"The First of the Many"

[LUKE'57]

"The First of the Many"


Kinda like the "Last of the Many" Hawker Hurricane in the "Battle of Britain Flight" that commerates the last one built back in '44, I guess you could call this Wrangler Thunderbird, from Monogram's original series of two Fords and two Buicks, the "First of the Many" when it comes to what I believe may be the longest running model kit series ever.



I remember opening the box on these kits after fabricating my own racing parts for so msny years and being amazed at what was in it. It was like a back yard mechanic getting a key to the back door at Holman Moody and a license to steal.

I know that there had been the occasional race car kit and that wonderful series of "one size fits all" MPC stockers in the '70's but nothing with this kind of accuracy on a scale such as this. For sheer volumn of kits produced, these two basic tools (front steer and rear steer chassis) had to have been the logest running and most produced tool in the history of plastic car kits.

I worked for a hobby wholesaler supplying hobby shops with plastic kits of all types when these kits were in production. Usually I would order kits one or two cases at a time on all but some of the new releases and would have plenty to go around. But when the feeding frenzy really hit with the stock cars I would order from ten to twenty cases of the stock cars as a general rule. And when the new Lumina kit hit with the familiar black paint scheme my initial order was over two hundred cases.

I wonder just how many of these kits have been manufactured in the course of the molding runs with only small changes done. And what kind of profit margin when new kits could be added with only the expenditure of box art and decals needed for an brand new release?

In another Battle of Britain reference it could be said that, "Never have so many owed so much to so few" in the money generated by the sale of these kits that went to fund new tooling of all kinds of models that might not have been made otherwise.

I know that they were the stimulus that got me back into building when all my dirt car models got sold in the divorce auction. I might not have started over and have the darkside and other stock car models I have now if these kits hadn't caught my fancy in the early eighties. I think it would amaze us if we knew just how many of these little race cars have been molded since those first four kits back in the early eighties started a whole new kit, decal and detail parts market way back when.

[freakray]

Originally Posted by LUKE'57

"The First of the Many"


Kinda like the "Last of the Many" Hawker Hurricane in the "Battle of Britain Flight" that commerates the last one built back in '44, I guess you could call this Wrangler Thunderbird, from Monogram's original series of two Fords and two Buicks, the "First of the Many" when it comes to what I believe may be the longest running model kit series ever.

I am assuming when you say 'the longest running model kit series ever' you're referring to the genre of car modeling only?

[tigeraid]

Dale Earnhardt in a Ford... so wrong.

Great looking model though.

[LUKE'57]

You think that one looks bad then you should have seen his pink '56 Ford or one of those raggedy little Falcons from the early days. LOL

Maybe not the right choice of words for the kit, should have been most kits produced from a mold type. These kits, like the real cars they represented, went basicaly unchanged for years. Monogram got a LOT of mileage out of those molds with only minor changes.

There may have been other molds such as some planes or ships that ran longer but they couldn't hold a candle to the sheer numbers racked up by the race car kits. I was a buyer for a wholesale hobby distributor during those years and while I would order a case or two (4 to 6 kits per case) of the long running plane kits that were usually only availible in one version at the time, I was ordering twenty to one hundred cases (12 kits to the case) of five or more racers that were the same kit with only decal changes. That counts up in a hurry.