Some years back, I saw an amazing toy at auction on ebay, battered and incomplete, it was the Waco tinplate space station. Naturally interest in the rarity was high and it quickly vanished for a tidy sum into an international buyers collection. Even though i'm not a tin fan, I could appreciate the beauty and complexity of this wonderful toy and I was even more surprised when I realised that it was lifted directly from a model kit from around 1959, made by Revell.
Just recently, during a space book resurgence, I came across a book with the very same model on the cover, which I duly bought. Unfortunately, the cover was the only interestin part of it, as the book was almost entirely text!
The model kit seems to have been quite sizeable and for the 1950's, very complex. A partial restoration project appeared on an auction site in the US, which shows some of the interior detail.
The box art for both the Waco and Revell versions is quite spectacular and the kit came with a very finely illustrated pamphlet.
Scale Model News carried a very interesting article recently, showing how rocket engineer Ellwyn Angle designed both the Space Station and the fabulous Manned Lunar Space Ship - another fine creation from Revell.
http://www.ninfinger.org/models/html_pix/station.html
http://www.scalemodelnews.com/2012/03/rocket-engineer-who-designed-revell-xsl.html
