Origin of SMER "1/180" Cutty Sark kit?

Finally, here is what can be the answer.

There could be two molds of this model.

- The original one, by MERIT (but, note, that Merit had copied Aurora molds : Drakkar and Ghost Ship) ; SMER bought (from AEROPICCOLA?) the ARTIPLAST molds ; ARTIPLAST had then inherited the MERIT molds

- The HELLER mold, copied from the MERIT mold, but please note, that in 1991, we can not be sure, that HELLER still had the "Epervier" mold, because they re-released the Airfix Cutty Sark.

 

The informations are provided by J.C.Carbonel, hoping that someday he will join us in this forum.

 

I confess that theory strikes me as a bit bizarre - especially in view of the Heller kit's similarity to the old Aurora one.  Over the past year or so, however, I have learned that everything Michel.vrtg says should be taken seriously.  Michel, we'll be interested to hear what your antennae are able to deduce about this one.

According to J.C.Carbonel, this could be an original Heller mold, maybe from a 1/2 scaled down 1/96 Revell Cutty Sark model.   Interesting, I'll try to get more informations.

Michel

 

Very interesting indeed!  I suspect outsiders like us will never know the real answer to this one.  It sounds like, somewhere in the process, some illegality may have been involved.   In any case, this isn't the kind of thing that model manufacturers disclose to the public.

I've seen some other examples of kits that were almost duplicates of others.  The UPC H.M.S. Victory comes to mind.  If I remember Michel.vrtg's description of it correctly, the parts are almost interchangeable with those of the old Revell kit, but show various differences in detail.

One of the few things about Dr. Graham's history of Revell that disappointed me is that it doesn't include a picture of Revell's pantograph machine.  That must have been a fantastic contraption.  It was capable of reducing incredibly small details.  Some of the other old model companies must have had machines that were just as good.  AHM, in the days when it distributed the old Roco Minitanks series of HO-scale military vehicles, sold several sets of figures that obviously were miniaturized versions of Revell and Monogram products.  The machine had reduced those little people from 1/40 and 1/32 scale to 1/87, and every conceivable detail had remained intact.  The pantograph apparently was a key element in the quality of many kits from the fifties onward.

 

AndrewGorman wrote:

Overall, the Smer parts are SLIGHTLY larger than the Aurora parts.  From my limited knowledge of plastic kit tool and die making, this makes me think the Smer molds were pantographed off of  the Aurora originals, like some Polar Lights kits.  The not-very pressing question is who did this?  Did Smer see some saleable kits by a defunct company and copy them themselves, or did Heller copy the Aurora parts, and finally Smer ended up with the tooling?  I'm curious.

Very interesting! Maybe this explains the SMER kit being 1/210 whilst the Aurora kit is described as 1/260, though this is a difference of about 25%, much larger than you'd expect for pantographing.
It seems more likely to me that Heller were the ones doing the original copying, as (as far as I know) SMER have never produced any moulds of their own, they only use moulds from other, usually defunct companies. (Merit, Aurora, Artiplast, Pyro and Heller are the ones I know of, there may be more)

The Aurora/Smer/Heller connection seems pretty interesting.  For a current project, I bought a Smer Viking ship to add oars to an original Aurora Viking Ship I had.  The kit parts are very close, but not identical:
The Smer oars are a little thinner and more nicely done than the Aurora.
The Smer dragon head is slightly larger than the Aurora, and not as finely detailed.
The Smer hull has some small recesses along the stem and stern that the Aurora kit does not have.
The Smer Nameplate/stand is not as deeply cut as the Aurora.
Smer oarsmen are differently arranged on the  sprue than the Aurora oarsmen.
Overall, the Smer parts are SLIGHTLY larger than the Aurora parts.  From my limited knowledge of plastic kit tool and die making, this makes me think the Smer molds were pantographed off of  the Aurora originals, like some Polar Lights kits.  The not-very pressing question is who did this?  Did Smer see some saleable kits by a defunct company and copy them themselves, or did Heller copy the Aurora parts, and finally Smer ended up with the tooling?  I'm curious.
And a word in defense of the Pyro Olympia/Maine, I bult this kit when I was kid, and you had the option of plopping the turrets on the centerline for the Olympia, or adding some sponsons to mount them off center for the Maine. Either version made for some good bathtub battles!
Andrew

