I just love the box art on this 1960s vintage Tamiya 1/35 British Armoured Car Saladin MK-2. Much better than the bland white background on their modern kits.
The vehicle is literally flying through the air, so I guess it belongs to an airborne unit ? The real Saladin was over 11 tons, so this one must have been really travelling to reach take-off speed.
I do not know what the correct order is for the box art styles, but both are likely from the 1960s.
Two photographs from Worthpoint.
Paul Adams from New Zealand
Yes, the golden age of model kits invariably included a magnificent illustration. I don’t know what happened in the industry, but somewhere around 1975 (?) model kits started using boring photographs of the assembled models. Maybe the artists’ work became too expensive? Or maybe there were complaints from modelers (or their parents?) that the beautiful box art never matched the kit inside? That never bothered me, cuz the box illustration to me was a separate entity, a bonus in fact, a pretty picture of the model you were going to build. But box art was so cool to many of us, even back then. SFZ
ReplyDeleteRead Shunsaku Tamiya's book Master Modeller to learn about Shigeru Komatsuzaki's art and it's importance in selling kits. This is a perfect example of the master at work!
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