Entex kits are a memory, from the little smiling bullseye to the almost generic Helvetica'd packaging -- seems like the old Ontario discount store near downtown Toledo had 'em all, and I remember seeing the Spruce Goose box on the shelf. And there's an unbuilt Concorde kit that was in Dad's hobby closet at the old house and has been in the attic of the present house since the family moved in in 1975. But I remember a line of Entex-branded little tiny plane kits so badly engineered that the two fuselage halves seemed to be from different aircraft.
I remember the Enterprise brand from my earliest trips to a hobby shop, particularly the 1/100 helicopters and 1/144th " pocket fighters". They cost about a dollar, and I remember buying a bunch, gluing them together with tube glue,( the parts I could twist or bite (!) off the sprue without breaking anyway. I recently found a few that I bought for nostalgia's sake. Some are half-decent, with nice recessed panel lines, but no cockpits, just a flat space to set the canopy on! I had the Entex Titanic a buddy had given me half built.I passed it on eventually, as it was too much work to salvage. I still keep my eyes open for Entex kits at shows though,,for the right price. IE: cheap! Thanks for another informative and entertaining " Hobby history" video! Look forward to the next!
@@maxsmodels , the news? Same as it ever was. I remember Vietnam bodycounts, Nixon, and then the rest. I'll take my chances watching your work instead. You bring back memories that make me smile.
The shot of the old mainframe brings back many memories. In the mid 70s an IBM 360 took over an entire room. The room had to be air conditioned and equipped with a Halon fire suppression system. Huge tape drives and disc drives and an impact printer for a operator console and a daisy wheel printer for printing. And programs were keypunched and cards and had to be loaded into a card reader. And the available memory was 32K (32,000 bytes). Today there is more processing power and memory in a one dollar pocket calculator.
@David C. Years ago i purchased a God Phoenix model by entex off eBay for about $100 ..i will just say it didn't age that well as far as details goes but i was still happy to have it for Nostalgia sake
Found this video while doing some research into a model kit I found and bought at a flea market. Got a 1804 Trevithick steam locomotive. The box itself is a bit worn, but it's complete, with a display case, with everything but the box being unopened. I can't say I'm a model enthusiast, but I like steam history, so I plan to assemble and display. It's neat to learn about the value and history of this kit.
I recall building the Bonanza in their boxing. I think I left it all white as my masking skills were not up to the task. I didn't remember Entex until this video. I only saw their kits at the largest toy stores when we'd pack the Family Truckster and head down to Albany, NY to go shopping at the new malls. I don't recall any dedicated hobby shops at that time in that area. I bought most of my childhood kits at the drugstore (Fay's) or my local dept stores (Britt's or White-Modell's). I became adept at riding my bicycle home many miles one-handed carrying my next kit in my other hand.
Excellent video as always, I remember walking into a bowling alley and seeing my first "Pong" machine. I was maybe 18 years old and it was fun for ten minutes, my younger brothers thats another story lol.
I believe Entex used some Aurora molds. This seems to be the case for the Entex 1/48 scale Boeing F4B-4 1930s bi-winged U.S. Navy fighter that Aurora issued many years earlier. I often wondered about the history of Entex (loved their 1/100 scale jetliner kits!) so thanks for providing the background of this long gone company.
Thanks for these videos. Us old model geezers love them. Hope you have stayed safe and solvent during this "pandemic crisis". And they couldn't make a sequel to The Last Starfighter..It was the Last One 😎
Great video. Didn't know the company but I remember all the video game consoles you showed and it makes me realize how it took me away from a great hobby. Glad I found my love for it again.
I have a lot to learn after watching this vid. Your research goes far deeper than mine. Your attention to detail is top notch. I had no idea Entex released so many models. Like the P2V Neptune!
0:22 Tamiya 1:25 '66 Ford Galaxie(slot car?)!?!? Holy Moly! I've always had a soft spot for Entex. They had a vast catalogue of great reboxings. One of my favorites is the 1:48 Beech V-35 Bonanza, originally from Bandai, if memory serves correct. That's one of those "cursed" kits to me. I've had obe of the original Bandai boxing's, two of the Academy, and four Entex... All but the Bandai (built when I was like 9, and henceforth, crummy lol) ended in disaster. Dropped and then accidentally stepped on before finishing, short shot parts, funky plastic that melted under Model Master paint(of all things)..😒 you get the point lol😄
OH BOY - are you in for it now kiddo - I have been watching you for a cpl months now, but Tubalcain "mrpete222" gave you some shout outs this morning, youre sure to get a big bump in subscribers and views now dude! I love it when people I watch, also watch the OTHER channels I watch!
