Lindberg models

Jtilley covered several of the Lindberg kits in this thread

/forums/1/925254/ShowPost.aspx#925254

Hope he doesn't mind my quoting his post here, he gave some good info.

 

jtilley wrote:

I think I can identify all of them - though I'm not 100% certain.  I don't think any of them originated with Revell, but most originated somewhere other than with Lindberg.  Here goes. The shrimp boat, Coast Guard patrol boat, "Captain Kidd," "Jolly Roger," and "Flying Dutchman" are original Linberg kits, all of them dating originally from the fifties and sixties.  The "Captain Kidd" was originally the German convoy ship Wappen von Hamburg.  The "Jolly Roger" and "Flying Dutchman" are the same kit, except (I think) for the color of the plastic.  Both of them are reboxings of the French eighteenth-century frigate La Flore.  Both La Flore and the Wappen von Hamburg have gotten quite a bit of attention here in the Forum; a search on either name will turn up some interesting posts. The Sea Witch is (I think) a reissue of an extremely old, but not bad, kit originally produced by the Marx toy company in the early or mid-fifties.  It's gotten quite a bit of Forum attention recently too. The others are, I think, all old Pyro kits from the fifties.  At least two, the tug and the "North Atlantic Fishing Trawler," are copies of Model Shipways solid-hull wood kits.  (The two gentlemen who founded Model Shipways referred to Pyro as "Pirate Plastics.") The tug's original name was Dispatch No. 9, and the trawler's name was Hildina. That little Golden Hind (it's about six inches long) brings back particularly pleasant memories; my mother bought me one at the local drugstore for 50 cents when I was in grade school.  It bears scarcely any resemblance to a real ship, of course, but it was great fun to build and paint.  Pyro made a series of sailing ships that cost 50 cents apiece. By the standards of the modern scale modeler, they range from pretty good (the shrimp boat, CG patrol boat, trawler, tug, lightship, Flore, Wappen von Hamburg, Sea Witch, and "Tuna Clipper") to the awful (the little ex-50-cent Pyro kits.)  In any case, a fun trip down memory lane.

Shipwreck wrote:

Lindberg has an interesting line of ships and other models. Does anyone have an opinion of the quality of these kits?

Like everything else it will depend on which ships you are interested in the lineup. Generally speaking you are not dealing with anything close to state of the art. AFAIK almost all of the product is decades old. Their large kits like Hood and Bismarck are simply awful, unless you are looking for pool toys or moving BB targets. Some of their larger scale small ships are acceptable, with a lot of work. If you could let folks know specifically which ones you are interested in you will get a greater, more particular response. WS

i'll be doing a build thread on the Jolly Roger/ La flore here in the next couple of weeks. i'll let you know as I've never done a lindberg kit myself.

 I have two "Lindberg projects" in build at this time. HMS Surprise, the movie version, and the Bobtail Cruiser. Lindberg kits, for the most part, are usable for starters. Most all, require a lot of extra detail, and it's here that the problems show up. A lot of Lindberg's models are "Box scale", and there aren't a lot of available "upgrade parts", so most all of them will have to be scratch built. One example is the Bobtail Cruiser, at between 1/168-1/172 scale, depending on where you measure the model, there isn't any after market parts(I have started scratchbuilding the eight, MK-106 5" Bomroc launchers). There have been a couple of nicely done "Jolly Roger" builds posted in this forum.

I have one Lindberg build, the J Lloyd Int'l re-issue of the USS Yorktown (CV-10), underway and two other kits (the Dock Landing Ship and HMS Hood) waiting.  There is a wide range of quality in many of these kits with the later ones being far more detailed than the kits that were tooled in the 50's.  I'm not sure if the sailing ships (with various pirate names) that are highly detailed and very nice models are original to Lindberg or were re-packaged by Lindberg from kits developed for the European market, perhaps another forum member has some insight on this.

The "Bobtail Cruiser" kit (USS Carronade) mentioned above is a nice kit for super-detailing and builds up to a very impressive model of a unique fighting ship, and to my knowledge, the 1:256 model of the dock landing ship is also unique to Lindberg.

Regards,

Mike 

I'm still lookin for the LSD Oakhill which Lindberg has been advertising ,but I haven't seen in the shops yet. Any body heard???

I agree with most of what has been said already.  It is important to note that Lindberg has bought molds from all sorts of companys now out of business (Pyro, etc), and some are good, some are OK, and some are truly awful.  It really depends on which kit you are considering!  One kit that I haven't seen mentioned which I thought was pretty good (even if it IS quite old!) is the schooner named variously 'war of independence armed schooner,' Roger B. Taney,' and I think one or two others.  This builds up into quite a nice Baltimore Clipper-type schooner, and I have one in progress that I have painted up like 'Pride of Baltimore II'......