Honneamise - Welcome to the Forum!  You obviously have a great deal of experience with old plastic sailing ship kits - and some interesting insights into their various European incarnations.  I remember the old Heller (ex-Pyro) "Maine," and I vaguely recall seeing something with a French name in a Heller box that looked remarkably like the Cutty Sark.  (That must have been "L'Epervier.")  And I knew that quite a few old Revell sailing ships showed up in Heller boxes for a while.  (A few of them turned up in American hobby shops, which are almost the only ones with which I have any personal experience.)  According to our Forum friend Michel.vrtg, some Revell kits are still to be found in Heller boxes - and a few Heller kits are in the catalog of Revell Germany.    The Russian Aurora and Potemkin kits also were marketed by Heller for a while; I believe the Aurora has recently resurfaced under the Zvezda label. The migration of plastic kit molds from one company to another really is beyond sorting out.

The Olympia/"Maine" story just may be the great-grandfather of all such scams in the plastic kit industry.  In selling an Olympia in a box labeled "Maine," Heller was just repeating a stunt initiated by Pyro.  I can remember seeing the Pyro "Maine" in a hobby shop in Columbus, Ohio, as early as the mid-1950s.  It was, of course, the company's reasonably accurate (but extremely crude) Olympia  in a different box.  Pyro did the same thing with its old, highly popular steamboat Robert E. Lee, which the company reissued as the Natchez.  (As I remember, the Lee was molded in white plastic, and the Natchez in garishly bright colors.) 

Apparently somebody blew the whistle on Pyro at some point.  For a while the "Maine" kit was being sold in a box that said, in rather large letters on the side, "The within model is similar to the Maine, but not an exact duplicate."  Similar language appeared on the Natchez boxes for a while.  Revell and Heller, of course, have never had the integrity to do that.

I've often wondered how much of Heller's behavior was motivated by cynical greed and how much by honest ignorance.  (Did anybody at Heller actually know that the real Maine didn't look like that?  Maybe not.  I suspect the story of the Spanish-American War doesn't get much attention in French public schools.)  Many of the early Heller sailing ship kits seem to bespeak a tremendous level of artisanship combined with an appalling ignorance of the subject matter. 

So far as I'm aware, the very first instance of a manufacturer reboxing a kit with a different name involved Revell's ancient Iowa-class battleship - the company's very first warship kit.  (My source here, as usual in matters Revell, is Dr. Thomas Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.)  The thing first appeared in 1953 as the Missouri, complete with a pair of catapults on the fantail bearing objects that vaguely resembled seaplanes.  A year later Revell reissued the same kit (as the Missouri again) with an electric motor.  And in 1955 it reappeared as the New Jersey, with the catapults and seaplanes replaced by helicopters.  That old, nearly-fossilized kit has, of course, been reissued many times since, bearing at one time or another the names of all four Iowa-class ships.  And it's one of the handful of shiop kits still in the catalog of Revell/Monogram.  (It's one of the crudest and most inaccurate warship kits on the market - partly because, at the time of its initial release, the hull lines and various other characteristics of the real ships were still classified.  Revell/Monogram presumably has access to all, or most, of the warship kit molds from Revell, Monogram, and Aurora.  I can think of at least three other Iowa-class kits that those companies issued at various times.  Any of them - even the old Aurora 1/600 version - would be preferable to the one they're selling now.)

The concept caught on quickly.  Dr. Graham's book lists, by my count, 79 "new" Revell warship kits that were released in the 1960s.  By my count, 46 of them were renamed reissues of older kits.

honneamise wrote:

This is interesting, it is obviously the old Aurora kit but it is also the same kit that Heller offered as the french Clipper "LÉpervier" for decades! In their 1970 catalogue they even claim that it is one of their best sellers! The Epervier was discontinued from the Heller Line in the 80s and a few years later it appeared in the SMER line. I built the kit in the earlier 80s and I was amazed how different in style the kit was compared to all other Heller ship kits, especially those pre-molded ratlines come to mind. Sails were just printed on paper and the stand seemed odd. Over the years I learned that Heller used a lot od Pyro and Aurora molds during their early years: They had the Pyro paddle steamer "Harriet Lane" issued as "Le Sphinx" (the actual ship looked completely different) and there was a "Maine" battleship that was actually a Pyro "Olympia". Strange that they  changed the names of models that originally depicted actual ships!  In the 90s they had Revell´s Flying Cloud and -this time Airfix´- Cutty Sark in their line . I believe there was even a Heller version of Aurora´s big "Bonhomme Richard" kit but I have yet to verify it.

Thanks for the information - this will be very useful for the list of sailing ship lists that I'm compiling.

