Vintage Revell Toys and Models

Though many collectors associate the Revell brand with model kits for cars, airplanes, and ships, the company actually started out as manufacturer of basic plastic parts needed for everything from home radios to aircraft sent into battle during World War II. In addition to these items, Revell produced a ladies compact made out of Lucite. It was only after the war that Revell moved into the toy market, introducing a plastic washing machine designed to launder doll clothes. Not surprisingly, and despite a pair of Disney-branded facelifts, the toy was as popular with children as doing the laundry was with most adults. By the late 1940s, Revell was licensing designs for a number of pull toys, including a dog named Champ. With wheels on its feet, the dog was easy to pull, and it barked and jumped when a trigger at the end of its metal “leash” was depressed. A similar toy, Buckaroo Bill and his Bucking Bronco, bucked when triggered. These toys were clever enough, but Revell’s big break came in 1950, when the company debuted a red, 1/16th-scale 1911 Maxwell, the noisy automobile made famous by Jack Benny on his radio show (the trigger at the end of its pull cable caused the car to honk and shake). The success of the Maxwell led Revell to release a collection of 1/32nd-scale cars called Action Miniatures, which included a Model T Ford, Cadillac, Stanley Steamer, and Packard. In 1951, these Action Miniatures would be reimagined and then produced as model-car kits, which were twice the size of the Action Miniatures and were called Highway Pioneers. By 1952, Revell was finally in the model-kit business, selling its “Authentic Kits” in hobby stores. The first of these kits was the H-301, a model of the USS Missouri, chosen because it was the vessel upon which the surrender of Japan was formalized at the end of World War II. More warships followed—the New Jersey, the Los Angeles, to name but a very few—and just as quickly, Revell took to the air, producing detailed models of Lockheed Starfires and Grumman Cougars. Revell also took its customers below the surface of the ocean via its models of the USS Nautilus, which it produced in 1953 before the nuclear-powered submarine was even commissioned in 1954. Beyond military models, Revell also spent much of the 1950s producing Western-themed models and Roman chariots, as well as sports cars, clipper ships, oil tankers, and tugboats, holding a model-kit mirror up the prosperity that characterized postwar America. By the 1960s, Revell was in space, offering models of rocket ships, missiles, and space stations—the company produced models of NASA's Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, and even lunar landers, virtually in real time. Down on earth, Revell sold beginners kits featuring Dr. Seuss characters such as the Cat in the Hat. The ’60s was also the decade of the Revell hot rods, including Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Beatnik Bandit. Revell also made models of Roth’s most famous character, Rat Fink. Other Roth-Revell collaborations included Mr. Gasser and Drag Nut.