Collecting Vintage Plastic Model Airplane Kits

This is a great book with beautiful model box art on every page along with some wonderful history of model kits. Highly recommended! Worth it for memories alone. I still remember building model airplanes with my dad on our kitchen table in the 50's. This book is filled with pictures of those kits and space kits too!

Great reference book. Super trip down memory lane! Full of great pictures and information. I really enjoyed the book and will review it countless times before I put it on the shelf. The pictures are very good quality and detail. Saw so many kits I built, have in the collection and will build and some I will never have but now at least I have a good picture of the model or at least of the box. Worth every penny especially if you get one of the used ones at a nice price.

For any male that grew up in the 1950s-1960s and was fascinated by things with wings, this book is as good as it gets. The quality and quantity of images of model kits and cover art is stunning and the author's pure exuberance in remembering these treasures made me smile . . . a lot. This book is both a great overview of the plastic model industry in its heyday as well as a personal time machine taking me back to a very meaningful time in my life.

Reading this book is like spending an evening with a really enthusiastic model kit collector. The author, Craig Kodera, loves model kits and everything about them, which, as a fellow kit collector and kit historian, I'm all for. This is not a book of lists, or company histories, or in-depth studies of the people behind the kits---it's about the hobby of kit collecting, what drives collectors; it's about what kit collectors love to talk about. And it's all through the lens of Mr. Kodera's personal experiences and personal kit collecting interest. The subject matter is Aircraft and Helicopters, Rockets, Missile kits and Space ships from the early years of the hobby until about the mid '60s, the most interesting era in kit creation. He is a big enthusiast of jets and modern aircraft of the time---pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, which is perhaps the book's greatest shortcoming. Still, to try and cover everything would dilute the rich vein he's tapped in his book. I would say that for Airliner collectors, this is a particularly well illustrated book. He does an excellent job illustrating many examples of the earliest plastic kits, and many of the transitional wood and plastic hybrids. The book is generously packed with excellent photos of box art---though not always of the boxes per se---many pictures have been neatly cropped and delicately outlined, which looks very clean, but also sometimes loses a tiny bit of the box edges. There are, however, many pictures of open boxes with sprues and contents visible, particularly the kits that had the more impressive packaging. I would say this may be the best-illustrated kit collecting book so far. Most of the book, in fact, consists of photos of kits and related paraphernalia with informative and sometimes breathless descriptions. It is also here that he mentions current average values, most of which have a real world quality born of personal experience. He even twice mentions the absurd heights a Frog Bristol Bloodhound had sold for recently. He has a whole chapter on notoriously hard-to-find gift sets, with photos of excellent examples of many that I've never seen or even heard of before. As an exceptionally talented aviation artist himself, he devotes a chapter to the various techniques used to promote and sell kits, not just the box art, though he does acknowledge that for many of us, that can sometimes rival the importance of the kit itself. He also has pictures of magazine ads, catalogs, display banners, built-up company-made models, contest inserts, trading cards and various store displays. He talks of the hobby shop experience when a child, and shares anecdotes from several other collectors, knowing full well that many readers would be able to add their own personal stories, too. There are a half dozen shots of old hobby shop interiors. He even includes photos of a few paints and glues, though only enough to whet the appetite. But at least he includes them. Once again, the book celebrates the joy of model kits in their varied aspects, from building them and craving them as kids, to learning about them and acquiring them as adults. He has a chapter where he shows examples of the "Rarest of the Rare"; much arguing will ensue concerning his choices, but, again, it's a reflection of his own interests, and there are definitely some kits in there that are legendary rarities. He even includes a few "what-if" fake boxes and displays. And a somewhat welcome surprise, a pretty even-handed selection on foreign manufacturers, as far as what was available in the US at the time. I can relate to his comments about foreign kits being exotic and kind of status symbols. Not just Frog and Airfix and Heller and Hasegawa, but companies like Faller and Solido and Sanwa and Co-Ma and more. He offers up a tempting taste of artwork from most of the important early non-US kit makers, usually of interesting kits, and again, lots of airliners. All in all, it's a different sort of model kit book; I imagine every kit collector with a good collection could create something similar, a sort of "Look at all the cool kits I've got!" book, but Craig shows a broad array of excellent, rare and important kits, even if they are mainly from his own particular niche of interest; many are of things I've never seen before in other similar books, and I find that even if they aren't my specific cup of tea, I can see why they are to others. Again, it's the work of kit collecting enthusiast, and I recommend it to anyone who loves model kits, or has memories of building a model when they were a kid. Dorfdarb

Craig hits a home run with his book on model kit collecting. He has amassed an impressive collection of kits and kit memorabilia. No matter your age, you will enjoy this book. The photographs are crystal clear and sharp. The text notes contained trivia and history that every model builder will find enlightening. Highly recommended!

This book addresses the somewhat quirky hobby of collecting plastic aircraft model kits and not building them. As the title states, the focus is on model aircraft; although, missiles and some space items are also included. The period covered coincides with the glory days of plastic model kit construction, i. e., the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the early 1960s, when the kits were affordable and the domain of children, not adults. The transition from solid wood to plastic is touched upon, and built-up display models, such as those from Allyn are briefly mentioned. The real strength of the book is in its excellent photographs of old kit boxes and a few completed models. Some photographs of kit catalogs are also sprinkled throughout the book. It is filled with nostalgia for those of us who built many of these during our youth. Included are models by the greats (Revell, Monogram, and Aurora) as well as those from many smaller companies. The number of kits is very representative of the era covered and included are a number of rare items, e. g., the ITC F-108 Rapier and boxed gift sets. Obviously, many kits had to be omitted, but those included will bring back many memories. The weakness of the book is its text. It is fairly shallow and vague and adds little value. There is very little substantive discussion about the kit collecting hobby itself beyond some generalities. The author does mention representative prices for some of the kits in today's market, but he really does not talk much about specific topics, such as condition issues (warpage, decals, instruction sheets, etc.) and how old kits are graded, nor does he provide useful guidance as to where they may be found. He does provide a few references, but it would have been very helpful to have included more. A more comprehensive and coherent discussion of the hobby would have added measurably to the book. Irrespective of its shortcomings, it is well worth buying for the illustrations alone. It is a good addition to other books on the overall topic of old plastic model kits, such as those written by Tom Graham. My greatest problem with the book is that it was not two or three times as long so that the author could have presented more of these great kits.

As Russell Benton says, this is mainly about American kits of 'the golden years' from the 1950s to the end of the 1960s. The golden years, because collectors like Kodera love the kits they bought (or just lusted after) in their youth! But that love shines through, and that makes this an excellent book. It is very well-illustrated, too, showing the glorious box art of those days. There is a short section dealing with foreign kits towards the end, but mostly this is American-centred. Great stuff!

Pour tous les maquettistes et surtout les collectionneurs, un livre indispensable quand on aime les maquettes plastiques des années 50-60. une vraie plongée dans un passé où quelques pièces de monnaie suffisaient à acheter des heures de montage ...et de plaisir ! Des boîtages qui me font toujours rêver sans compter les présentoirs et affiches promotionnelles des fabricants de cette époque. Beaucoupe de nostalgie et plein les yeux....... incontournable.

perfect item and fast shipping -- didn't cost tooo much and so REALLY happy with the whole experience !!!

Book in perfect condition and very interesting on the topic

Great book. It does have a US slant but for anyone building aircraft kits in the60s this will bring it all back. Being American it's mainly Revell and Monogramwith Airfix only making an occasional appearance.however still very worthwhile. The authors enthusiasm shines through