by jpeeler » Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:24 pm
This thread got me interested, so I hauled out the Thomas Graham book about Revell kits, which tells the story of the Missouri kit. When Revell decided to go into the model kit business, one of its advisers suggested a ship as the first kit because plastic molding technologies opened up possibilities not readily available in the wooden kits of the day. They decided on Missouri because that subject would look dramatic, tied in with World War II, and was famous as the site of the Japanese surrender. (The NBC television series Victory at Sea was also a factor.)
One problem was that the Navy would not cooperate with the project, citing security concerns. The three-view drawings were based on what they could find in books and magazines, and since Missouri's underwater configuration was off-limits to researchers that's why this kit was the first of Revell's "flat-bottom fleet." Once that was done, patternmaker Tony Bulone carved the patterns for the kit from plastic blocks, and the patterns were done in the same scale the kit would be (unlike the later practice of making patterns in much larger scale to be pantographed to the target scale). Revell paid for the tooling up-front, and if the model wasn't successful, Revell would risk bankruptcy.
The Missouri kit hit the market in 1953 and was an immediate sensation, both to the hobby industry and with the buying public, which could finally acquire a nice-looking ship model that offered more and easier detail than was available in the wooden kits of the day. At some point a duplicate mold with minor changes was made to provide for production of a short-lived motorized version sold as New Jersey, and I've never been able to figure out if it was the original Missouri mold that formed the basis of the motorized kit, or if the duplicate tool was used for the motorized New Jersey.
Either way, we have that old kit to thank not only for Revell itself, but for pretty much making injection-molded plastic ships a thing. Every ship kit we've built since can pretty much trace its roots to the Revell Missouri.
Jodie Peeler
This thread got me interested, so I hauled out the Thomas Graham book about Revell kits, which tells the story of the [i]Missouri[/i] kit. When Revell decided to go into the model kit business, one of its advisers suggested a ship as the first kit because plastic molding technologies opened up possibilities not readily available in the wooden kits of the day. They decided on [i]Missouri[/i] because that subject would look dramatic, tied in with World War II, and was famous as the site of the Japanese surrender. (The NBC television series [i]Victory at Sea[/i] was also a factor.)
One problem was that the Navy would not cooperate with the project, citing security concerns. The three-view drawings were based on what they could find in books and magazines, and since [i]Missouri[/i]'s underwater configuration was off-limits to researchers that's why this kit was the first of Revell's "flat-bottom fleet." Once that was done, patternmaker Tony Bulone carved the patterns for the kit from plastic blocks, and the patterns were done in the same scale the kit would be (unlike the later practice of making patterns in much larger scale to be pantographed to the target scale). Revell paid for the tooling up-front, and if the model wasn't successful, Revell would risk bankruptcy.
The [i]Missouri[/i] kit hit the market in 1953 and was an immediate sensation, both to the hobby industry and with the buying public, which could finally acquire a nice-looking ship model that offered more and easier detail than was available in the wooden kits of the day. At some point a duplicate mold with minor changes was made to provide for production of a short-lived motorized version sold as [i]New Jersey[/i], and I've never been able to figure out if it was the original [i]Missouri[/i] mold that formed the basis of the motorized kit, or if the duplicate tool was used for the motorized [i]New Jersey[/i].
Either way, we have that old kit to thank not only for Revell itself, but for pretty much making injection-molded plastic ships a thing. Every ship kit we've built since can pretty much trace its roots to the Revell [i]Missouri[/i].
Jodie Peeler