Regarding the Bonhomme Richard, SMER produce a kit of this ship listed as 1/400 (who knows what the real scale is), this is probably the old Pyro kit, it could well have been sold by Heller in the past if as you say they used a lot of ex-Pyro moulds.

I didn't realise that the Heller Maine was simply a reboxed Olympia - this is the first example of a scam like this I've seen with a kit of a non-sailing ship! The Olympia and Maine looked nothing like each other, other than the basic hull shape. The Olympia has the classic "predreadnought" design with a large turret fore and aft of a bulky superstructure, whilst the Maine has a very distinctive design with the two turrets amidships on either side of the hull - a lot like the Chinese pre-dreadnought Ding Yuan/Ting Yuen which I built a model of recently.

Being a fan of the ironclad/pre-dreadnought era (mid 19th to early 20th century) I've been looking out for an Olympia or Maine kit for a while - I'll make a note to leave any Maine kits I see to the kit collectors!

Heller really do seem to be worse than Revell in terms of bogus renamed modifications of ship kits. The Revell Beagle, Thermopylae, Staghound and Seeadler are infamous, but Heller seem to have a much larger list of "dodgy" kits, not to mention a fair number of kits which seem to represent entirely non-existent or fictional ships!

This is interesting, it is obviously the old Aurora kit but it is also the same kit that Heller offered as the french Clipper "LÉpervier" for decades! In their 1970 catalogue they even claim that it is one of their best sellers! The Epervier was discontinued from the Heller Line in the 80s and a few years later it appeared in the SMER line.

I built the kit in the earlier 80s and I was amazed how different in style the kit was compared to all other Heller ship kits, especially those pre-molded ratlines come to mind. Sails were just printed on paper and the stand seemed odd.

Over the years I learned that Heller used a lot od Pyro and Aurora molds during their early years: They had the Pyro paddle steamer "Harriet Lane" issued as "Le Sphinx" (the actual ship looked completely different) and there was a "Maine" battleship that was actually a Pyro "Olympia". Strange that they  changed the names of models that originally depicted actual ships! 

In the 90s they had Revell´s Flying Cloud and -this time Airfix´- Cutty Sark in their line .

I believe there was even a Heller version of Aurora´s big "Bonhomme Richard" kit but I have yet to verify it.

 

That does look like the old Aurora kit all right.  The only reason I'm hesitating at all is that it's been so long since I've seen it.  Frankly the kit in the picture looks a little better than what my senile brain remembered.  It actually does look, in general at least, like the Cutty Sark.   

The layout of the black parts is interesting.  I think that circular arrangement was a predecessor of the more modern "sprue" configuration, at a time when the manufacturers were still figuring out just what were the best ways to use the injection-molding system.

Judging by the style of the base, which is nearly identical to the one in the Black Falcon kit, I'd say that the SMER kit is definitely from the Aurora moulds.

The hull is 31cm long, so the scale is actually around 1/210.

Plastyk is also an Eastern European company so possibly they borrowed the moulds from SMER?

It must the the same 1/180 scale Cutty Sark sold by Plastyk too :

Michel

 

I've read about those Marx kits with metal decks, but I've never seen one.  I still think the idea of using steel to represent the deck of a wood ship is - well, a little irrational.

What relationship, if any, existed between Marx and ITC kits I don't know.  I have the impression that the 1/96 Sea Witch kits from Aurora and Lindberg are modified versions of the old ITC one.  (Aurora, I believe, was responsible for the injection-molded "sails.")  Whether the original ITC kit had anything in common with the Marx one I have no idea.

Fascinating stuff.

I've read about one more - an ITC Swordfish that appeared briefly in the fifties and had, of all things, a sheet metal deck.

   Marx also used sheet metal decks in their "Seawitch", in 1/96 scale, at about the same time as the "swordfish". I still have the hull, and some of the deck furniture. The model was long ago dismasted.

I have no idea what was in that old UPC box; I don't recall ever having seen the kit.  Most - if not all - UPC ship kits were reissues of Japanese products - which in turn frequently were ripoffs of American ones.  (Our good friend Michel vrtg discovered recently that the UPC Victory was a modified reissue of the Revell one, with the separately-molded guns on the lower decks replaced by gun muzzles cast integrally with the hull halves.  And I remember buying a UPC kit labeled "H.M.S. Prince" that was, in essence, really a Victory with different hull halves.  It was one of the awfulest kits I've ever seen.)