I'm so glad somebody posted this before I did! When I saw your video for Entex I watched it for the Titanic kit but didn't see it until the very end of the catalogue. I still have this model on the top of my entertainment center! It was a good kit but it had a few fitting problems that I had to fix myself.
Thanks for the info. I built the F-16 when I was 10 or 11. I remember it was a nice kit, but had no idea where it came from as I mostly had access to Airfix as kid.
Thanks again.you bring a lot of stuff out .that I haven't heard much about in modeling.I have 1 tube of modeling glue.its still good.it is practra.glue.its old but still works.
By the early 1980s it was the homecomputer market that started to hurt the first gen dedicated consoles plus the fact the cartridge market collapsed, i still have some entex handhelds
When I was in the US Navy, 1980-1986, I got into computer games, first on an Atari 800XL then a Commodore c64. Living offbase at this time with a shipmate, I didn't have my modeling stuff nor much room for models. So the computer games took over as my prime hobby. Once I got out and moved back with my parents trying to get a decent job, I did both, modeling and games. Got into state IT, and I found after pounding out code all day the last thing I wanted was getting on my computer at home! An IT instructor warned me this would happen. So, more time for modeling! Even after five years of retirement, I prefer modeling over computer games. My reflexes suck anyway. 😄 I have heard of Entex but never found one to build. Another name for my search criteria.
The Entex F4B4 is not the Aurora kit. That mistake may stem from Scalemates, who is wrong. It's a Japanese copy by Fuji (along with the Entex F86D and SE-5A. The F4B4 is a copy of the AUrora kit but is not made from the same mold (it is pretty rough). The same with the SE-5A. The C5 Galaxy was an Otaki kit released in Japan a year or two before Entex got it.
To Formula 1 kit builders. Entex Super 1:8 scale of the Lotus 72D Emerson Fittipaldi 1972 and the Mclaren James Hunt 1976 M23, both World Champions, were the Holy Grail of the kits. They cost a fortune if you can find one in a brand new condition at eBay or other Japanese auction markets like Yahoo! Japan Auctions.
I find this series of videos extremely interesting as I never really know there were that many kit manufactures. Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Renwall, Lindberg, Tamiya, Airfix and Hasegawa stick in the mind. Some of the others?????????. I had forgotten IMC but when I saw the video on that one remembered building a couple of their race cars. Very intricate kits for the time. Just a wild thought. What if a kit manufacturer developed a game that let you build their models digitally. I know it's not the same. But it might help build a customer base.
Vectrex. My friend had that in the early 80's. It was in the same basement where his dad had a collection of built 1/35 scale military models we would play war with on their ping pong table. I remember all the boxes of unbuilt Tamiya kits of armor and German soldiers. I wonder what happened to them all?
I built the visible Wankel engine circa 1977. I’m pretty sure it was a mould from a Japanese company, it had that kind of feel to it. Unfortunately, there was so much friction throughout the system that it really didn’t want to run. The other thing I remember about them was I had a 1/8 scale McLaren m23 Formula 1 car from them. The only one I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m pretty sure it too was a Japanese mould, and the scuttlebutt was that it was basically an upscaled Tamiya mould. They certainly looked very Tamiy-ish. Unfortunately I had to sell it 20 years ago when out the work.
Yeah, the Wankel Rotary was a Gakken kit originally - always good and interesting models. It could be got going but needed some careful fettling. I replaced the light bulbs with LED's and corrected the timing. TBH you couldn't see much that was going on through the 'clear' plastic but it was fun.
Yeah, you certainly couldn’t see anything going on inside. It was educational to me during a tweener year though when I was starting to figure out how things worked.
About the Entex 1911 DeHavelin kit. That was a Renwal model that Renwal never issued. Renwal made a deal with Entex and made the kit for Entex. This was one of those models that required glueing “Aero-Skin” to the plane framework. Except Entex sold this kit without the skin. In their model instructions they suggest glueing paper to the framework. I actually have this kit, yet to be built. I would confidently say most of their models were other companies ideas for models that never quite flourished…. until Entex.
