More about the small HMS Victory models

Well, I've now become thoroughly confused by all this, but let's see if I can get at least a few of them right.

The Pyro and Life-Like ones are almost certainly the same.  (Extremely small kits - right?)  I thought we established that the smaller of the two Revell kits (I've lost track of what scale they claimed for it) was the same as the Lindberg one.  From then on I guess I'm mixed up.  I thought UPC had sold a version of the LARGER Revell kit (the one that's actually around 1/220 - though Revell has claimed it was 1/146 or something like that).  And the photos of the Entex one that Michel posted earlier didn't look like anything else I'd ever seen.  It was truly hideous.

Michel, if you actually have all these kits in hand you can do a minor service to the modeling community by sorting it all out.  My guess, though, is that the final verdict will be pretty simple:  the big Revell, big Heller, and tiny Skytrex kits are the only ones that really meet any reasonable definition of the term "scale model."  Fortunately, all those three seem to be currently available. 

Good, as you can see it here :

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

- Pyro and Life-Like sold the same model (little difference : Pyro model is in beige plastic, Life-Like model is in white plastic)

- UPC and Entex sold the same model

- Revell 1/225 and Lindberg 1/400 depict the same model

Interesting, to see how Revell erased the "The Lindberg Line" inscription on their model :

http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/ModelscomparedModlescomparsMichelvrtg/photos/photo6.html

Take a look at the "Gallery" homepage to see the albums, pictures of the Airfix model added.

http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/gallery.htm

Next week, I'll have the 1/146 scale Revell model, so I'll post pictures to compare the Airfix model and the Revell model.  Unfortunately, I am waiting since one monthe the delivery of my Heller model.

Once I have the Heller model, I'll post a "super size" picture to show the half hulls of all the plastic models.

Michel

Very interesting indeed.  The lineage of these old kits is really bizarre.  Lindberg apparently based its kit on the larger Revell one (hence such things as the coils of rope on the deck).  Revell then somehow got hold of the Linberg molds - and almost, but not quite, ground the "Lindberg Line" label off the inside of the hull. And utterly screwed up the matter of the kit's scale.  Weird.

The photos of the Airfix kit are interesting, too.  I built this kit several times when I was considerably younger.  The ones I bought (in Ohio, in the sixties and seventies) had plastic-coated-thread "shroud and ratline" assemblies, like the old Revell kits.  The one in Michel's photo seems to have a little jig for "weaving" the ratlines.  Maybe a little better than the original - but not much.

I've commented several times in the past about the inaccuracy of this kit's bow.  Michel's broadside photos of the hull halves demonstrate what I was talking about.  After looking at those pictures, though, I think I may have identified the problem incorrectly. 

The problem is that the knee of the head - that is, the projecting part on which the figurehead is mounted - is too low relative to the rest of the bow.  If you continue the line forming the low forecastle bulwark forward, the line should go through the head of the cherub holding the coat of arms on the figurehead.  In this kit it wouldn't.  I think, though, that the mistake may be not in the shape of the knee of the head itself, which seems about right, but rather in the sheer of the forecastle deck.  The forecastle deck seems to sweep up in a rather dramatic curve that's at odds with reality.  (A glance at a decent set of plans, or even a photo, will establish that the forecastle deck is almost - though not quite - horizontal when viewed from the side.)  I think the angle of the bowsprit may also be wrong (or maybe the deck on which it's stepped is too high).  At any rate, the result is that there's a big gap between the figurehead and the bowsprit, whereas in reality they're only separated by a couple of feet.

The bigger Revell kit, and the big Heller one, got that point right.  (Assuming, that is, that the forecastle bulwarks of the real ship are correctly configured for 1805 - which they may not be.  But that's another question.)

In listing all the small-scale Victory kits we shouldn't forget the little Airfix one.  I remember building it when I was a kid.  (A hardware store, called Hall's Hardware, in downtown Columbus, Ohio, had a wonderful hobby shop in the basement.  Hanging on one wall of it was a rack of Airfix kits - the little ones in plastic bags.  They cost about 50 cents apiece.  That rack, along with a small stack of Rosebud Kitmaster locomotive kits that Hall's also stocked, gave me my first experience with non-American models.)  I don't remember much about it except that it was a waterline model (complete with a rather nice "sea" base), it had injection-molded plastic sails, the flags and the stern decorations were printed on the card that held the bag closed ("Caution - Open carefully.  Instructions overleaf."), and the shrouds and ratlines were printed on a small sheet of clear plastic.  For its day it was a nice kit, and a great way to introduce little kids to the hobby.  I believe it's still in the Airfix catalog - but I wonder if it still has the printed stern decorations and clear plastic "rigging."

John,

about the little Airfix model, I have a picture of this model (in a Plasty Armada bag), we can see the clear ratlines and the base :

About the large UPC model, are you sure, that it was sold by UPC, and not MPC?  I could see a box of a "large" MPC model.  I hope, I can say more about it in some days (or weeks)

Also, having the "Lindberg 1/400 scale model", I am now certain, that there were at least two Lindberg models, this one and a smaller one, called "1/500 scale", but is this "1/500 scale" model still a different one, or one already mentioned here? Not sure about it.

Michel

Well, Celestino,

the scale of the Airfix model must be 1/173 ; there could be the Imai 1/150 scale model with metal hull and maybe the unidentified MPC model.  But, hmmm, are Le Superbe and Le Glorieux really 1/150 scale models?   If their scale is close to 1/160 scale and allowing a 10 % difference, then the Airfix model could be a good choice.