The old Revell Flying Cloud represented the state of the art when it was initially released, in 1957, and it still holds up remarkably well.  It got reissued in modified form several times - under the names Stag Hound (in one of Revell's typical marketing scams; the real Stag Hound bore only a slight resemblance to the kit) and "Yankee Clipper."  If all you're looking for is a hull, either of those reissues probably would work fine.  I'm virtually certain that I saw it once in a Heller box.

It's a testament to the tiny size of this phase of the hobby that the only clipper ships ever released in plastic kit form are the Cutty Sark (quite a few times), the Sea Witch (the old ITC/Aurora/Lindberg kit), and the Flying Cloud (Revell, Lindberg, and a tiny Pyro version).  (I'm not counting kits like the Revell "Stag Hound" and "Thermopylae," which are reissues of other kits and not really scale models.)  I've read about one more - an ITC Swordfish that appeared briefly in the fifties and had, of all things, a sheet metal deck.  And I think I may have seen another Flying Cloud advertised on an old ITC box.  Considering how many beautiful, important ships of this type existed, that does seem rather remarkable.  Maybe some other Forum member can think of a few more.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice!

I've since found out that the length of the kit's hull is 36cm, which measured against the real ship's length of 64.8m gives a scale of exactly 1/180, so the scale on the box is correct (for once). I assumed the kit was the Aurora one with a bogus scale on the box (most of the other SMER ships are ex-Aurora)
Maybe it's the Pyro kit - the size and scale of this one isn't listed on the aforementioned list, I assumed it was one of the 5-6" $1 range, but maybe I'm wrong (36cm would be about right for one of the larger Pyro ships).
The Monogram and UPC kits are apparently both about 16" long, which is close enough, though SMER haven't reissued any other kits from these manufacturers.

I already have the Airfix 1/130 kit, as you say it's quite good for its age, however I'm intending to build this one and have no intentions of using it as a source of kitbashing parts! This kit is the most widely available one here in the UK so it's possible I might be able to pick up another one cheaply at a second-hand sale or on eBay (I only paid about £7 on eBay for the one I already have).
The Revell 1/220 kit is probably a bit small for my purposes, ideally I don't want anything smaller than 1/200 scale.

The distinctive bow shape of the Cutty Sark is a definite problem when recycling the hull, but I don't know of any other cheap, widely available clipper kits (not sure what the Revell 1/220 Flying Cloud is like, but it's hard to find this side of the Atlantic and is a bit small).

EDIT: Just found out that the Pyro kit is about 8" long, so evidently it isn't this one. The Monogram or UPC kits seem like the most likely candidates.

I haven't seen the kit, but your guess about its origins seems reasonable.  I know of two possible candidates other than the old Aurora kit:  the Airfix one and the 1/220 Revell one.

I have faint memories of the Aurora version, which I last saw (and built) at least forty years ago.  My recollection is that it had a badly mis-shapen hull, with its widest beam too far aft.  I could well be mistaken about that, though; it's been a long time.

The Airfix kit is actually quite nice for its size (and age).  I believe it's the only Cutty Sark kit that represents all the carving on the bow and stern in relief, rather than by means of decals.

The Revell 1/220 version is still in the Revell Germany catalog.  As a matter of fact I saw one fairly recently in the local hobby shop.  If it's available in Greenville, North Carolina it must be pretty widely distributed.  It's not a bad kit - not one of Revell's very finest by any means but, if my memory is correct, basically sound in outline and reasonably well detailed for its size.

Monogram briefly marketed a Cutty Sark in the late seventies; it had a one-piece hull, and was designed for beginners.  I suppose it's not inconceivable that Smer is selling that kit.

I think a few more medium-size Cutty Sarks may have been issued by various firms at various times.  It sticks in my mind that UPC had one many years ago; most of that company's kits were Japanese in origin.  And I have an extremely vague recollection that Heller, for a while, was selling a model of an allegedly French sailing merchantman that looked remarkably like the Cutty Sark.  As always, though, my recollections of such things are not entirely trustworthy.

When it comes to recycling the hull, it's probably worth remembering that the Cutty Sark's hull is extremely distinctive in shape.  The sharply-angled intersection of the stem and keel was quite unusual (especially among British ships).  (Revell's reissuing of its big Cutty Sark as the Thermopylae is one of the company's typical scams.  The Thermopylae's forefoot was almost an arc of a circle.)  And the Cutty Sark's stern is much fuller and more powerful-looking than those of most tea clippers.

Good luck.