REMEMBERING REVELL MODEL KITS: A BOOK REVIEW

Here is another quick look at one of the reference books from my library.

Remembering Revell Model Kits, Thomas Graham, Schiffer Publishing, USA, 2002, 2nd Edition 2004, 3rd Edition 2008.

There are some reference books you use all the time, and this is one of them. Thomas Graham wrote books on the Big Three US model kit companies, and this is his second, on Revell. 

Revell was probably the closest US company to Airfix in Britain. They had a vast range of models, mostly covering the more serious side of modelling, with the occasional diversion in to more oddball areas.

Revell started out in California in 1941 as Precision Specialties (not to be confused with Precision Plastics in Pennsylvania). Again, the company began by making a variety of products, and moved in to toys after WW2. Their first kits came out in 1951, based on an existing line of toy cars, but now sold unassembled. 

Revell grew to be one of the Big Three model companies, with branches all over the world, but was sold in the late 1970s, and would eventually be merged with Monogram.

This book is similar to the previous volume on Aurora. My 2nd Edition has 174 pages. The first 144 are on glossy paper, and packed with well reproduced photographs, most in colour. 

The remaining 30 pages are on plain paper, and comprise listings of all the kits Revell produced from the 1950s to the 1970s, giving kit number, year of introduction, period of production, scale, and brief notes. Again there is a detailed history of the company, and the people behind it. 

The story only goes up to the sale of the company in 1979, and the later history is not covered. Also, the book concentrates on the US side of the company, rather than foreign operations.

The illustrations are beautiful - from some of the early toys, to original artwork, box tops, assembled models, store displays, and vintage advertising. 

Many are of items you are not likely to see in the flesh - such as the multi-kit Gift Sets, and oddballs like the Westinghouse Atomic Power Plant, or the Dr Seuss kits.

Paul Adams from New Zealand