What If… Fantasy Model Kit Box Art

April 2024

Matthew Teevan

A year ago - technically March 2023 - I created and posted on YouTube a video featuring artwork for imaginary model kits. Growing the in London in the 1970s I made many model kits. Airfix, Revell, Aurora, Matchbox and Frog were the mainstays of the stock of models at nearby Beatties of London. I found out recently that our Beatties was the the first one. As I got older and more kits became available I added Monogram, Frog, Italeri, Tamiya, Lindberg, Heller, MPC and Hasegawa.

Some of the first kits I remember making were the Aifix 1/72nd scale Beaufighter. a Revell Spad biplane (72nd), a Spitfire and V1 double pack by Frog. The Wolfman and the Hunchback from Aurora’s ‘glow in the dark’ monster series. Also from Aurora the Seaview form the action- packed TV series ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’. UFO’ Also from Aurora was ‘The Invaders' UFO’, I from the TV Series ‘The Invaders’… a show I had never seen or heard of. But coming from the same people who did the Seaview, the monsters and the dinosaurs, how could I go wrong? Well, I did a horrendous job on this. Humbrol Silver 11 was used for the hull to this day a particularly poor paint job , brush painted of course was liberally globbed on all over it… which were squishy for weeks. I think I thought that applying more of the ‘shiny paint’ would equal more shine.. but it looked dreadful. Lumpy and it took weeks to dry. To this day I refer to any truly awful paintwork as ‘The Invaders’. As cool as these kits were, i think it mostly whetted my appetite for more. if I could get a model of the Seaview and the Flying Sub, where was the model of Thunderbird 2, or Stingray? I didn’t understand the ins and out of the different ownership issues, not to mention the practicality involved in manufacturing complex models.

There is now a short series of videos; ‘Video #10’ has been completed and published today. There is something like 100 ‘what if.. kits’ to see across about 2 hours of YouTubing.

Creating the original artwork has been fun in itself and I have endeavoured to make the kit as believable as possible. choosing the right manufacturer, scale and possibly features. It’s quite addictive really.

None of these kits existed when I was growing up, had they been I would have raced from the cinema to the hobby shop to snap up the latest spaceship or futuristic aircraft. But in the past 40 years or so, some of the subjects I have chosen, have actually been made as kits. Some limited run, or garage kits as they used to be called, in Resin or 3D prints these days. Flash Gordon’s Rocket Ship, the MiG-31 Firefox, the Liberator. And some mainstream injection molded kits - the Jupiter 2, the Proteus, Martian War Machine. But this artwork and these videos take us back to simpler times and imagine - in some detail in some cases - what mainstream models from the 1960s,70's and 80s from our favourite TV and Films may have been like.