The most influential (plastic) ship kits ever produced.

Im late to the party, but here is my top three:

1. Revell PT-109 and derivatives. Still produced, still one of the main "introductory" ship builds available.

2. As MR mentioned, the Dragon Buchanan - just raised the bar to a height never seen before, at a very affordable price.

3. 700 scale waterline series - already mentioned..cemented 700 scale as the "divine" scale and helped moved shipbuilding from the "sticks" display to a "water" display. You can spend a lifetime building nothing but waterline series ships.

Pavlvs makes an excellent point.  The introduction of the "Waterline Series" really revolutionized styrene warship kits, literally around the world.

I don't remember exactly when the first kits in the series were released; I think it was in the early seventies.  It originated with a consortium of four Japanese manufacturers:  Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima.  (Other companies, of course, jumped on the bandwagon later.)  The first several batches of Waterline Series kits all represented Japanese ships.  That was great news for American modelers; prior to that time we'd had virtually nothing Japanese except a handful of Yamato's.  I'm not sure it would be possible to designate one kit as the first one in the Waterline Series.  I think the first ones that arrived at the hobby shop where I worked were the Tamiya Mogami-class cruisers, but lots of others hit at almost the same time.

At any rate, the introduction of those first 1/700 kits certainly was a turning point in the history of ship modeling - from both the hobbyist's and the manufacturer's perspective.

My nomination as far as plastic sailing ships are concerned would  have to be the Revell  Cutty Sark, Constitution, and Heller Victory.These set the standard for their time and were large enough to include more realistic fittings and provided modellers of all capabilities the opportunity to derive a great sense of satisfaction. I can still remember the wow factor  I experienced back in the 1960s on opening the Constitution box, it was a revelation  compared to the smaller Airfix kits I had hitherto been modelling. It was the Constitution that really got me into serious modelling of sailing vessels, and I suspect also for many others.

Based on ships that still exist, for which there is wealth of information, these kits still provide great modelling opportunities, especially for advanced modelling enhancements.

I have little knowledge of 'modern' vessel kits or have much interest in modelling them, with the exception perhaps of the Matchbox 1:72 scale Flower Class Corvette, which is a personal favourite.

 

I don't know how they started but the Tamiya Missouri et. al. and the Hasegawa/Fujimi/Tamiya Water Line series pretty much established the focus on actual scale rather than "Box Scale" and since then 1/350 and 1/700 became the scales of choice in plastic model ship kits. They also raised the bar considerably regarding precision and quality of the kits themselves. I remember my first Tamiya 1/700 ship that astonished me with its excellent fit and precision.(The model was the carrier Taiho) I built these ships to the exclusion of all others for years. They were at least influential to me. As far as sailing ships go, I think Revell's Constitution and Cutty sark still set the standard.

I know this is more than three, sorry.

Taking out the nostalgia factor, 10 years from now we may all be thinking that the Dragon Buchanan was the most influential ship model ever produced...only time will tell...

 

 

MJH wrote:  "Fair comment as regards the Heller Victory but do you think there are any ship kits that may have been so influential?"

Sure!  The aforementioned Revell Missouri and the warships that Revell issued over the next year (Fletcher-class destroyer, Midway-class carrier, Baltimore-class heavy cruiser, PT boat, and the Nautilus) pretty much established what modelers expected plastic warship models to look like - how big they should be, how much detail they ought to have, and how much they ought to cost.  Lindberg, Aurora, Renwal, and other companies jumped on the bandwagon.  (A bit of research would be necessary to establish just how all this worked.  I'm not sure, for instance, exactly when Lindberg's old Essex-class carrier was initially released. It may have beaten some of those Revell kits.)

In the area of sailing ships - I certainly agree with Jake about the importance of the Revell Constitution and Cutty Sark in terms of the influence they've had on consumers.  On the other hand, it's easy to forget nowadays just how small the range of available sailing ship kits of that size ever was.  Revell actually only made three that were honest-to-goodness different scale models - and released them over the short span of six years:  the Cutty Sark (1959), Kearsarge (1961), and Constitution (1965).  All the other big Revell sailing ships (Thermopylae, Pedro Nunes, Alabama, and United States) were modified reissues of those three.  Heller made two that belong in the same category (and, I imagine, were heavily influenced by the Revell competition):  the Soleil Royal and Victory.  (Maybe the Reale and Chebec ought to be counted there too; I don't remember just how they compared in terms of dimensions, box size, and price.)  Those big Revell sailing ships dominated the market, in a sense, for decades.  When the Revell Cutty Sark was initially released it cost $10.00, and was, I believe, the most expensive plastic kit on the U.S. market.  It was the sort of thing that adult modelers bought and kids (like me) dreamed of getting for Christmas.  But the truth of the matter is that, in terms of the size of the range of releases, great big plastic sailing ship kits never really caught on.

