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The Entext Titanic
is born
The History: It appears
the decision to tool the Titanic was made in 1974 by Tony Clewes,
the President of Entex. The engineering and mold making was assigned
to Mr. Fuminori Inage of G-Mark who arranged the mold-making and
initial production in Japan. Early samples of the Entex kit dating
from 1976 bear the G-Mark logo on the shot frames. The boxed, completed
kits were shipped to Entex from Japan. Later on, the molds were
moved to Carson, California where Entex had the molds run by outside
molders and packaged at the Entex facility. "That's one
way to identify an older Titanic model. Look for the G-Mark logo"
The
Revell Titanic is born
While Entex had the
tooling, it is known that the molds were leased once or twice on
a temporary basis to Revell Germany who sold the kits in Europe
under their brand name. "This answers the Revell 1/350 scale
question"
The
Entex Titanic dies
In 1982, Entex filed
for bankruptcy, the result of some bad decisions regarding electronic
toys. The molds were transferred to Anmark, a start up hobby kit
company whose entire line was based on the ex-Entex molds, supplemented
by bagged kits obtained from various Japanese hobby kit makers.
In 1985, Anmark quite the hobby kit business, whereupon Minicraft
bought all the ex-Entex molds including the Titanic.
The
Minicraft / Academy Titanic is born
Distribution of
the Minicraft Titanic Kits, molded and packaged in Torrance, commenced
in 1985. In 1986-87 Minicraft sold bagged Titanic kits to Revell
Germany for European distribution. Minicraft exported to the rest
of the world. In 1989, Minicraft moved the molds to Korea where
they produced under the Minicraft / Academy joint venture brand.
The
Gunze Titanic is born
During this period,
several shipments of bagged kit parts, without bases, were sold
to Gunze for distribution in Japan in their own box. It appears
that Academy also made a production run or two of the Titanic in
their own Korean language box which somehow omitted the Minicraft
name, logo or copyrights.
The
end of Minicraft / Academy model kit
The joint venture production continued
until April of 1998 when all of Minicraft's molds were moved to
China in anticipation of the August 30,1998 termination of the joint
venture agreement between Minicraft and Academy. Upon arrival in
China, extensive repairs were made to the molds and eliminate much
of the heavy flashing to replace the originals were commissioned
and are nearly complete; they will be used in the next production
run.
The
new Minicraft model
The moment thousands
of people have been waiting for (I know I have) for six months.
And for that reason its been a very slow six months, but it's here,
and ready to take on the world. It's something I like to call "Titanic
Model: The Next Generation". It's been a long time since the
first Titanic model was cracked out of the mold and sold to the
public. Since then, everyone wanted to put this mini-Titanic together.
There's only been one problem: Too many errors. Titanic without
a center anchor? Who's ever heard of such a thing. One company has:
MINICRAFT. The original Titanic mold has been passed on to a lot
of people, but only one had the courage to stand up to the challenge
of re-shaping this thing we call Titanic. And to that person (Minicraft),
I give a long over due Thank You! Now to the photos. What your about
to see is only a small portion of what's been updated. More photos
will be added later..
Whats
next?
Only time will tell.....
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