Being in my mid 40’s I have no recollection of the hobby before the early 1970’s, and I cannot find any history of the Renewal Model Company. Were they bought out by Revell, or were they the early mane of Revell? I would like to know if the old Renewal kits and the “newer” Revell kits are the same molds. Thank you!
That would be “Renwal”, not “Renewal”. Perhaps this is why you are having difficulty finding anything.
RENWAL - A very interesting company .They brought out many fine , low cost friction cars such as the 57 chevy 4 dr taxi , fire chief and police vehicles ( these were surprisingly very accurate in shape and markings . I wish they were still around , The cars that is ) .These did NOT have interiors .They made also some very nice toys of the gender specific things they assumed only boys would play with .The girl stuff they made was always in pastel colors .They never did , nor ,do I know of have any association at any time with REVELL who at that time was in VENICE ,CALIFORNIA . RENWAL also made many war toys along the lines of the products MARX marketed up to the late sixties . The company I worked for at the time was AVECOR PLASTICS .This company,s claim to fame was the fantastic color pellets we produced for COX and other companies back then .Color pellets were regular plastic ,infused with color pigment and then shipped to COX , and others to mix in with the styrene pellets prior to the injection molding process . Our main request from RENWAL was NAVY GREY and WHITE . The rest we sold to many other firms in the country for anything that could be molded in styrene .RENWAL also made , like COX some powered toys whos popularity was iffy at best . To straighten you out ,I believe you made a typo when you called them “RENEWAL”. REVELL had their own name and stuff early on .The fellows who formed the company also had to do with the early years of GOWLAND and GOWLAND , That,s the info I have and I hope it helps you out
Renwal was a solid part of the model industry in the 50’s and 60"s. They were not bought out, but their molds have ended up in many places. The visible series of engines and human beings go back to them, and all kind of assorted other stuff like the atomic cannon and the early pioneers of flight. It was and IMO remains high quality stuff.
In the same era as Hawk, Pyro, Strombecker and ummmhhh, me.
I remember their “Visible” Man, Woman, Heart ,Dog, Horse, etc.
Pretty darn cool (i.e. “gross”) for any young boy! Great to chase around after Mom and sister when completed. [6]
I just saw a Revell ad saying that Revell would be handling several repopped Renwal kits. The one they showed in the ad was the Atomic Cannon, but the ad implied there would be more. It sounded to me like the boxes would carry the Renwal logo, but not sure on that.
Revell bought out Renwal sometime in the 70s when Renwal went under. As a young kid (I’m 47 now), my friends’ older brother had many of the Renwal 1/32 scale armor kits. Compared to the Aurora tank kits I was building, they were “super detailed” with moving parts, larger vehicles, etc.
Back when we played with our models, I couldn’t understand why Ray’s older brother (can’t remember my friend’s brother’s name) didn’t play with those awesome Army vehicles in the sandbox with us! He left them on a shelf over his desk and would not even take them down for us to look at. He would, on occasion, show us the operating hatches or engine detail after he built them and before he put them out of our reach. But this only happened if we were around the house when he finished building. I remember a whole lot of silver paint and black paint he used to detail his builds. Back then, paint was something I didn’t have access to.
Any way, Revell reissued many of the Renwal armor kits in the early 1980s when I started college. I bought the M50 Ontos (my personal favorite out of my friend’s brother’s collection), the 5 ton wrecker, M42 Duster (aka Twin 40), M41 Bulldog and M47 Patton. I also bought the Mace missile with Terracruiser, but at a much later time; 1988 or so when I was stationed in Germany. The others were bought during my 1982-83 freshman school year.
Of that group I still have the Duster and Ontos. The Ontos is undergoing a lengthy restoration project using parts from a partially built kit a friend gave me 10 years ago. The M41 and M47 seem to be fairly common on eBay.
This is one of the reproductions I picked up a few months ago.
Someone mentioned “Strombecker” earlier. That brings back fond memories of the '50’s for me, I built a lot of their solid wood aircraft kits, at about 10 years of age. They had lots of civilian aircraft, also things like a B-47, a DC-something Pan Am airliner, etc. About the same time, I built some “Highway Pioneers” antique car kits, I’m not sure which company made them, can anyone remember? Those were the days- I think most of those kits could be purchased for about a dollar!
Also, I remember paying 50 cents for big “Comet” balsa wood stick model / tissue airplane kits, with rubber band propulsion systems. Never tried flying one, I knew it would be a one time event.
Certainly. And the Tamiya Easy Eight is pretty much 1/32.
These models were cast in olive green. I never painted any of them, except as Col. G sez (my gosh I’m 8 years older than you) the inside of the hatches were silver, and the road tires were black.
My dad was a red leg, in the ARNG 1950-1952, and he and I built a couple of SPGs.
