Mike Machat, Revell/Lodela artist
I asked our old friend Mike Machat if he would like to be the first artist to contribute an article to the new Boxart Den website.
All the artwork was furnished by Mike, is subject to copyright, and is clickable for a larger format.
My questions to Mike were, "if Lodela can release the F9F Cougar in Blue Angels markings why didn't Revell USA?" and "how did you get involved with Lodela?"
Here is his response ...
Thanks for your letter and questions, and I'll
do my best to answer all of them properly. Feel free to use this for
Chris's new website in any way you wish. I also have no idea why Revell
didn't release the F9F-8 in Blue Angels markings, or the F-84F or F-100C in
Thunderbirds colors for that matter, except possibly for the complexity of the
decal sheet in those days.
My involvement with Lodela began with a local
model show and swap meet that dates back to the summer of 1976.
Established by a noted Los Angeles collector and model builder named Bob Keller,
the now tri-annual "Kit Collectors Exposition & Sale" as it
is more formally known started from humble beginnings in
a small high school
auditorium out in Orange County. Back in those days, a typical Revell
"S" kit in beautiful shape sold for about $5 and the
really exotic kits such as a Strombecker Sea Dart or Revell American
Airlines Electra were way up there at around $25-30. After all, they were
pretty rare. The crowd was composed mainly of guys in their 20s and
30s at the time - nearly all of whom built those kits originally as kids growing
up in the 1950s and '60s. Life-long friendships began in that hot sweaty
little room, and a bastion of Southern California model collecting that still
exists to this day was born.
One
of the vendors selling kits at that very first show was an
energetic gentleman from Peru named Ron Ferreyra, the American
representative and creative director for a company called Revell of Mexico,
better known as Lodela. Ron and I first met at that original kit show, and
soon began a very nice business relationship where I supported his model
projects with mechanical artwork for decals and eventually paintings
for the boxtops themselves. I'd recently graduated from
California State University Long Beach and was working in the Art
Department of the Douglas Aircraft
Company - my dream job of a lifetime!
Painting in transparent watercolor at that point, I designed and produced my first cover artwork for Lodela which was their reissue of the Revell F9F-8 Cougar in Blue Angels markings as shown in your attachment. That kit was released in late-1978 by the way.
Transitioning into the more traditional
aviation art medium of gouache on illustration board, my next two covers were
for reissues of two great Revell airliner kits, but in totally new
markings -
the Douglas DC-9-10 in Bonanza colors, and the Fokker F-27 in Ozark. Released in early-1979, these kits were received successfully in the
marketplace.
Next up was a cover that could only be described as bombastic
- the multihued Ecuatoriana Boeing 720B fanjet! Composed of a tribal
design covering the entire fuselage, the decal sheet for this motif
contained no less than eleven different colors. Sadly, the original
artwork was destroyed in shipping to Mexico, and alas, this colorful and unique
kit was never produced.
By summer of 1979, these Lodela airliner kits were being bought and collected as a series, and the hits just kept on coming, as they used to say.
A Boeing 727-100 in Aero Peru followed next, and then my personal favorite of the entire set, another DC-9-10 but in the delivery colors of Ozark to match the F-27 kit.
For
DC-8 enthusiasts, the
Revell DC-8-21 in VIASA colors was produced followed by a Flying Tigers
DC-8-63F. This was actually the Revell United DC-8-61 kit re-released
as a freighter with plugged windows and Flying Tigers markings, but with vacu-form
Series-63 engines inserted into the box. Last in this nine-kit series was
a military subject, the Douglas A4D-1 in Argentine Navy colors to tie-in with
the then-ongoing war in the Falkland Islands.
As the dreaded
"Truth-In-Advertising" laws took hold of the model world, like all the
major model companies, Lodela reverted to photographs of the real
airplanes for their cover illustrations. However, I
continued producing mechanical decal artwork and side panel profile
drawings for such Lodela kits as the Aeromexico DC-8-21 and
DC-10-30, Mexicana
727-100 and DC-10-15, and Aerolineas Argentinas Boeing 747-200. Cover
artwork for the Republic F-84F in Thunderbirds markings was also planned, but
was never put into production.
In all, these projects were a wonderful way for me to experience the evolution of an actual series of aircraft models. Inspired in my early years by the magnificent works of legendary "boxwrap" artists Jack Leynnwood, Jo Kotula, and John Steel, I got a chance to participate in this wonderful industry and see how things worked from the inside. Overall, it was a terrific experience and proud association with the great Revell name, and I felt very privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute to the model airplane industry in this way.
Sincerely,
Mike Machat
Editor-In-Chief
WINGS & AIRPOWER Magazines