for 70 years I have loved model box art! great job thanks Mike

My favorite memory of box art was accidentally seeing the Monogram B-17G in the back floorboard of my dad's car that I got for Christmas around 1979. I was so excited, Christmas couldn't come fast enough! I didn't let him I saw it, but it was one of the best presents I ever received! Thanks, Dad!

Another great video Mike and thanks for the shout-outs. As you know I am always in the Jack Leynnwood camp but Bob Steele had a way with ships that I love as well. I felt that Aurora and Lindberg often had less impressive boxart whereas Revell's was the best overall. Monogram ran hot and cold. Hasegawa also had some of the more impressive boxart. Tamiya's white boxes were a cheat but it worked. Sometimes the artwork would transcend the simple idea of showing you the subject matter such as Aurora's Aero-Commander or Glencoe's Jupiter-C; not so much for the image of the subject itself but for the world it created as a scene in its entirety. It made me want to be there. In general I feel that the later iterations seemed to be better as the 'science' of boxart matured. For my money (and I mean that literally) no one really surpassed the work of the mid-late 60's. Cheers, Max

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. I’m still building model aircraft at 70.

When I was young my dad bought one of those Nash rambler station wagon secondhand. I remembered it as being my favorite car that my dad had ever owned while I was growing up. Two tone paint, great styling inside and out, seats that recline down flat, and it had air-conditioning that was mounted on the floorboard of the front seat area. First car we had ever owned that had air-conditioning, I was in heaven living here in Texas. LOL 🤣

THANK YOU FOR THE TRIP IN THE WAYBACK MACHINE.THIS VIDEO MADE MY DAY AS I BUILT MANY MODELS WITH MY BROTHERS AS A KID IN THE LATE 50S. GOOD TIMES LONG GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. GOD BLESS AND TAKE CARE

The Hasegawa boxes with Shikeo Koike art boxes were just awesome too.I could spend hours in the shop in the 90 's when I was teenager just watching it....

For a model channel with no Godzillas, your videos are very thorough and informative.

I live literally 300 feet away from the Oscar (Kodak Theater) stage. Late afternoon yesterday (Academy Awards day) an F-18 flew right past this building and doggone it was loud and high-pitched. True story.

The largest box art played my way was, #1 scale & price . I, was Born in 1955 I started building model planes in 1961. Tiny 1/72 nd. Scale. This is a very good display of Box art.thanks!😎👍😍

Great video, as usual. To this day Hasegawa are the masters of rereleasing kits with new box art and new decals.

Boy, this episode certainly brings back memories!

This video brings back great memories I have of those modeling days.

One of the main reasons I collect vintage kits (nearly all I won’t build) is the epic box art…I can stare at that art all day. I’m proud to say I own that Revell Electra kit!

I was born in 1956 and the plastic model kits I had aquainted are ones after 1960. These imported Revel, Monogram, Aurora kits are the aces at the hobby shop, mostly be diplayed on the uppermost racks and are shining. In the era one US dollar was 360 JPY and the differences in peoples` average income plastic model kits you listed here probably had been marked up 10 times after imported to Japan. Perhaps I could only afford to be able to buy any of one made in US kit a year. They are still shining in my memory

Growing up in the 70’s box art was switching from those glorious paintings to pictures of assembled models. I felt that it took away from a child’s imagination. I get what they were doing but I’d be curious as to how much of the next generation were turned off to the hobby by changing the box covers. Great video Mike!

19:50 One cool detail of the XKE box top that surprised me is the red reflection of the car on the puddle of water on the ground. Brilliant!

George’s work that you’ve shared is so unique, Mike!

I like the clean Revell box art with out the red FUN splotch.

Oh man, you bet the box art influenced me. I grew up in northern Wisconsin in a very small town (no hobby shops; the stores didn’t even have a model!), but periodically my Mom took me down to Wausau, two hours away, for my braces. This was a BIG deal for me, as it meant a Big Mac for lunch (at the nearest McDonalds) and being dropped off at Pope’s Hobby Land (just like 00:50) for a few hours while my Mom did her mall shopping. What a day, so overwhelming! I must have pulled out every box to get just the right model kit, and thumbed through all the Squadron/Signal books to select one or two. I couldn’t make a choice until Mom came to pick me up. I learned an awful lot about airplanes in those years, and got surprisingly good at identifying a lot of airplanes. Good memories. Thanks, Mike.

I was a member of the Revell Master Modeler Club in the early to mid 1970s and I remember the monthly newsletter and the cheezy plastic tools. Inside the newsletter was a serial; where the "good guy" (name not remembered) vs. the "bad guy" named Delmo Kitsalp which was a scrambled anagram of "Plastic Model". Fun times!

