SCENES WE’VE SEEN

It’s been great fun this past year exploring so many aspects of model box art and sharing stories with you, the good readers of this website. This month, I’d like to talk about the scenes on our favorite boxtops and how, despite their distinctive content and detail, they all visually relate to one another. The graphic use of certain bold colors by different model manufacturers also helped establish strong corporate identities in this wonderful industry during the time of 98-cent model kits and 10-cent tubes of styrene cement. For instance, it was a rare Lindberg Line model that didn’t feature bright yellow and red somewhere prominently on the box, and what would the Renwal “Blueprint Series” have been without their unique blue-and-white grid?

Take a good look at the selection of covers that head up this month’s column. They encompass a variety of airplanes, helicopters, and ships produced by Revell Models of Venice, California spanning a time period from the “Pre-S” era of 1955 to the peak of the famed “S” kits in 1959. Linking these colorful images together is the unmistakable identifying element of all Revell models – the classic red-white-and blue American flag logo carefully designed into the respective corners of each and every boxtop. Most noticeable on all these covers is the fact that the artist depicted each aircraft or ship in its natural environment, even if that meant exaggerating the specifics more than just a bit. (Hint: Did the X-15 really go into earth orbit?)

These scenes always made you feel like part of the action by showing the model subjects doing what they did best, and an effective device was the use of only a small part of another vehicle on the cover to imply great size and mass. For instance, the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker is shown refueling a B-52 while the harbor tug Long Beach is shown steering a large freighter out of port, yet only a small segment of the cover was devoted to either of those secondary subjects. Oddly enough, many of the jet fighters were so dynamic that they only had to be shown flying in order to look exciting on the cover, while others were depicted delivering ordnance to heighten the effect of their being brute machines of combat.

I’ve also mentioned the subliminal device of using human figures in dramatic poses for getting a potential modeler to imagine himself in the cover scene. If you were there at the hangar where they’d just rolled out the Douglas X-3, which person would you want to be – the pilot in his full pressure suit; the khaki-clad Project Officer; or the cool-looking guy kneeling to put the towbar into position before he climbs on the tug and drives the sleek white jet out to the flightline? If you were into building ship models, you probably wished you could be on the deck of that stricken freighter attaching the lifeline fired over from the Coast Guard cutter. (Personally, I always wanted to be one of those people climbing the steps to board the American Airlines Boeing 707 jetliner!)

Let’s compare how many of these model subjects were captured in action versus posed statically on the ground. Of the 25 aircraft kits shown here, 19 of them featured the airplane or helicopter inflight, whether it be taking off, climbing, cruising, or landing. The six covers with aircraft on the ground all have human figures in them (look closely at that Yak-25 Flashlight – there’s a flightline guard accompanied by a fierce-looking German Shepard at lower left). Four of those six have some part of the aircraft such as a canopy, loading door, or maintenance panel opened up to reveal some interesting internal structure, while the remaining two (the Yak and X-3) use a much more detailed background and hangar wall to offset the otherwise static pose of the jet.

From a strictly artistic standpoint, let’s look at the use of bold color I mentioned at the top of the article. Revell artists Dick Kishady, Scott Eidson, and Jack Leynnwood were famous for their unique color palettes which are highly evident in these images. While at first glance the most prominent color would seem to be yellow, it is used on only four covers. The most popular color is actually green (9), with dark blue and light blue tied for second place with five each. Standing out in complete isolation is the Douglas A4D-1 Skyhawk which seems to be trying to fly its way out of an ominous salmon-colored storm cloud. Notice also that dark aircraft and ships are placed against light backgrounds while light-colored aircraft and ships are shown on dark backgrounds. It was these highly-contrasted shapes that always attracted our attention, and notice how the artwork still has that same effect today.

So there you have it – a capsule summary of the major elements employed in creating some of the best and most popular images we all enjoyed as young model builders in the 1950s. Were the scenes on those model boxes as fictitious as you might think? Perhaps. But there is one image here that still gives me the chills every time I see it, and that story begins with my having grown up in the suburbs of New York.

During a trip to visit the Statue of Liberty with my grandparents one sunny Sunday in 1956, I was viewing New York harbor from the open air observatory located high up in the statue’s crown when the new superliner S.S. United States could be seen coming down the Hudson River having just sailed from Pier 86. I ran all the way down the endless spiral staircase and arrived at the front of Liberty Island just as the elegant 1,000-foot-long ship glided silently by, its massive red-white-and-blue funnels glistening in the noonday sun. What a magnificent sight. She was so close that I could actually see the passengers on her decks!

Saying that Kishady’s cover painting of the great ship was accurate would be a gross understatement, for he must have been figuratively standing there with me that very day. The scene I so vividly remember was exactly as it’s shown on that boxtop, which is perhaps the most evocative model cover of my lifetime.

What’s yours?