I've been flickin' through my old Classic Plastic book by Rick Polizzi.
I got it Xmas 1997.
Its stuffed with magnificent model kits from the golden age of the 50's and 60's in America.
One of my fave ranges in the book are the Frantics by Hawk and my fave amongst them is a kit called the Frantic Cats.
Released to cash-in on the so-called British Invasion of the States by the Beatles and fellow beat bands in the early Sixties, Frantics appears to have perfectly frozen the cross-over between different youth cultures in America at the time.
Frantic Cats is a fine example. Here's the wonderful box art as it appears on Ebay. You can see two beautiful young things boppin' to the latest beats in a very appealing and zany cartoon style.
This pro-painted example of the kit I saw on the Bay showcases brilliantly the excitement and poise of the model itself. Both boppers are cleverly caught in mid-groove creating a hypnotic scene of balance and symmetry.
Yet somehow the two characters don't say the Beatles to me.
The boy's boots on the cover have been replaced by loafer style shoes and socks on the model more closely associated with rock 'n' roll. Similarly the girl's look shouts more Bill Haley than the Fab Four.
And so to the beard. Despite the Beatle's mop top, the chinstrap beard makes me think of beatnik culture, Bob Dylan and folkies more than anything. I suppose that's what the Beatles invaded.
Similarly juxta'd were the designers, middle aged company men looking for the next big thing and the fearless youths they so desperately hope to emulate in plastic. It was and is a tense stand-off of generations and sub-cultures.
For me the appeal of these Frantic Cats and the other Frantics is just this, that tension caught in plastic, freezing the borderland between the Beatles and the Beatniks, between folk and rock, between hep and hip and between corporate America and its youth.
I'll explore some more Frantics soon.
