Is there any way to know from a kit box when it was manufactured? Thanks Aardvark
Not necessarily from the box, though some indicate a copyright date.
You may be able to find information about the release date by searching https://www.scalemates.com/kits/
This site can sometimes be helpful.
You can do a search for a kit, and it traces its history.
The box can be misleading anyways. A new or recent boxing could potentially be a kit that is decades old with nothing changed but a new decal sheet, box, and instructions. The box may have a 2016 copyright mark on a 1976 vintage mold.
The instruction sheet often has a copyright date, and I think this may be more of an indication of age than the box.
[quote user=“Don Stauffer”]
The instruction sheet often has a copyright date, and I think this may be more of an indication of age than the box.
I think this is the most frustrating subject in the hobby for me. Unless the LHS allows you to open the boxes ,how do do know if the model is a new tooling ROG or new Arfix before you buy it? And forget Ebay on this subject. I’ve bought several kits I thought where new tooling only to find a box of old stuff with tons of flash/seam work ahead.[bnghead] [:'(]
The Scalemates site is probably the best way to check a kit’s lineage. Boxes and instruction sheets will show the most recent copyright date. But a few minutes of websearching on Scalemates will show the history of the kit itself. How many times the kit may have been issued, decals/markings in those releases, any changes to the kit, etc.
In the case of some specific manufacturers, I can recommend Thomas Graham’s books, too. He wrote books on the history of Monogram and Revell, up to about the mid-80s, and one on Aurora, from start to finish.
There is also a book on Airfix, too, though I don’t recall the author and title, offhand. But it’s available through Amazon, at least.
It’s called Airfix Celebrating 50 years of the Greatest Plastic Model Kits.
Even the molds of kits can be deceiving. For instance, when Revell bought the Renwal molds and reissued the M50 Ontos; the original Renwal logo and original date was tooled away and replaced with a date of Revell 1982. The original kit dates from the early 1960s.
You’d be surprised how many kits from the 1950s and 60s are still sold as new kits. The Revell Monogram M48A2 is from 1956, many of the Peerless Max armor kits from the 60s are still in Italeri’s current line (some boxed by Revell Germany and Zvezda too).
Nichimo did a similar “update” on their copies of Monogram 1/48 aircraft. Where the copyright mark was molded into the parts, there were raised blobs of styrene, showing that the lettering was just ground out.