of Life-Like (ex-Pyro) sailing ships models.

This is too small on my site to see the models, so I try to post a larger picture here :

It is smaller than the small Revell model and than the Entex model, scale must be 1/500.

Michel

 

The box of the smaller Lindberg kit in the first picture in this thread is kind of beat up, so it's hard to be absolutely sure, but it looks to me like the smaller Lindberg kit and the Lifelike kit are one and the same.

To delve into a lengthy discussion of this kit's scale would be pretty pointless; it obviously isn't a scale model.  (Take a look at the shape of the deck.)  If one took the trouble to measure it, the "scale" would depend on which part one measured.  On the other hand, it has - rather remarkably - the shoulder-high forecastle bulwarks that the ship probably had in 1805 (and that all the other kit manufacturers, except Skytrex, have missed).  And the moldmakers took the trouble to include some representation of copper sheathing.  Those are about the only good things I can think of to say about it.

That "catalog" on the back of the instruction sheet is interesting - and brings back some memories.  I think all the kits shown are indeed reissues of Pyro products.  The names under the pictures aren't reliable; at least two, the Constitution and the Ark Royal, have gotten swapped.  I'm pretty certain that those pictures represent quite a variety of kit sizes.  Pyro offered at least three series of sailing ships, each in a standard sized box.  I remember the tiny ones, including those with wood masts and paper sails, selling for 50 cents, the medium-sized ones (generally molded in brown plastic) for $1.00, and the biggest, with lengths around 18", for $3.00.  (The prices went up, of course, before Pyro went out of business.)  Only the biggest really rated the label "scale models."

The list on the instruction sheet doesn't include all the old Pyro kits.  The early 1950s ones (several of which are being sold with Lindberg labels now) aren't there.  Most of the 50-cent and $1.00 kits that I remember are illustrated, but a few aren't.  I don't see the Arab dhow, the British bomb ketch, or the Chesapeake Bay skipjack.  I suspect a few others are missing.

Fun trip down memory lane.

Since we seem to be trying to compile a definitive list of all available miniature reproductions of H.M.S. Victory, I offer the following link:  http://www.modelshipbuilding.com/images/h.m.s%20victory.jpg

I got to it via the Steel Navy website. 

The small kits I talked about earlier were a new run by Lindberg for a short time only.They are not the old Pyro molds.I've got the kits here and I compared them not even close.Lindberg also came out here a short while ago with a little bigger scale .They where far more detailed than these smaller ones.I think there was four or five kits.I remember the Ark Royal and the Constellation but not the rest. The boxes had a picture of the famous captains of each of ships on the lid.They were very well detailed and reminded me of the nicer Pyro or Life -Like kits.I don't have of those kits around anymore to look at.

Rod

It sounds like - horror of horrors - there may actually have been three Lindberg Victory kits.  One - the one that seems to have been "pantographed down" from the Revell one.  Two - the small ex-Pyro, ex-Lifelike one.  (The photo on the box in Michel's picture of the Lifelike kit and his photos of the parts in the Lindberg box certainly seem to match - though I guess it's possible that the photos are deceptive.)  Three - the one Rod has.

I have an extremely vague recollection that one of these companies - either Pyro or Lindberg, I'm not sure which - issued a few of these tiny (5" or thereabouts) kits in "antique bronze" versions, molded in a strange, mottled metallic green plastic.  I think I remember a Cutty Sark, a Constitution, and a Victory in that format - but my memory is even foggier than usual about them.  I wonder if they were Lindberg kits, and perhaps that Lindberg Victory came from the same mold as Rod's.  It seems like Pyro was still in business at that time.  If so, tiny Victory kits from Lindberg and Pyro may have been on the market at the same time. 

I think those Lindberg Ark Royal and Constellation kits to which Rod referred are reissues of Pyro kits - the same ones Lifelike also reissued (and advertised on the instruction sheet Michel posted).  That's the medium-sized, "$1.00" Pyro range I was talking about earlier - the series that also included the bomb ketch and the Morgan.  Rod's right:  they were much more detailed than the little "50 cent" kits.  I don't remember ever having tried seriously to build one (I was a lot younger then), but it sticks in my mind that the hull shapes were about right and the detailing, though simplified and a bit exaggerated, was pretty reasonable.  The big problem was the injection-molded "sails," which were cast integrally with the yards.  To make them into decent models would have required building all the spars from scratch, and that was beyond my ambitions at that age. 

In raking back through my senile memory I recall a couple of other Lindberg ships, which must have come out in the late sixties or early seventies:  a Viking ship and a seventeenth-century French galley.  They were about 8" or 9" long, and molded in white plastic.  The Viking ship, if I remember correctly, was a reasonable scale model; I think it was based on the lines of the Gokstad Ship.  The oars and shields were molded in port and starboard "gangs," but if they'd been replaced a nice little scale model could have resulted.  The French galley, if I remember right, was generally accurate in shape, but the subject was so intricate that it just didn't work as a small, simplified model for kids.

This discussion, if it's done nothing else, has established that the available range of plastic sailing ships back in the Goode Olde Dayes was considerably broader than it is now.  Most of those old kits wouldn't stand up to criticism by today's standards - but they sure were fun, weren't they?  And heaven only knows how many people, young and otherwise, got interested in maritime history as a result of buying and building them.  I miss them.