Some of these kits were 69 cents back in 76-77, along with some hawk 1-72 scale planes similar in price. Valuegiant dept store. I loved the day when these models were that cheap and had good detail.
''Their mortal enemy, electronic games''. I never shied awaw from computer games, but over the decades I saw how availability of plastic model kits in regular toy shops slowly dwindled down to practically nothing. These days I can only buy them in specialized model kit shops, or on the internet.
Back in 1984, just as I was getting my first Atari computer and playing games, the gaming market dropped out! Many 8 bit software companies went out of business. The hobbyshops' model kit sections picked up a bit. But then SEGA, Nintendo, etc. came in with their consoles. Graphics got better, games more involved, and modeling took another hit. Ah well. Sometimes "progress" isn't.
@@lancerevell5979 That was the US, yes, but other markets handled it differently. Arcades and consoles died off in Europe yes but the microcomputers continued to exist and even thrive; they were more aimed at adult consumers, leaving model kits to be more prominent. Consoles began making inroads better by the 90s, whereas it was hard for them in the 80s. Japan relied on making model kits either media tie-ins or more complex affairs, before Zeta Gundam introduced a budget “Snap-Fit” mini line, which expanded into the SD Gundam series, then became fully incorporated into Gunpla by 1988.
Nice segue to Last Star Fighter, one of the great under rated movies. I would submit that Galaxy Quest is the follow on (if not actual sequel) of Star Fighter.
So we finally meet face-to-face ! I’ll tell you what Max you had me going there for a while ! That World War II marine pilot that you have as your Avatar really fooled me ! Now I got a question for you, You told me that a lot of these companies inner twined in interconnected with insects in my younger teen years, I assembled and built and completed the Entex Wankel rotary engine ! And yes it worked when I was done ! Which actually led me to believe why a lot of rotary engines didn’t last ! Who was that rotary engine originally from if it wasn’t Entex ??? Jorge 🌊🐺
You did not mention that Entex was the first company to market a beautiful Titanic plastic kit in 1974. I was a member of the Titanic Historical Society and how did i discover this Society? Well, by buying and building this extremely good kit, for its time. The instructions had a coupon for membership in the THS. Up to that year, 1974, no plastic model company wanted to make a model of the beloved Titanic because they argued that people won't buy models from tragedies. How wrong they were!! I have the original magazine of the THS when Mr. Clowes, president of Entex wrote an article for the kit's launching and there is a photo of him with Mr. Ken Marshall, artist, who collaborated with the making of the model and the Titanic 1997 film. I imagine that the decision of making a Titanic kit was the best one this company ever made. The original molds, made by Bandai are those used after Entex's closing, by Minicraft for making their Titanic.
At least from my perspective, their failure was due to marketing as much as anything else. I am a second-wave modeller--I started modelling just before Aurora disappeared. Entex was a big presence in discount stores. I thought of them as a discount brand like Lindberg or Airfix, so I never took a chance on them. Had I known they were reboxes of Aurora, Otaki, and Bandai, I would have given them a shot. Those were names I trusted.
No plastic model of the Gunstar was made because "The Last Starfighter" was the first movie to use CGI for the ships. I think it was Monogram who was approached to issue one. When the company found out there were no drawings or filming model, just a computer generated image, they took a powder on the idea.
I've taking time to transfer the gunstar into a vector model in order to reproduce it using a 3d printer. My intention is to build a multimedia kit in 1/144 scale. Compatible with the most of the Gundam movile suit on the market.
I had the clear plastic Wankel ! As I recall it even had small red lights as spark plugs, 2 per chamber that were controlled by the distributer and the transmission stickshit was the on off switch.
Errr? I thought Pinball Wizard was originally by The Who? But the Elton film version was also top notch. Great stuff as always and they are coming fast currently.
Thanks Max another good one (video). I had one Entex kit, I believe, a Concorde. Later I discovered it was a prototype and not a production and was unhappy. Also I found the fit poor and decals too. Not sure who made it originally but was not impressed.
0:22 Heck, these days it’s not uncommon for companies to produce kit models based on video game franchises (Kotobukiya, Good Smile, apparently even Revell to an extent if we count app games) or even be in the game development business themselves (Bamco).