Box art is not a factor for me to choose a model airplane or AFV. Although it would be very nice to have large color posters of good quality of much of this wonderful art; or large format 'Coffee table' type books to browse and enjoy. Comparing different images of the same plane in the same scale would be marvelous! Model reviews on scale fidelity in shape and accuracy in dimensions, plus quality of materials are the most influential in my decision. Consistency of scale among models - 1/144, 1/72, 1/48, 1/24 - is VERY important (main reason to buy Airfix, Hasegawa, Tamiya), especially when building dioramas with additional figures and equipment. Strange scales defined by convenience in box sizes are a definitive NO! As always, I love your videos!

when I was kid, model box art is THE definition of "art"

Mike, thank you for such an interesting presentation. How I loved my Revelle B-58! P.S. The photo of the F-106 model at the end is super.

Another great video. I don’t want to sound like a broken record. The box art back in the day and the colors were so great. And the wording they used, don’t think they could use it today. Great work and thanks for sharing.

Great video Mr. Machat. Box art always made me buy the kit in the 50s/60s. Never knew one plane, ship, or tank from another. Late as I got to know what was what, the box art still sold me on buying the kit. Even today box art attracts me to the kit. And in many cases it has also sold me on the kit. Thanks for sharing all that great box art. I remember many of those kits. Whis a lot were still made today with the original artwork.

14:45 Without the banner; and 21:32 the Revell kit. 😉 Great video! ^^

Great one again Mike....more box artwork PLEASE!

This video certainly brought back memories. As a kid of the 1950's I had the original issue of just about every one of these kits - right up until the Monogram B-58. .(For the record, I did slip the Aurora X-15 -- just as well.) Box art definitely does influence buyer behavior. Well done and thanks for the memories.

A lot of Revell Elektra kits were sold at Dodger Stadium from 1962 to as late as 1971 as the Dodgers Elektra. Molded in white plastic with exclusive Dodgers decals.

as a Printer, I also find the use of different Fonts and typestyles and how they can -scream- a particular time period, 1950s-60s vs say 1980s-90s. Very different look & feel.

Lovely artwork, Mike. It looks the way you think of the aircraft. The Minicraft box tops from the '80s showing the actual model on a desktop had no stimulation at all. Thanks!

Model box art is a subject I could talk about for hours.... Just picked up two Hasegawa 1/32 Bf 109E (08116 and 08051) for the simple reason of the box art. My two favourites when it comes to '109 box art! 😍🥰😎

Yes,colour played a major role. Thats why i kept all my boxtops from the kishady era, the models long gone and donated or broken. My favourite was the b 25 , i missed out on the martin b57, so eventually i did my own version on a similar sized card, i used the a3 d warrior box for ref, i did the 57 best i could remember, agaist an orange backhround,

Great subject Mike. The box art certainly influenced me in my early model building days, not so much later on once I started to learn about the different qualities of the manufacturers. I was so disappointed when they started using pictures of the built kit instead of art work on the boxes...BORING! I agree with you, I like the cleaner art work without the red banner.

Another fantastic post Mr. Machat! I can't count the kits I bought because of the cool box art. The only helicopter kit I ever built was because of the box art. As always your video is informative and entertaining. God bless you 🙏 and your family! Thanks again for everything you do! Take care always Sir!!

Great topic. Great video. The green color in some of the box covers is cool.

I hear you are mentioning Joe Kotula a number of times in this video . He made some fantastic frontpages for the Model Airplane News magazine in the 1930 and 40s . I think many of your viewers would like a video about these old magazines , both the frontpages and the content . That was the golden age of model building . When it comes to "modern" box art my favorite as a kid back in the 1970s was Monogram since you could see a photo of the actual model . Nice video by the way .

Revell did some kit accuracy blunders too. Their vintage USS Nautilus atomic submarine kit is horribly innaccurate. Absolutely the worst of the four different kits - Revell, Aurora, Lindberg and the recent Micro-Mir kit. Revell is still selling it. Being an ex-F-106 avionics tech, I love the Convair planes. The B-58 is one of my favorites. Did the smaller Monogram kit as a kid, and found it again a few years back. Cool to relive my youth. I have the larger Lindberg kit in my stash, unbuilt so far.

Reposition the red banner to the text box. Keep the artwork pristine. After all, that's why we bought the kit in the first place. BTW, I had that model kit of the Jaguar XKE, although my love were the aircraft from World War II. I was never much into ship models, with the exception of a model of President Kennedy's PT-109. I did make model tanks, as my dad was a tank driver in WWII.

I grew up in the sixties and the box art was definitely a factor looking at the kits in the dime store. As I got more kits under my belt the manufacturer and subject became more important.

I like the constellation because they had it in the godfather movie. It looked beautiful.