Michel

My recollection of a UPC Victory on the same scale as the Revell one is extremely vague and unreliable.  I'm fairly certain it was UPC rather than MPC, though - mainly because of the date. 

In about 1965 (that's forty years ago, folks; don't trust my memory) my family took a vacation trip to Washington, DC and my father took me to a fine old hobby shop, called Core's.  (I imagine it went out of business decades ago.)  On one of the shelves was a stack of UPC sailing ship kits.  (I suppose it's possible that they were from MPC - but I don't think MPC was in business in 1965.  I could well be mistaken about that, though.)  One of them, I think, was a Victory.  Since I'd already built the Revell Victory I wasn't interested in that one.  But the one that grabbed my attention was a kit that purported to represent H.M.S. Prince - the one from the reign of Charles II.  (This was long before the Airfix Prince was released.)  My father, generous man that he was, gave me the necessary $3.00 to buy it.

When we got back to the hotel room and I took the cellophane off the box I got a shock.  The hull halves looked sort of like a seventeenth-century ship-of-the-line, but even my 14-year-old eyes could tell this wasn't a scale model of the Prince.  All the other parts, which were sealed in a plastic bag, looked identical to the components of the Revell Victory, with which I was intimately familiar.  My father and I concluded that the bag of Victory parts had been put in the box by mistake.  My father thereupon took the model back to the store.  The clerk opened up another Prince kit, which was identical.  He and my father then took a careful look at the instructions, which matched the parts.  The kit wasn't defective; the manufacturer really was selling a copy of the Revell Victory as the Prince, with no changes other than the hull halves and the transom (and probably a few other parts, such as the figurehead).

UPC, if I'm not mistaken, released no original kits of its own.  I'm pretty sure this...thing...originated with some Japanese manufacturer and was sold in the US under the UPC label.  It had a couple of other amusing characteristics.  The underwater portions of the hull halves carried a series of wide, shallow, vertical grooves, vaguely (but only vaguely) reminiscent of the unplanked framing seen on "Board Room style" models from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The hull halves were molded in a marbled, greenish gold color, and the underwater portions were prepainted a bright, garish red.  And the box art was really remarkable.  It was a painting of the Prince, at anchor in a harbor surrounded by other elaborately-decorated warships with flags flying.  The Japanese artist had also gone to considerable trouble to show the unplanked frames of the ship projecting above the waterline, with blue sky visible between them.  It was pretty clear that the people responsible for this travesty had been looking at a photo of the "Board Room" model of the Prince,  which is now in the Science Museum in London.  (It's one of the most photographed of historic ship models.  I suspect the designers were looking at a picture in a book.)  They apparently had no idea what they were looking at, and thought the unplanked bottom was literally accurate.  I do wonder how they thought a ship built like that would be able to float.

That was my nearest encounter with a UPC Victory.  I never actually saw one out of the box, and it's entirely possible that I didn't actually see one with the Victory label.  But the preceding story is hardly the sort of thing I would have imagined.

That little German kit does indeed look like the tiny Airfix one I remember.  That clear plastic "shroud-and-ratline" idea really isn't so bad.  Our ship model club used to have a member who specialized in sailing ship dioramas on very small scales.  One of his tricks was to draw the shrouds and ratlines with indelible ink on vellum and then spray the paper with a fixative, which made the paper almost transparent.  The illusion was pretty convincing unless the light hit the "shrouds and ratlines" from just the wrong angle.

Thank you John,

in my opinion, the MPC model is just a reboxed Airfix 1/180 scale model, it was sold in the '80's.

BTW, the Revell 1/146 scale model must be one of the oldest models (1958) still in production and selling well.

Michel

I have added a picture to compare the size of the half-hulls (including the Airfix 1/180 and the Revell 1/146 scale models):

http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/ModelscomparedModlescomparsMichelvrtg/photos/photo9.html

Michel

Michel - I think you're right about the MPC/Airfix connection.  There was a period when MPC was the American distributor for Airfix kts, and replaced the Airfix logo with the MPC one on boxes and instruction sheets. 

Airfix kits have appeared under several labels in the U.S.  Back as long ago as the early sixties, specialist hobby shops were importing Airfix kits directly from England and selling them in the same packages that were on the shelves of English stores.  There also was a brief period (don't ask me about the dates) when quite a few of the aircraft kits, at least, were labeled "Airfix Corporation of America."  Then there was the "Airfix by Craftmaster" period.  (Craftmaster was an American firm that sold art supplies and paint-by-number sets.)  And for a long time American Airfix kits had MPC labels.  The contents of the boxes, so far as I know, were unchanged - with a few exceptions.  For a while, some of the Airfix 1/72 aircraft kits were packaged by MPC with bizarre decal sheets and chrome-plated "customizing parts."  (Apparently the MPC people were trying to convert car modeling enthusiasts to airplane modelers.)  I seem to recall that MPC added a few "ground crew" figures to Airfix aircraft kits.  And some of the colors of plastic were irrational.  I distinctly remember buying an Airfix Victory and Cutty Sark (in MPC boxes) that were molded in olive drab.

Your photos really have me wondering just what's wrong with the bigger Airfix kit.  There's something strange about the shape of the bow; Revell and Heller got it right, but Airfix didn't.  I think there may be several small errors, rather than one big one.