The Sabre dog, c-5 and the 1/16 mg tc, I built. Fun builds. Bought a still sealed mg tc off of eBay. Can't remember any others. I avoided the spruce goose and the dornier Do. X...
Minicraft almost seemed to become the torch bearer for Entex given they ended up with so many of the GMark and Bandai kit molds (the GA aircraft) that those companies did (plus Minicraft's first Titanic). GMark's relationship with Entex seemed to be more than just import as Entex may have supplied B-1A scaling data from Palmdale based Rockwell to GMark so they would have the kit ready to go so soon after the plane flew.
I think it was Birch. It was also called the flying lumberyard. Hughes hated them all. It he had quit meddling it may have flown sooner. It it had been aluminum it probably would have worked
one of the issues of the first pong games is they caused screen burn in....SO many display tvs had the centre line severely burned into the middle of the screen.
Entex made a nice DC-3/C-47 kit and you could build a 3 or C-47! Even with floats! And a real dog of a kit of a XP-50 the Air Corps verison of the Skyrocket with a longer nose! And for a long time the closest kit you could get to build a Blackhawk's Skyrocket!
I oft thought why Entex would have done what they did. I know I have a couple of these kits - the 747 and the Concord. Thing is, was the Entex 747 actually the Aurora kit? Gunstars can be bought as resin kits - Interstellar Modeler I think sells them, or at least he can tell you where to get one. I used computers like that when at university in the 70’s. Long live key punch cards and 18” diameter reels of magnetic tape! LOL
I recently bought (second-hand, at Brisbane's Plastic Exchange (PX) ) two Entex models (looking for 1/16-1/14th scale car kits), the Ford Cobra II and the Mercedes 300SL. Both were in unstarted condition with somewhat mediocre boxes, but these are going to be built. :) Does anyone know how many 1/16th scale car kits they made and what they were?
Wow, I remember the visible Wankle; fit was better than the visible V-8, but no less complicated to get work smoothly. The Who was the obvious choice here, too.
Yeah, the Wankel Rotary was a Gakken kit originally - always good and interesting models. It could be got going but needed some careful 'fettling'. I replaced the light bulbs with LED's and corrected the timing. TBH you couldn't see much that was going on through the 'clear' plastic but it was fun.
Surprised you didn't mention their 1/100 scale Boeing 747 kit... Entex bragged it was the largest plastic model kit ever made (At the time anyway! LOL!)!
Pong gets credited as being th he first video game. I'm not so sure about that. I know in late 70 or 71 I saw a video game called Space Command ata mall in A Milwaukee suburb. It was in a molded plastic case in a bright blue metal flake paint job. The game was basically asteroids with another ship that shot back. As I recall the game was developed by some students at MIT who also belonged to the MIT Model Railroad Club. Their interest wasn't so muc trains as electronics and control systems en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club Trying to find iformation on the game is not easy. I'm quite sure of the time frame because I saw it when I was a senior in high school. Graduated in 71 It want called Space Command. It was actually called Computer Space en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space The first publically demonstrated video game actually goes back to 1950 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertie_the_Brain Prior to a lot or most plastic kit manufactures
You may be right. My guess is Pong is considered first by many because it was more widespread but I am guessing. I do not recall seeing Space Command. Ah history and the fog of time.
-SO, THE LAST STARFIGHTER IS DEAD?- And the console burns out overheated... The boys come to my work area and starts to make questions. A girl ask me about making details then I show her a YT channel where a gorgeous woman shows her abilities in plastic modeling. I bring models of my collection (the triplicated ones) and start to guide them into the path of the force. -THE KO DAN ARMADA IS STINGISHED BUT XUR ESCAPES- This battle is far from over...
Now THAT would be a nice bit of irony if someone was to produce a model kit of someone playing computer games, with some kits in the background under construction... or would that be too cruel?
You should have channeled James Earl Jones, Darth Vader voice at the end of your video. However that is and was a “Bitter Irony!” I the last 70’s and early 80’s I worked for a guy who had to own the latest and greatest. He had Atari and he was one of the first people I knew who own an IBM PC (128 k) over $10k. This cell phone has more capablities. Never liked him. You should compile these together.