Estes Industries (model rocket kits) bought out both Comet and Guillows. They decided to drop the Comet brand, but kept the Guillows kits, which are still in production and in larger hobby shops. The Guillows kits never flew as well as the Comet ones- too many scale decals resulting in too heavy a model. However, by replacing the tissue covering with card stock or thin styrene, they can make excellent non-flying scale models. The more recent kits include instructions for changes to allow building either as flying or as non-flying models.
My first completed kit was a Guillows Aeronca. A friend tried to fly it- yep, it was a one flight wonder :-). However, I kept at it, and got them to fly. Other brands flew better.
Strombecker made some neat warship kits. Sure do remember the Highway Pioneers and the Hudson Miniatures car kits. Built a couple of the later a year or two ago. Both are still available from collectors.
Some of those kits were reissued by Glencoe. That company was started by a guy in Massachusetts with the goal of bringing old, out of production kits back into the market place and make them available to modelers without paying “collectors prices”. Most kits ran in the $10 range in the 90s.
Most of the kits were very dated with 50 year old molds, but added high quality, state of the art decals. They reboxed Aurora biplanes, ITC/Ringo armor, many of the sci-fi kits from Disney’s World of Tomorrow, Lindberg sci-fi and many more.
Many modelers not familiar with these ancient models immediately associated Glencoe with extremely poor models after opening the boxes. And to be honest, many of the kits were very poor because of the age of their design and the condition of the molds. They did, however, do many of us old guys a favor by making these nostalgic kits available to the average modeler.
Thank all of you for your replies! Does anyone know if the Revell Angle Deck Carriers (i.e. Lexington, Bon Homme Richard, Oriskany, etc.) were from old Renwal molds?
The Bon Homme Richard carrier kit I owned in the 1960s was by Revell.
!(http://www.oldmodelkits.com/jpegs/Revell H384-298 Richarvg.JPG)
Glencoe made it possible for many of us to actually build the Mars Liner and Nuclear Powered Space Station for only $10!!!
Here’s a little bump for this old thread. I followed this auction, recently ended, on eBay:
I had not yet heard of Renwal’s task force sets, in my research into 1/1200 plastic ship kits. I’m intrigued.
Looking at the photos of the kits in this box, the “B” set, it looks like they’re all original, though the Hornet’s hull parts do look like they could be related to the Pyro Essex, derived from, that is. The other ships, I have not seen yet, among the kits from other manufacturers of 1/1200 ships in plastic.
But on the box, there are some pictures of subjects in the “A” kit, and the USS Washington is included. I am very curious now to know if that is the same kit as Pyro’s “American Battleship” kit (sold variously as the North Carolina, the Washington and the Massachusetts).
Has anyone else ever seen these Renwal kits before?
It’s also amusing to see the closing bid price, too. Someone’s e-adrenaline was up, that’s for sure.
I wonder if anyone has written any books on Renwal, in the meantime, like Graham did for Monogram and Revell…
If one Googles “Renwal models”, the second hit is “Renewal Model Company” (linking to this thread).
I thought that was too good not to mention. [:)]
I know this is an old post, but I just found this site and offer the following:
My grandmother worked for Renwal. If I recall, they were located in Carle Place, Long Island, New York. My father built the Visible V8, and I don’t recall him having any issues with building it. Regarding the complaints I see in reviews of this model, I suspect the Revell is using the very same molds Renwal used; if so, they’re undoubtedly worn out.
I remember Rewal’s model of Augustine Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’, which my grandmother kept in her house. I also remember some of the Navy ships and the submarine, the Visible Man, the automobile chassis kit. I don’t remember what it was called, but they also had a model which consisted of a base with a round tower, and on top of that was a chrome plastic ball. There was a crank connected to a roller in the base, with another roller in the chrome ball, and running from the base to the chrome ball over these rollers was a wide rubber band. Turning the crank would create static electricity, and if a florescent light bulb was held near the chrome ball, it would light up. I seem to recall the manual saying it could create up to 50,000 volts, obviously only with billiamps (is there such a term as billiamps? There’s gotta be a term smaller than milliamps…) of power. I don’t recall much else about what else was inside this to generate the static electricity, but I do recall bringing it to school in fifth or sixth grade, with my teacher so impressed with it that she let me go to all of the other fifth or sixth-grade classes to demonstrate how it worked.
I remember the name Carle Place. I went to Hofstra University just a few miles away. I know the town of Hempstead was home to Aurora models. There was a hole in the wall model store along the south shore run by a man who looked like a real world leprechaun. I think I was last there in 1987. It always had old Aurora and Renwal kits of unpopular subjects that never sold when they were new.
This got me to thinking about the hobby then and now.
Renwal and a couple of others made models that were of very broad interest. Some were military, but a whole lot were not.
Monsters, rockets, anatomical, buildings, animals.
That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. Military subjects are the overwhelming maority of subjects.