Here is a link that discusses reissuing the pirate kits.

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/archive/index.php/t-63531.html

If you read down far enough, there is an e-mail address to ask Ertl ( the current owners of MPC ) to reissue the kits.

I wish MPC and Disney would re-pop them ,even at todays prices they would make a foutune, How many of us would more than one of each kit?

Jake

  Ahhh, those kits decorated all of my shelves as a kid...wonderful stuff!  I'm seriously looking forward to the film, but then again, I am a dedicated fantasy fan (as you can tell by all of my what-if builds).

              greg

The diorama kits were made by MPC. Look here

http://search.ebay.com/mpc-pirate_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8

 

Dr. Graham's book gives the initial release date of the kit, in its "Peter Pan" guise, as 1960, with one reissue in 1969.  I'm sure Millard is right about the later one, though; Dr. Graham's coverage stops with 1979.

I have vague memories of those diorama kits, which featured miniature skeletons engaged in various allegedly piratical occupations.  I don't remember the manufacturer; seems like it was MPC, UPC, or one of that sort.  I think they were on the market when I was working in a hobby shop in Columbus, Ohio.  That would have been between 1975 and 1980.  I could be mistaken, though; such kits had no interest for me at the time, and I never bought or looked inside the boxes of any of them.

This kit was issued in the early eighties.When the Pirates Of the Caribbean ride was opened at Disney World.There are also figures and Dioramas of some of the scene on that ride.They are very rare kits and hard to come by.

Rod

I was also surprised to spot the ersatz "Seeadler" today on eBay.de - seems like this best-forgotten kit, like the HMS Beagle, has been resurrected.

Regarding the pirate ship, personally I'd rather they re-issued this old kit (based on a movie prop in the first place) to cash in on the PotC sequel than stick the Jolly Roger on a historical ship like the Golden Hind, as Heller have done! Seeing something like a 17th-century ship of the line (e.g Lindberg "Capt. Kidd") boxed as a "pirate ship" just looks wrong to me, like painting camouflage + roundels on a Boeing 747.
Genuine pirate ships of the 17th/18th century would presumably have been small, fast types like brigs, sloops and schooners, the Aurora "Black Falcon" is an example of this although it is a crudely-moulded and ancient kit.
(I suppose you -could- consider the Golden Hind to be a pirate ship, though, as it was involved in privateer actions raiding Spanish shipping - the Spanish probably regarded it as a pirate!)

A sequel to "Pirates of the Caribbean" is upon us - due to be released within the next few weeks.  Ads for it have been showing up on TV.  It appears the moviemakers used one of the Bounty replicas this time - probably the blue one from the Marlon Brando/Trevor Howard version.  That will open up a whole new set of opportunities for the plastic and HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank On Bulkhead) kit companies to rip off gullible hobbiests.  I rather suspect we'll be seeing at least one Bounty kit flying the skull and crossbones before Christmas.

I have to admit (with some reluctance) that I'm sort of looking forward to the movie.  My kids gave me the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" on DVD (I never would have paid money to see it in the theater), and once my wife talked me into watching it I had to admit I enjoyed it.  It's so clearly a fantasy that (I hope) nobody could possibly take it for anything else.

If I'm allowed a not-too-earnest footnote on the Pirate Ship (I wonder whether they still sell it with that dreadful semiluminous paint...) - it actually has to rank among Revell's successful attempts at producing a faithful scale model, as it's as far as I know quite a good representation of the actual ship (which of course is only a prop, but even so...). That's more than what can be said about a number of other kits...

Jorit

This one looks rather like the "China Discovered America Junks 1421"?

Trumpeter #1202 1/250 Cheng Ho Chinese Sailing Ship	Item number: 6040120705

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It's obviously a reissue of the old "Peter Pan's Pirate Ship Jolly Roger."  Dr. Graham's Remembering Revell Model Kits says it was originally released in 1960.  It seems to have migrated from one Disney movie to another.  (It's interesting, though, that the phrase "Pirates of the Caribbean" doesn't actually appear on the new box.  That suggests that Revell didn't get licensed by Disney this time.  "Pirates of the Caribbean" presumably is a copyrighted phrase; "Caribbean Pirate Ship" isn't.)

According to my TV movie guide, Disney's "Peter Pan" was originally released in 1953.  I guess the original Revell kit was intended as a reproduction of the three-dimensional "replica" at Disneyland.  (I don't remember the date the original, California Disneyland opened, but it was pretty new when the kit was released in 1960.)  If I'm correct on that point, this kit has an odd distinction:  of all the plastic kits on the market that purport to be models of pirate ships (e.g., the reissued Lindberg Wappen von Hamburg, La Flore, and  Sovereign of the Seas, Heller/Revell Golden Hind, Aurora Black Falcon, etc.), this old fossil is the only one that actually started its career as a scale model of a real pirate ship.  Well, sort of.