Tenth Birthday Guest Article: A Paramount Hobbies Exclusive! Part 2 by Rob C

To many of us, it was the Science Fiction line (called "Space Vehicles" in the catalog) which really made a Paramount Hobbies fan. In the U.S. at least, Paramount Hobbies released an astounding 20 kits of a truly fantastic nature, the likes of which most American kids had never seen before - let alone knew existed. 

As the Paramount Hobbies line was rarely seen in actual hobby shops, fans had to hunt down these most beautiful and rare kits at weird places like smoke shops, convenience stores, department stores, and even greeting card shops. (This author stumbled on Paramount Sci-Fi kits at the most unusual places, finding a long-coveted Jet Dill Moon Tank kit at a gas station convenience shop in New Hampshire!)

            The kits themselves were absolutely fantastic, as anyone familiar with the first wave of Japanese SF kits knows already. In many ways crude and simplistic, in other ways too beautiful for words, the spaceships and cars and tanks were hands-down the coolest things available at the time,  light years ahead of the dreary Aurora Lost in Space models or the AMT Star Trek models. 

Yet with the Science Fiction model kits especially, there was often a shocking discrepancy between the seductive depiction of the vehicles in the mesmerizing box art, and the crude, cheap, toy-like quality of the actual assembly kit. It was sort of like being ripped off, but the end product was still so cool you gladly accepted it. It became part of the "Paramount Hobbies Experience," wondering how widely the two manifestations of an art concept would vary. 

And when the actual model faithfully matched the glorious illustration of it, as with Otaki's Giran Missile Tank (Paramount's Luna Missile Tank), it was almost too good to be true. When built, it became an almost magical invocation of something truly "out of this world," something "impossible" come to life.

            There seem to have been two different lines of kits released in Canada and the U.S., with very little overlap, and the Canadian branch may have begun distributing their kits as early as 1967. The bulk of the U.S. kits were released in 1968 and 1969, and the hobby line seems to have closed up shop by the very early 1970s. (The author even traveled to Pawtucket, Rhode Island in the summer of 1971 to visit the Paramount Hobbies sales office, and the company had already left the premises! Paramount had rented a tiny office in the giant Hasbro Toy complex at that address and had, according to a Hasbro sales rep whom I spoke with briefly, vacated their space earlier in the year.)

            So, the Paramount Hobbies "experiment" was very short-lived, at least in its U.S. incarnation. The reasons for this may be many. The market was flooded with product during the time period, with model kit giants like AMT, Aurora, Monogram and Lindberg dominating the industry. Paramount Hobbies, possibly because of their parent company, as noted distributed their hobby line almost entirely to venues other than hobby shops, including greetings card shops, stationary stores, toy stores, department stores, even gas station convenience stores. 

In other words, Paramount Hobbies tended to distribute their line to exactly where they distributed their greeting card lines, which may have been convenient from a distribution point of view but was likely disastrous in terms of finding a loyal audience for their product.

            Also, being an early example of importing foreign kits into the domestic market may have met with some resistance or prejudice on the part of modelers, who were weaned on U.S. manufacturers and their lines, and were perhaps wary of venturing into kits from another country. 

Another reason may have been that the quality of the Paramount Hobbies product varied widely. Some kits, such as many of the automobiles, were impressive and quite detailed, coming from established manufacturers such as Bandai, Fujimi and Eidai. 

Many of the ship models, coming from the renowned Nichimo concern, were also nicely molded and quite handsome. Other genres fared less well; the science-fiction vehicles, for example, although highly collectible today due to their rarity and historical value, were by and large extremely primitive, poorly designed, lacking detail and according to some, "little more than unassembled toys," a not-inaccurate description. 

As well, several of the Paramount armor line were crude, toy-like kits with no detail and little to recommend them. Truthfully, one never quite knew what one would end up with when he purchased a Paramount kit, and while an open-minded person might find this uncertainty intriguing, it is likely most modelers learned to be wary of this exotic line from a foreign clime.

            Another factor which may have inadvertently doomed the Paramount line to early distinction is a feature which, at first glance, might have seemed a valuable selling point. Many of the kits, covering virtually all genres, were motorized, coming with either a wind-up clock-work motor, or else a battery-operated Mabuchi DC motor and gearbox. 

Proudly announced on the product packaging as an "Action Powered Kit," this "selling point" may have reinforced the notion that these kits were not serious scale models, but merely "unassembled toys." Of course, all of these kits were originally produced in Japan as motorized models, as the distinction between toy and scale model was far less sharp in Japanese youth culture, but what was likely a huge selling point in their original country may have been a  liability when tested in North America.

            But to a certain weird brand of baby boomer, there was nothing more exciting than to be walking down a junk store aisle and seeing these immortal words: "A Paramount Hobbies Exclusive!"

Listed below are all known Paramount Hobbies Science Fiction Kits:

0982 Space Invader Crawler (Imai)

1001 Tiger Jet (???)

1050 Thunderbird 1 (Imai)

1051 Thunderbird 2 (Imai)

1052 Thunderbird 3 (Imai)

1053 Thunderbird 4 (Imai)

1054 Thunderbird 5 (Imai)

1055 Lunar Sky Ship (Sky Ship One) (Imai)

1059 Moon Explorer (small Zero-X) (Imai)

1060 FAB-1 (Imai)

1070 Mars Explorer (Large Zero-X) (Imai)

1200 Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (small) (Imai)

1201 Spectrum Patrol Car (Imai)

1202 Spectrum Command Car (Imai)

1210 Maximum Security Vehicle (Imai)

1211 Spectrum Patrol Car (Imai)

1220 Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (small) (Imai)

1221 Spectrum Secret Carrier (Imai)

1221 Secret Car (Imai)

1270 Spectrum Cloud Base (Imai)

1260 Atomic Powered Carrier (Imai)

1280 Angel Interceptor (Imai)

1271 Spectrum Passenger Jet (Imai)

1272 Spectrum Helicopter (Imai)

1517 Remote Control Thunder Jet (???)

2009 Jet Flash R2 (LS)

2010 Jet Cat 9 (LS)

2011 Fire Bird 009 (LS)

3001 Solar Ship Beetle II (Midori)

3002 Planet Ship Meteor 2 (Midori)

3003 Mercury Space Ship (Midori)

3004 Space Command Tank 5 (Midori)

3005 Astro Car (Midori)

(photo P09)

3006 Barracuda Hydro Tank (Nichimo?)

3007 Space Patrol Car XKW (Otaki)

3101 Jet Drill Moon Tank(Otaki)

3102 Luna Missile Tank (Otaki)

3103 Explorer VII Space Truck (Japan Hobby)

3201 Planetoid Echo 7 (Midori)

3202 Orbital Ship Super Arrow (Midori)

3203 Astro Boat Super 7 (Midori)

4101 Stingray (small) (Midori)

4103 Stingray (large) (Midori)

Hope you enjoyed it!

by
Rob C
USA

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ADDENDUM
2019

Below is Paramount Hobbies (Canada) page 16, with the IMAI Missiles series.