EIGHT OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MODELS

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We all went through that model phase in life.

Not the annual Sports Illustrated model phase –that would come later in life.

This is all about an era when a new AMT model was like Christmas in July so here’s a list of my all-time favorite pieces of molded plastic and glue.

I built the Little Red Wagon for several reasons. It was a legendary Mopar; it was a Hemi; it was a wheel stander; it was a track legend. This truck was the embodiment of 60s cool and when it was built I only had one regret—I left it in the original red. It came in a maroon-ish red and I was too cheap to pop for a $1.98 red spray bomb. I’d make worse decisions later in life but when I was 11—that was a big one.

LITTLE RED-001

My brother Jim (MSCC co-founder) built a pretty sharp ’64 Buick Wildcat model. That one was a catalyst for a lifetime attraction to these big luxury barges. Every time I see a ’64 Wildcat at a show I think back to that little AMT beauty sitting on the desk.

64-001

I built a ’67 Barracuda model to keep company with the Little Red Wagon and it definitely made me a fan of the 2nd Gen ‘cuda. I painted it light blue for some reason (could have been the effects of the glue).

67 CUDA

My sense of style improved when I built a ’49 Ford. This little shoebox was a three-in-one model so I turned it into a gasser.  It was yellow, it was ultra-cool and it was probably my finest hour as a model maker.

49-001

 Jim built a very cool ’56 Ford and he went the gasser route too. Gassers were the ultimate ride in pre-teen 60s kid world and to this day they still evoke memories of the yellow shoebox and green ’56 Ford.

56-001

There was a neighborhood kid who was also into models but he leaned heavily into the pop culture custom world so he built the Munster’s Dragula.

MUNSTER-001

He really bought into the Munster’s automotive theme so built the Munster Koach—I think he owned stock in George Barris’s company.

MUNSTER-002

He followed up with the Red Baron. That one was a little tricky because the big chrome helmet roof would never hold up to a glue job—hopefully the real one was engineered better.

RED-001

There was a lot of effort put into these models and the more I built them, the better the end result. Practice does make perfect but none of them survived the 1960s because they all met grisly fates.

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The ’49 Ford and the ’56 Ford were stolen out of a display case after winning awards at a junior high model contest. I knew the perps in the caper but they got by on lack of evidence—the justice system was just as leaky back in 1968.

The others went out in a blaze of glory. Tim Allen talked about it often but one of the pre-adolescent male rites of passages in the 60s was to stuff a plastic model full of lighter fluid and firecrackers and touch a match to the fuse.

firecracker

It wasn’t smart but it sure was spectacular—I still miss those models.

Jerry Sutherland

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