Customer Reviews

Remembering Revell Model Kits (Schiffer Book for Collectors)

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This book takes a look at the history of Revell in its heyday of the 1950s to the 1970s. The book looks at the development of everything from the kit itself to the artists who drew the box tops which drove me nuts because I could never even come close to making the model like what was on the box top.

I was born in the 70s when Revell was starting to go through the turmoil that consolidated the plastic model industry so all this history is new to me. This book makes me want to go back in time and build most of these kits with only my trusty tube of glue as and a powerful exhaust fan as my companions.

Although I generally build the Tamigawa kits when I get the chance, I still have many happy memories of building assembled models from Revell even though they were poorly painted and badly built (fault of the builder, not the company.)

My only quibble is I wished the author would have spent more detail in describing how a kit goes from idea to market.

If you are a modeller who enjoyed building the planes, vehicles and ships of Revell, you will find this an enjoyable history into the company that helped millions (including me) find things to do on a rainy day.

This book is just fantastic. It's a great reference - but most of all, it's a wonderful trip down memory lane.

I bought this book because I was a model freak back in the 60's and early 70's. It brought back some pleasant memories however some of the art could have been printed better. Also some of the opinions on the kits were a little off base.

On coffee table books such as this I usually borrow a copy from my local library before I lay down 30-plus dollars at my high street stockist (hobby shop, Yank). It's a good thing that I followed my usual pattern with "Remembering Revell..." since the book covers only US-based operations during the period 1952-1979. Revell's sizeable, more profitable and argueably more interesting UK, West German, Mexican (Lodela) and Japanese design and manufaturing operations are virtually ignored. The UK shop does get some ink but it is primarily spent criticizing the British tool and die makers. To be accurate the book should have been titled something like "US Revell Models 1952-1979".
The author has given the reader a well organized, smoothly written and beautifully illustrated book, albeit, one of limited scope. The text's limitation goes beyond the time and geography. The end of Revell as an independent, closely-held firm is dismissively summarized in less than half a page. All that the reader is told is that "costs rose" and "Profit margins had always been slim",...oh. What does that mean? If margins had always been minimal how had Revell survived, no, prospered as the world's largest model manufacturer? The author does tell the reader about changing liesure time options for US children and teenage boys, Revell's traditional market, that cut into US sales but nothing else. The effects of Revell's always more proftable foreign operations and the emergence of fine scale modeling as an adult hobby in the US go undicussed as do the oil shocks of 1973-74 and 1979 as they effected the cost of Revell's raw materials. Similiarly, the place of Revell in the stagnant N. American and W. European econonies of the late 1970's is ignored. This is not a tome aimed at MBA's but I'd like the full story about why my favorite boyhood model company folded. I suspect it is rapped up in the early death of the founder and the presence of a fuzzy undefined corporated hierarchy with ill-defined authority, responsiblity and accountablity.
Additionally, be advised that the introduction and much of the first chapter are lifted from this same author's earlier book about Aurora models.

Please save your money if you purchased the second edition. This volume, the third edition, is no diffrent than the second edition. Bottom line. Save your money and pass this by.