Reissued Lindberg 1/96 Sea Witch?

If it's the kit I think it is, it has a long, convoluted history - and I can't pretend to know all of it.

I believe it first appeared way back in the early or mid-fifties under the ITC label.  (I'm a little hazy about that; Marx and ITC both issued a handful of sailing ship kits, and I get them mixed up.  But I've seen the Sea Witch kit in an ITC box.)  It vanished for a long time, after ITC got out of the plastic kit business.

Sometime in the late sixties, Aurora (then in the last few years of its existence) issued a small series of sailing ships.  There were four of them:  the Bonhomme Richard, the whaler Wanderer, the U.S.S. Hartford, and the Sea Witch.  They were all about two feet long, and were packaged in glitzy, shiny white boxes with paintings by John Steel on the lids.  Priced in the neighborhood of $5.00, they apparently were intended to fill a gap between the Revell, Airfix, and Pyro 18" series (originally $3.00; up to about $4.00 by then) and the big 3-foot Revell ones.  The first three in the series were, so far as I know, original, newly-tooled Aurora products.  They were characterized by reasonably accurate basic shapes, reasonable (though somewhat over-done) detail, some glaring errors (the Wanderer's whaleboats were distorted to the point of caricature), and horrible, injection-molded "sails" molded integrally with the yards. 

The Sea Witch kit, on the other hand, was a modified version of the old ITC kit.  (At least I'm fairly certain of that.  I don't think I've ever seen the two kits side-by-side, but I've seen the ITC one in the box and I bought the Aurora one.  Other modelers have said they were basically the same kits.)  Aurora added a set of those dreadful injection-molded "sails" and some crew figures, which appeared to be pirated from those in some Revell kits.

A few years later, Aurora went belly-up and all four of those sailing ship kits became collector's items.  (Frankly I personally wouldn't have much inclination to seek them out.  Those "sails" were bad enough to turn me off thoroughly.)  Some years after that, the kit showed up in hobby shops under the Lindberg label.  I think it got a set of vac-formed sails and separately-molded yards at that point.  (I'm fairly sure that was the arrangement it had in its original, ITC incarnation.)  That's the kit that the newly-reorganized Lindberg is announcing now.

My recollection is that the kit was not, in fact, on 1/96 scale, but was somewhat smaller.  (The figures Aurora put in it were, I believe, the same size as those in the Revell Bounty, which was on 1/110 scale.  A couple of them found their way into my model of the Bounty.  At least I think that's where they came from.) 

I should emphasize that all the above is based on vague memories, rumors, and guesswork.   I guess it's possible that we're talking about two, or even conceivably three, different kits here.  But that's my understanding of the story.

A few weeks ago I took a look at Lindberg's new website.  It contains some photos of an assembled Sea Witch.  Making allowances for the usual weaknesses of built-up models in manufacturers' advertising, it certainly looks like decent kit - especially in view of its age.  I suspect it could be turned into a serious scale model.

I don't imagine that helps much, but it's the best I can offer.  Maybe some other member has either the Aurora or Lindberg kit and can comment more intelligently than I can.

Thanks very much JT-  I suspected it was from that lineage...still as you know with the paucity of plastic sailing ship kits-  it might be worth a try.

 

-Len

I don't think there's much question about it - especially if, as I'm pretty sure is the case, the kit no longer comes with those awful injection-molded "sails."  (What made them so problematic was not just their existence, but the fact that they were cast integrally with the yards.  To do a decent job on the kit in its Aurora incarnation would have meant scratchbuilding virtually everything from the deck up.)

As I've noted before in this Forum, it's sad that the American clipper ships - surely among the most beautiful vessels ever, and of considerable historical importance - have been so ill served by the plastic kit manufacturers.  If we ignore the various spurious re-issues (e.g., the Revell "Stag Hound") and the little Pyro kits (most of which aren't really worth much attention), the Revell Flying Cloud and the ITC/Aurora/Lindberg Sea Witch are the only games in town.

Hello:

 I have the Lindberg kit no. 813 and it appears that it is 1/96 scale. The sails are vacuum formed and the yards are seperate from them. I also have the original Marx version of this kit and the two are identical except the deck of the Marx version is a piece of very thin metal printed with the grain of the deck in color. In addition, the deck houses were also metal with little tabs on their bottom edges that were fed through slots in the deck and then bent over. The Lindberg version has replaced the metal pieces with plastic ones. All in all one could build quite a decent rendition of the Sea Witch from the Lindberg kit. The dimensions on the box say the length is 33 inches, height is 22 inches and the width is 9 inches (across the main yard?, the hull isn't this wide!). The model  is comparable to the 3 foot Revell Cutty Sark detail wise except the hull is all black without the lower copper colored plating. I hope this helps.

  I must have the ITC version then, as the deck houses are plastic, and have round locating pins that match round holes in the metal deck. I saw the seawitch at the hobby show in Rosemont, Il. and it is basicly the same hull. The Marx / ITC version had a full hull, and I believe the Lindberg version has the same. I have a copy of "Shipmodels How to Build Them" by Charles G. Davis. It references Seawitch , and comes with a half breadth, profile, and half deck plan, with a rudimentary rigging plan on the back. I built the kit in my late teens, and needless to say only the hull, and some of the deckhouses remain. I will have to scratchbuild everything from the deck up.

I believe it's one of these kits in the window of my LHS.  It isn't a badly done model from what I can see - done without sails, standing rigging, only.  But the masts are raked to the fore.  Looks a bit silly, like a cartoon character with his cap down over his eyes.

There is even a Revell (of Germany) reissue of that kit, must be from 1983-4 but it was only available for about a year or even less.

 The Catalog of that year featured a John Steel (iirc) box art and a photo of a built-up kit. It definitely had vacuformed sails, not the solid ones, the scale was stated as 1/96, and I am pretty sure that I saw some well-known sailors of Revell origin on it, leading me to the suspicion (then, I know better now) that the Sea Witch was really a new Revell product.

   I saw one of these kits in a hobby shop in Kenosha, Wi. . I only got to see the photo on the box cover.  I have one of the old Marx/ITC hulls, the Charles G. Davis book, and a set of Marine Models rigging plans. I consider myself lucky.