Growing up in 60s/70s England Airfix were the premier make, i do remember Revell and made a few. Now you have to check for company origins as well as improved artwork, i wouldn't partcularly want to find out it was one of those kits from back then, theyre so much better now.Roy Cross artwork is the only thing that still looks great and stirs the memories.

Hi Mike and another very interesting video. To answer the question I am a box art junky and was from the start and to this day. My models turned out like a kit bash not a build. Thank you, take care and peace out.

I have a b-58 kit laying around I did not feel like doing but after looking at that cover for that monogram kit, I think I’m going to try it.

A friend of the family gifted me his half-built Forrestal. I wasn't even ten years old, he was in his late teens. Pretty sure it was the Revell version. Somewhere in a house I lived in over 40 years ago, there may yet be a tiny FJ-4 Fury stuck in the bathtub faucet still...

very cool!

Excellent presentation! Thank you for sharing.

Box art had a negative effect on me. I loved Aurora kits until the reissue of the X-15. Bought the kit because of the beautiful art, then my nine year old self saw the kit that I saved for. It was years before I bought another Aurora kit!

The box art was great and did its job. Cartoons, for example, have loud bright colors, and have lots of motion to grab and hold a child's attention. Early box art had loud bright colors and conveyed motion though the image. It sure worked for me and my friends when we were kids. Another great watch from Mike.

If possible, how about a show from the model factory? How they are made.

I don't know how and where you get all of these pictures and info ,but I love it! Enjoyed that vid very much. And I like the Revell version of the aircraft carrier.

The red banner on the Revell kits must have worked. I owned all three of the kits shown. Thanks for the memory.

Great topic and great video. For me, this has to be the most enjoyable subject covered on the channel. Box art certainly did play a big part in deciding what kit to buy. Not always an easy decision to make since there were so many evocative and action packed covers to choose from. Excellent job on this one Mike.

Nice video and I appreciate the research that you put into it! I have been building models for over 30 years now and have a stash that could last for many years if I stopped adding to it. In response to your question, I have purchased very few of my kits based on the box art. I make my purchases based on the subject, but I do appreciate good box art.

I just built one of those Monogram B-58’s with the vertical box.

This brought back some great memories. Box art was like a magnet to me and set my emotions in gear when selecting a kit. I first started building kits at about the age of 5. The box art was fascinating then and continues to be so today. I remain in awe of the many artists that did incredible work. Thanks for the re-visit of my childhood memories. By the way, I picked and built the Revell USS Forrestal.

I didn't buy it, but received the Revell version of the Forrestal for my 10th birthday...first kit I ever built on my own. Before hobby magazines and online review sites existed, the box art or a buddy's recommendation were the prime factors influencing my kit purchase decisions. Now what's in the box beats what's on it..."cool" no longer plays a part.

Thank you Mike. Growing up in Phoenix in the 70's we were team Revell all the way. We were never hesitant to use the X-acto knife and Dremel tool to modify our kits to match our expectations. Me being an A type I would get frustrated at my friends lack of follow through and attention to detail. Once, I collected all of the unbuilt, leftover, and unwanted model parts from around the neighborhood (cause I had no $$$ to buy a new kit) and scaled up a USS Forestall super carrier, Shirly Muldowney top fuel dragster, covered wagon, delta dart Frankenstein homologation. It was ridiculous with the slicks and giant pink wing glued to the stern. We used it in a super 8 movie we liked to make back then, Sadly it did not survive the fall from the Mill Ave. bridge into the salt river. Good times! thank you for all of the fun.

I really love classic box art. And yes, that was definitely one of the reasons I was attracted to any given model. Another great video, Mike. Thanks.

Another great presentation! Box art is nice, but for me, the quality of the model box contents was what mattered. If the box art was so important, for some models that were not very high quality, the model purchase might as well have been for the box art alone, it seems to me.

Thanks for sharing 👍

I had a HUGE white B-58, circa ‘65. I recall the lower wing parts fit into the upper wing, sort of. The hatches opened over the three cockpits. Molded in white, it was a tough build for a 10 year-old. It was huge, and I would’ve needed three arms to build it well. Does anyone remember this kit? If memory serves, it must’ve been an Aurora. As I recall, it had a hard-to-fit weapons pod & a pretty intricate landing gear assembly that led me to leaving that Hustler hanging from the ceiling with closed gear doors and crew hatches. It was my last Aurora airplane model.

Hey Mike, the X-15's mothership; The High and Mighty One, was an NB-52A, and by the end of the X-15 Program, the launch aircraft changed to "Balls Eight", NB-52B-BO, AF 52-0008.

Thank you Mike! Truly my favorite subject of all the great things you cover. I love the xke box also.... Maybe Max can help you find the box art for revells Jupiter C kit with gantry ? I had it on my wall from the last re release but a heart attack and divorce made it disappear...lol

Fantastic video 👍👍👍👍

Hey Mike, check out the background on the cover of the original Aurora X - 15. It’s flying over Long Island!

