Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

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JamesPerrin
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Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by JamesPerrin »

Merit kits came in a standard box which makes identifying the kits a little tricky. They produced both aircraft and cars.

To be added to:

1/48 Aircraft:

Bristol Bulldog
Supermarine Walrus

1/24 Cars:

Talbot-Lago Grand Prix
Alfa-Romeo 159 "Alfetta"
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Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by JamesPerrin »

I've just got hold of Thomas Graham's Aurora Model Kits. According to him Merit made pirated copies the following models from Aurora (Aurora cat nos.)

101 Nieuport 11
102 Sopwith Camel
103 SE5 (also copied by Marusan (Jp) !)
104 Albatross D-3 (ditto)
105 Fokker Dr-1
106 Fokker D-7

210 Black Falcon (sailing ship)
320 Viking Ship

The copies later went to Artiplast (It) then SMER (Cz). When you remember that Airfix's first plane was a scaled copy of Aurora Spit, you start to feel sorry for them.
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Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by mattbacon »

Whilst wandering around the Lakeland Motor Museum this week, I had a good look at the "Racing Campbells" exhibition, which features full size replicas of the 1930s Bluebird car and two generations of powerboats (driven by two generations of Campbells). Amongst the exhibits are a whole lot of "Bluebird"-related memorabilia and products, including this:

Image

No sign of what the plastic inside looked like, but I'd be very interested in tracking one down to find out!

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Re: Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by JamesPerrin »

Very intriguing, was there any indication of scale? Roughly how big was the box?
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Re: Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by PaulBradley »

Cool! I read in one of the forums tha the kit is 1/30 scale.

On googling Merit Bluebird Kit, I found this, about Merit cars:

http://gpma.org/blog/?p=69;
Paul

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Re: Merit Kits; Cars and Planes

Post by smackers »

mattbacon wrote:No sign of what the plastic inside looked like, but I'd be very interested in tracking one down to find out!
The pics are quite small and it looks like the kit is incomplete but this shows the contents http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/m ... -269767316;
Below pic on left hand side is the number 4 indicating that is how many pics there are, click on the pic and a slightly larger pic pops up which has arrows allowing you to advance through them.
You could also use free software like screenhunter to make a borderless picture / screenshot and paint.net to enlarge the pic to see more detail.
Mike
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