SCALE MODEL NEWS

BRUNEAU AUCTIONEERS ARE PUTTING UP FOR SALE the First Stage of the Andy Yanchus Model Collection. Mat Irvine: I find it hard to believe, but it’s been over a year since well-known modelmaker and kit historian, Andy Yanchus, died on 11 September, 2021. But tomorrow, 17 September 2022, much of his collected material will come up for auction at Bruneau and Co Auctioneers, based on Rhode Island. However, this 225-lot event is only ‘Part One’ of the sale, and Bruneau reckon there is more to come. There’s plenty to see at the Bruneau website here . And if you are interested in bidding, either follow the links there or go directly here . You have to register to bid and you can also follow via apps from the Apple Store or Google Play. In fact, you can already bid online (and some already have), but the live bidding begins 10.00 am EDT (1500 hrs BST) on Saturday 17 September 2022. Here's what Bruneau and Co has to say about the sale: "... Andy collected everything, but most importantl...

  WITH MOST SCALE MODEL NEWS REVIEWS, we deal first with the model, then maybe go into a few intriguing details that we hope are of interest. But with this new Atlantis kit, we have approached it the other way around, as things are not anything like straightforward. Mat Irvine:  Firstly is this kit ‘new’? Well yes, it is a brand-new release from Atlantis Models, but it is not ‘completely new.’ Ah, you might logically surmise, it’s got to be a re-release of existing tooling and from the type of the model, it has to be an ex-Aurora kit. To which you can then answer, “Well, yes – and no…” The Metaluna Mutant appeared in the 1955 American film  This Island Earth . Based on a story by Raymond F Jones, it tells of the alien visitor Exeter ( played by Jeff Morrow ) capturing atomic scientist Cal Meacham ( Rex Reason ) to return him and other Earth scientists, to the distant world of Metaluna to aid them in a war against the oppressing Zagons.  This Island Earth  was on...

A NAME THAT WILL BE familiar to many modellers, Andy Yanchus sadly died in Florida on 11 September 2021. Mat Irvine: For many years Andy Yanchus worked with Aurora Plastics in West Hempstead, New York State, where he one of the two Project Managers there. Andy worked across the subject range, but in particular he came up with the Monster Scenes idea, a smaller version of Aurora’s classic monster kits, but presented in ‘scenes.’ In recent years he collaborated on a book with Dennis L. Prince to tell the controversial story of the Monster Scenes idea. The tale includes enraged parents, news headlines, and eventual cancellation - not bad for for a series of plastic models!   Click here to read more about Monster Scenes. Andy amassed a large model collection at the family home in Brooklyn, NY, and was extremely knowledgeable on the kit industry and its history. I encountered him when I wrote my first space models article for Scale Models International magazine, for the August 1974 is...

  IT’S HALLOWEEN AGAIN and here’s a chance to look at a kit that definitely fits the idea of ‘spooky.’  Mat Irvine:  I’m in the process of writing a book on dioramas, and for one of the chapters there’s a look at kits that already come as a diorama. And this kit from Polar Lights certainly fits the bill.  The Polar Lights model started out as an Aurora kit way back in 1965, but was on sale for less than a year. Most Aurora tooling originally ended up with Monogram, and Monogram did reissue some kits, but nothing like the whole of the range. Some tools were also licensed to other companies, so we did see again kits that Aurora had made, but which hadn’t seen the light of day for many years. Then we jump forward several decades, and the idea of ‘lost Aurora’ model companies started to emerge. Only two ever really fulfilled the promise though, those being Polar Lights and Moebius, which have created kits that Aurora might have made, but that it actually did not....

ANYONE WITH A NOSTALGIC MEMORY for classic Strombecker kits will enjoy this vid from Max’s Models. SMN report: the video is an update from an earlier one, and Max had some input this time from Andy Yanchus and Mat Irvine. It’s another fact-packed view from Max, and YouTuber Arnold Madderom agrees. He says: “Thanks for this great video. I do have in my collection both the 1909 Hupmobile and the 1902 Rambler from Strombecker. “I do like both the box art and the way the kit is put in the box. The red wheels in a bag and the chassis and wings put in the middle stuck on a piece of carton in the box and the rest of the parts in a bag. “The fact that I'm collecting and building 1/32 scale kits and I do have these 1/24 kits shows how much I do like these kits.” Here are some Strombecker kits from times past: