The worst box art

pyro-manic · January 17, 2012, 07:20:37 AM

Here's an interesting one. Not really "bad" as such, just rather odd. It's moulded in a very strange colour as well - a weird reddish-brown plastic. There's a label in English on the box end saying "Made in USSR", while everything else is in Russian.

I actually bought this off someone here, so perhaps they can shed more light on it...?

The Wooksta! · January 17, 2012, 07:34:21 AM

Russian repop of the Frog copy of the Hasegawa Lightning F6 (original tooling).

I bought about ten or so of this kit in 1992 for a quid each.

pyro-manic · January 17, 2012, 07:41:07 AM

Thanks. It's entirely possible this particular kit is older than me then.

The Wooksta! · January 17, 2012, 08:09:10 AM

Quote from: pyro-manic on January 17, 2012, 07:41:07 AM
Thanks. It's entirely possible this particular kit is older than me then.

Possibly. Novo boxings stopped in the early 80s (the English boxed ones) and afterwards, the only ex-Frog kits available in the UK tended to be bagged examples and at increasingly high prices for certain ones - Wyverns and Sea Vixens were quite highly prized with Shackletons being the rarest of all. I paid £25 in 1990 for a bagged Shackleton with no decals or instructions.

Bagged kits were all you could get up until about 1990, when certain kits became available in the UK in their Russian boxes and the Lightning was one of them. That one looks like a very crude copy of the Novo box art, which was taken from the later Frog boxings - the Hornet certainly was. I've seen other Russian Novo packets and they are terrible. The Spitfire VIII looks more like a Polikarpov.

The floodgates for Novo kits seemed to open in 1991 and it was easy to pick up pretty much anything (I picked up a few Hornets and Lightnings at Duxford in October that year), although Shackletons were hard to get until about 1995.

PR19_Kit · January 17, 2012, 10:25:52 AM

I've got one of those ex-Novo Russian mouldings too, but mine is in that medium green that they use to paint all their landing gears with!

It's got more flash than all the plastic on a Monogram B-36 but seems to be all there and isn't too badly moulded when you can find the real bits.

The Wooksta! · January 18, 2012, 04:10:22 AM

Trying to remember what I've seen in a box or packet from Novo:

Sea Venom - badly printed artwork on paper little more than toilet paper.

Meteor F4 - Simple side view plan but of the F3, not the F4! Wyvern *might* have come in a similar bag.

Beaufighter, Spitfire VIII, DH Hornet, MiG 21 - all in pretty awful boxes.

They're actually worth buying for novelty value, if they're cheap enough.

P1127 · February 20, 2012, 04:09:27 PM

Quote from: The Wooksta! on January 18, 2012, 04:10:22 AM
Trying to remember what I've seen in a box or packet from Novo:

Sea Venom - badly printed artwork on paper little more than toilet paper.

Meteor F4 - Simple side view plan but of the F3, not the F4! Wyvern *might* have come in a similar bag.

Beaufighter, Spitfire VIII, DH Hornet, MiG 21 - all in pretty awful boxes.

They're actually worth buying for novelty value, if they're cheap enough.

I've got a Harrier somewhere.

The Wooksta! · March 22, 2012, 09:13:12 AM

Found the Russian Hornet boxing elsewhere on t'interweb:

Not as bad as I remembered but nowhere near as good as the original Frog release!

CANSO · March 22, 2012, 11:53:11 AM

On page 4 in this thread you'll find the box art for the polish PZL-23 KARAS in one of its first and worst forms (maybe even the first and oldest). Ca. 20 years ago I bought the same model in Warsaw with a newer version of the box art. Already in the airbrush-era somebody tried the new style of illustrating. The ugliness remained...

Speaking of bad boxing, ugly box art, ridiculous instructions etc. one usually goes back to the Soviet era NOVO-models, some short run productions "Made in Poland or GDR" or grabs a very old model from the dawn of the plastic modeling. But sometimes also renowned manufacturers in their not so far history produced some sore for the eye, which is even worse than the actual model in the box. My nomination for such box art (and model) goes to Airfix Me-109G-6 in 1:72.

PR19_Kit · March 22, 2012, 12:16:19 PM

It'd be difficult to produce good looking box art for a Karas kit, mainly due to the inherant ugliness of the original product!

CANSO · March 22, 2012, 04:28:54 PM

Quote from: PR19_Kit on March 22, 2012, 12:16:19 PM
It'd be difficult to produce good looking box art for a Karas kit, mainly due to the inherant ugliness of the original product!

Even the ugliest duckling looks better in the proper scenery!

See artist's gallery here.

RussC · March 23, 2012, 12:31:51 AM

Good find, Canso. We have a thread for what-ifs from DeviantArt, could you also post this artists gallery link there too?

Always liked the Karas design, I built a card model of it in 74' because there was no easily available kits of it then, just a vacuform one.

NARSES2 · March 23, 2012, 08:24:55 AM

Quote from: RussC on March 23, 2012, 12:31:51 AM

Always liked the Karas design,

Me as well and it's interesting to see the bomb loadout on that one

MilitaryAircraft101 · March 23, 2012, 01:48:35 PM

I've got the Heller Karas kit. Doesn't look to bad actually, the panel lines are a bit accentuated though.

Ian the Kiwi Herder · March 23, 2012, 02:06:06 PM

Ever-so-slightly (a considerable way) off-topic, but would crossing a Karas with a Barracuda produce the absolutely worst looking aircraft of the 1930s/40s ??

I'll just leave that one hanging, shall I !!

As for worst box art, I'm off to G**gle some Airfix box-tops from the mid-eighties, I have a recollection of some really cheap'n nasty looking ones from that time; the PBY and the (otherwise superb), Banshee immediately spring to mind...

Ian