In terms of influence on the sailing ship kit market, I'd nominate the original, 1/192 Revell Constitution.  Originally released in 1956 (and still on the market), it did set a pattern:  good historical accuracy, better detail than the solid-hull wood kits that made up the competition (dig those little tiny full-length guns sticking out of the ports!), a handy size (about 18" long) to go on the mantle, and a price ($3.00 originally, if I remember right) that wouldn't break the bank (and was far lower than the wood competition).  It also introduced (I'm pretty sure) an alleged solution to the Great Ratline Problem:  plastic-coated thread "pre-formed ratlines."  Revell followed it up later that same year with its H.M.S. Bounty, and thereby set another standard:  a series of kits on varying scales, adjusted to fit a standard-sized box.  (To be fair, Revell was already doing something similar with its aircraft kits.)  In 1957 came the Revell Santa Maria, which (I think) introduced another dubious innovation: the vac-formed "sail."  The Revell fleet of sailing ships in those standard boxes grew to dominate the sailing ship market (at least in the U.S.) for at least twenty years.  Several other companies adopted the vac-formed sail; I think Airfix was the only other one that offered pre-formed, plastic-coated "shrouds and ratlines."  (Frankly I'm not sure either of those ideas was a good one, but there's no getting around their popularity.)

I'm a little nervous about asserting that Revell was the first in all those respects.  Pyro, ITC, Marx, Aurora, and Airfix were also producing sailing ships in the mid-fifties; it's possible that one of them offered a kit with vac-formed sails, for example, before Revell's first one in 1957.  (I have more precise info about Revell than any other company, thanks to Dr. Graham's book.  None of this is original to me.) 

I should also emphasize that my own personal experience with this stuff is almost entirely confined to the American side of the hobby - and in the grand scheme of things that's not fair.  Airfix, for instance, was getting into the twentieth-century warship business at about the same time Revell was.  I don't know exactly when the first Airfix warship kit appeared; I think in the late fifties or very early sixties, but I'm not sure.  (Was it the Hood?  The Nelson?  The Bismarck?  There's a book about the history of Airfix; does anybody out there have a copy?)  Airfix probably deserves credit for establishing the "constant scale" principle; all its modern warships (and liners) from the beginning were on 1/600.

This is a fun, interesting topic.  The more I think about it, the harder it is to narrow the list to just three kits.  If I absolutely had to do that, I guess my choices would all be from Revell:  1/535 Missouri, 1/192 Constitution, and 1/96 Cutty Sark.  But I'd expect plenty of arguments.

jtilley wrote:

How to define words like "important" and "influential" is an interesting subject.  I fully agree that the Heller Victory is a great kit - one of the best ever.  (It does have its problems, but there's just no denying that it's one of the finest, most elaborate products ever to come from the plastic kit industry.)  But its influence is another matter.  Has it had a big influence on model builders?  Unquestionably (though I suspect it's also driven quite a few people out of the hobby, because they insisted on buying something so advanced before they were ready for it).  Has it signficantly influenced the plastic kit manufacturing industry?  I'd be interested to see some research on that, but my instinctive answer is - I doubt it.

Fair comment as regards the Heller Victory but do you think there are any ship kits that may have been so influential?

<>Michael

I agree with jtilley about the Missouri. Not only the Revell but the Tamiya 1/350 as well. Looking at ship modeller's galleries, I think it is on everybody's list.

How to define words like "important" and "influential" is an interesting subject. 

I fully agree that the Heller Victory is a great kit - one of the best ever.  (It does have its problems, but there's just no denying that it's one of the finest, most elaborate products ever to come from the plastic kit industry.) 