I would like to see you do a compare and contrast of Kits/box art from the 60's into the 70's with the influx of international brands such as Hasagawa/Minicraft and Tamiya etc. Also how did the artists and there work get treated during the 50-60's; was it work for hire, were originals kept/returned/ disposed of. I imagine it was the same disposable ephemera as comic art/book cover illustrations back then.

What does this video (upload), Mike's previous video, and the one before that all have in common? Well you guessed it, they are all awesome, and truly from the heart! *This was awesome. Australia in the 1970'sand 80's seems like Mike's model shopping/buying experiences in the USA in the 50's and 60's. I spent so many hours trying to decide what model(s) to buy with my allowance, birthday money and once I got a part time job. Plus of course.. do i have the paint colors etc. *I still have 90% or more of my plastic models from childhood in a box at my parents house. (many in need of various states of repair) Some are way worse than I thought they looked when I made them as a kid... but it is still good to look back on them with fond memories. And I have some of the same kits from my childhood (same brand, or least same model aircraft) as new kits now waiting to be made again and bring back my memories. Some of these kits I want to do with a different paint scheme, especially military aircraft which had at one stage were all silver/metal then went to camo in Vietnam or such. Or Cold War camo to today's modern gray.

High contrast, totally..

I remember building an Electra model around 1963 that was the Los Angeles Dodgers team airplane.

I found a little sealed revell b-58 kit in the late 90s and was disappointed to find that half of the fuselage was warped to an unusable degree. its still on my list of models to build.

Another great video. Minor correction @14:55 -- Monogram released the 1/48 scale B-58 in 1985, not the 1970s.

I'm modeling on!

Tell you what I want to build a model of that Hustler bomber that is the coolest looking bomber from the 50s are so extreme on that plane it looks like it's going a thousand miles an hour just sitting on the tarmac a model of that and flight display would look awesome

Yes it did figure into the decision but it wasn't everything in the purchase decision.

Did the box art on models affect your decision to buy them? Yes, and it still does to a degree.

Thanks so much again Mike, have a beer on me. Any chance of you doing a Thrust reverse episode? Don't know wether it's too specific, but I'm fascinated by the development,

I remember that X-15 as a kid, I was so disappointed. When Max comes out show him Proud Bird.

Another great video. The S skits were styrene. What were the earlier kits ABS?

Box art never influenced me much, especially when the kit didn't match the artwork. I preferred seeing pictures of the actual model (even if done poorly) so I could judge for myself how accurate the model was. Even today, I buy a kit because it is a subject I am interested in, not because of the packaging.

episode suggestion,,,,,you must have a bunch of models you put together over the years....have a video showing and talking about your collection

A question about the Electra does thstb100,000 number include the ones sold at Dodger Stadium? Nice video brought back a lot of memories.

The big red banner was fun written on it is completely stupid by that company's marketing department. Apparently some younger guy that graduated college thought you had to do that to draw someone's attention to it. And that person in-charge apparently had never built a model of anything when he was growing 🤔

Hey Mike I love the presentation but I have a question about the USS Forrestal you had mentioned that the plane was taking off from the port side which is normally on the left but I know carriers dock on the right side which would be starboard. So the question is so is the right side of a carrier considered port side? Mike crawford

Did I see a B-52 with JATO (RATO) in there?

Heh! - The 104s with the same numbers.

Which Forestall did you prefer ?

Hey Mike you had a rich and rewarding career as an aviation artist so has Jack Lynnwood and all the greats does it concern you about the future of graphic design and artistry in respect to what chat GPT can produce graphically have you seen what this AI software is able to produce graphic wise? ( it's stunning) this is just the first generation unfortunately I don't think there is a future for graphic designers any thoughts?

Many memories involve the box art influencing my choice from the excited imagination of a young modeler. I did not like Monogram's white box series showing the actual model.

I'm a glue trooper.

...tell ya what Mr Mike! 1$ a week allowance 1966 no models in the budge😢 but☝️if you respect my privacy and let me work👉art,film&music "I'll give you all the models you want" Jack Leynwood. wonderful neighbors Jack,Joanne &Laura 216 Waterview Playa del Rey Ca

Why don't model kits have actual real pictures of the finished model instead of an artistic design of the model? That's what annoys me the most.

I even went as far doing my vision of what a kishady would have looked like on kits never done in the fifties revell, e g the p51 and f 86 to name just two, and remember those times there were no magazines oe aviation art in south africa, even today very few e g would know or care what say a b 58 0 r b 47 ignorantest nation on earth,

I like the X-15 rocket powered airplane my favorite plane very cool. 🇺🇸🇺🇲👍🤗🛫🛬✈️ I like the F-104 Starfighter too because different air forces. The F-8 Crusader is very nice also.