Both are reissues of extremely old kits. Please forgive a post-middle-aged modeler's exercise in nostalgia.
The "new" Revell Germany
Hawaiian Pilot appears to be a straight reissue, including the original box art. The original C-3 freighter kit appeared under that name in 1956, and was molded entirely in white plastic. (My source is the bible on the subject, Thomas Graham's
Remembering Revell Model Kits.) It was in the Revell catalog under that name through 1959. In 1962 it was reissued under the name S.S.
Dr. Lykes; if my memory serves, the only change from the original was the decal sheet. (The new version had "Lykes Lines" in huge white letters on the sides of the hull.) In 1964 the kit reappeared yet again, this time in grey plastic in the guise of a Navy cargo ship, under the name U.S.S.
Burleigh. (That was one of Revell's typical deceptions of the period. The real
Burleigh didn't look much like that.) This time it had some additional parts, in the form of 5-inch and 20mm guns.
Kit collectors assumed for a long time that they would never see this one in its merchant livery again. That's probably why, in Mr. Graham's book, the original
Hawaiian Pilot is listed as one of the more valuable Revell ship kits, with a going price in 2004 of $120-$140. I suspect the recent announcement of the Revell Germany reissue caused some kit collectors to fall on their swords.
The T-2 tanker originally appeared under the name S.S.
J.L. Hanna in 1956, molded in dark red. It apparently was one of Revell's weakest sellers; it was only on the market for a couple of years, and seems never to have been reissued in civilian markings by Revell U.S. (Apparently the collectors' market didn't think much of it either; Mr. Graham gives it a value of $50-$70.) It did reappear in grey plastic as the Navy oiler
Mission Capistrano, with a gun outfit about like the "
Burleigh's, in 1964. (Again, it wasn't an accurate model of that vessel; the real one was of a different class.) In that naval guise it got reissued a couple of years ago, I believe. I haven't seen the kit Revell Germany is currently marketing as the
Glasgow, but I suspect it's unmodified from the original.
Both kits, according to Mr. Graham, did make one other appearance (under their original names,
Hawaiian Pilot and
J.L. Hanna) in the U.S. The two of them and the harbor tug
Long Beach were boxed together as a "gift set" called "Merchant Fleet" for the Christmas season in 1956. In that set the freighter and the tug had pre-painted red hull bottoms. Mr. Graham values that set at $500-$600.
Both kits were typical products of their time. Their hulls were of the odd "semi-waterline" configuration Revell was using those days: they were chopped off flat at a level somewhere around the empty line. They had no propellers; their rudders were represented by stubs, showing the portion that would be visible above the water when the ships were empty. But each kit included a pair of "stands," shaped like trestles. (Why anybody would mount a waterline model on stands like that is something of a mystery, but several other Revell ship kits of the fifties were made like that.) They had overscale "guardrails" molded in solid plastic along the edges of the decks. The superstructures were molded in layers, with the bulkheads split halfway up; the portholes were represented by semi-circular cutouts in the layers. (That was considered high-tech scale modeling at the time.) The
Hawaiian Pilot was considered one of the most difficult plastic models of the time because its superstructure included dozens of tiny plastic deck stanchions, which had to be glued individually into sockets and adjusted so they touched the deck above. When my mother bought me the kit that task was totally beyond the capacity of my 6-year-old fingers. (My older brother managed to get most of them in the right places, but some of his were leaning over. He also painted his hull black. I left mine white, of course - which made the white decals on it difficult to see.) The
Hanna didn't have any deck stanchions, but it did have one really cool feature: you could look through the engineroom skylight in the after superstructure and see the engine. (Well, a shape molded into the deck below that looked sort of like an engine.)
Neither of these kits can be considered up to the standards of 2005. Both of them are certainly capable of being turned into good scale models, but it would take a great deal of work. (They're on 1/400 scale; Gold Medal Models does make some photo-etched railings, ladders, and other parts that would help a great deal.) I personally, however, am going to be looking for one of those German
Hawaiian Pilot kits, sheerly for nostalgia value. And I want to see if my 54-year-old fingers can set up those stanchions properly.