But its influence is another matter.  Has it had a big influence on model builders?  Unquestionably (though I suspect it's also driven quite a few people out of the hobby, because they insisted on buying something so advanced before they were ready for it).  Has it signficantly influenced the plastic kit manufacturing industry?  I'd be interested to see some research on that, but my instinctive answer is - I doubt it.  It was initially released, if memory serves (beware:  it frequently doesn't these days) in about 1978.  By that time Heller was almost the only manufacturer producing sailing ship kits.  Revell (of the U.S.) had released its last one, the nice little Viking ship, in 1977.  (Revell Germany has released a few since then, but all of them have been relatively small.)  Imai was enjoying its brief heyday in the late seventies; just what influence Heller may have had on that firm I have no idea, but it never released anything of the size and complexity of the Heller Victory - and went out of business shortly thereafter. 

Heller itself never released another kit of that size. (La Reale and the Chebec came close, and in some respects were better kits.  Did they appear before or after the Victory?  I'm not sure; I think all three date from just about the same time.)  Airfix released a handful of sailing ships, all relatively small, in the late seventies, but was out of the sailing ship business by about 1980 and hasn't produced a new one since.  About the only other plastic kit companies that ever produced sailing ships in any significant numbers were Pyro, Aurora, and ITC, all of which were out of business by the late seventies (though some of the Pyro kits were still being sold - as they are now - in Lindberg boxes). 

It looks to me like, unless the plastic sailing ship business enjoys the renaissance that Bill Morrison is hoping for, the Heller Victory will have to be seen as one of its last hurrahs - the end of an era rather than the beginning of one.  I hope I'm mistaken, but that's certainly how things look at the moment.  

The logic (if that's an appropriate word) of restricting the list is merely to keep it manageable.  If one listed every kit reckoned by anybody to be significant in this context it could run into a hundred or more (in ships alone), but that's not my purpose.  The aim is to refer to a representative sample or two from each genre to illustrate a point rather than create an exhaustive list.

Perhaps that's a suitable subject for its own thread. 

It's sometimes difficult for an individual to be objective, at least it is for me - obviously just because a model was a milestone for me it doesn't follow that it was significant in any other way, and I have prejudices against certain brands, I daresay we all have.  That's why I'm canvassing views from as wide a range of people as possible.

<>For example, I dislike Heller and avoid buying anything made by them (because of bad experiences many years ago), yet I would tend to put the Heller Victory in the list based on the comments I've read in this very forum over a period of several years.  It does seem to have set a standard but has it influenced other manufacturers or raised our expectations and effected the way be buy and build kits?  That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Michael 

I wouldn't want to try to narrow the "influential" or "ground-breaking" category down to just three kits.  But if I were trying to do it, I'd have to consider the old Revell Iowa-class battleship.

It was originally released (as the Missouri) in 1953 - the first ship model that originated with Revell.  (The title "first plastic ship model ever" probably belongs to the Varney Gato-class submarine, a revised version of which is still around under the Lindberg label.  If I'm not mistaken, it orginally appeared in about 1948.  It was the subject of a "Classic Kits" column in FSM a few years back.)  And Revell briefly marketed a series of tiny sailing ships in bottles that originated with the old company Gowland Creations in 1952.  But the Missouri was the first genuine Revell ship kit.  (All this Revell information comes from Dr. Thomas Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.  He suggests that the old Iowa-class battleship "may be Revell's all time best seller.")

It's been reissued many times - and is in the current Revell catalog.  Frankly I wish this old fossil would get permanently relegated to the realm of collectors; it is, by modern standards, an awful kit.  Its hull is misshapen (partly because the real ships' hull lines were still classified in 1953), the level of detail is primitive (20mm guns cast integrally with the decks), and, in general, it's more a toy than a scale model.  In virtually any other business, the sale of such a product as "new" (as Revell bills it every few years) would be described as deceptive advertising.  But there's no denying its historical importance in establishing the hobby of plastic ship modeling, and getting the plastic kit business established in the United States.

Revell's USS Constitution also the Revell's Cutty Sark. Not only were the GROUND BREAKING in 1959, but to this day still some of th best molds ever produced in plastic.  Yes, I agree that the Heller model ships (Victory, Chebec, Royal Louis etc,) have "set the standard" but in 1959 Revell set the world on fire with thes 2 models.

I would love to see the raw numbers of kits produced and sold as compared to Heller's above mentioned models.

Heller's HMS Victory. It's average price on e-bay for the past two years has been $122.00.