Models to Mars

In his office at Convair in San Diego last week, Space Age Planner Krafft A. Ehricke inspected the first 20-in.-long model of Helios,* a chemical and nuclear spaceship he envisions for interplanetary travel. For two hours Ehricke mused over his Helios with three visitors, while he suggested minute changes in the model's engine, then gave his O.K. for its production. A full-size prototype of Ehricke's spaceship may be ten years and millions of dollars away. But next year plastic model kits of Helios, ready to assemble, will be in the hands of schoolboys around the world. Price: $1.98.

Helios is the latest model of Revell, Inc. of Venice, Calif., the world's largest maker of plastic model kits (nearly 30 million sold last year), whose retail sales have rocketed from $2,250,000 to $35 million in only ten years. Says Revell's 41-year-old President Lewis H. Glaser: "Assembling models is the nation's leading hobby. It even beats stamp collecting." This year total model kit sales will account for $75 million of the $1.5 billion spent on toys. Among Revell's new models for Christmas buying: a three-stage manned rocket to the moon (price: $1.98) and a Jupiter-C intermediate-range missile (price $1.98). To attract girls, there will be $1.98 life-size models of Walt Disney's squirrel Perri, a tiny koala bear and a beagle puppy, each with three bags of fur and a sprayer to apply the coat.

Making Them Real. The key factor behind Revell's success is the models' authenticity. To achieve it, Revell employs an intelligence network in 70 countries where the company's models are sold. When Revell decided to produce the then-secret Russian Yak-25, a jet fighter (nickname: the Flashlight), it collected photos and details from overseas clients, got everything but the plane's landing gear. Relying on their study of other Red aircraft, Revell's engineers designed the Yak's landing gear as they figured the Russians would. Four months later, an official Soviet photo proved Revell's design correct.

Getting current U.S. weapons into model production sometimes is just as hard. Revell engineers hunted for information and photos so diligently for the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter model that when Revell forwarded its drawings to the company for approval, they were too authentic; a secret stamp was slapped on them until the Air Force cleared vital details a month later. For the Russian T-34 tank model, Revell badgered the Israeli army into sending drawings and details of Soviet T-34s the Egyptians had abandoned in the Sinai desert in 1956.

A Washer & Maxwell. Revell got into models in 1947, when President Glaser, who had tried his hand at radio repair work and plastics fabrication, decided to make a "detailed and authentic" plastic toy washing machine. It sold well, but his first big hit did not come until 1950, when Glaser put out a copy of the old Maxwell auto, made famous by Comedian Jack Benny, sold 800,000. Glaser added the battleship Missouri (still the most successful, with 2,040,000 kits sold), launched his own 89-c- version of the atomic submarine Nautilus in 1953 six months before General Dynamics Corp. Other bestsellers this year: the Bomarc antiaircraft missile (457,000 kits) and the Talos missile (443,000 kits sold since its October introduction). All are intended to be "tough but rewarding to builders from age six on up." Surprisingly, adults make up 40% of the kit market. Says Glaser: "We lose most boys at about age 15; they turn to other hobbies such as girls. But then they marry, and as soon as they have a six-year-old boy we get them back."

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