My first original Aurora Model Kit!!!

[Morkai]

I know that don't have too much merit have an original Aurora Model Kit. A lot of people here, have in their collections all the original kits, but for me at the moment was very difficult get one. I had re-issues of: Aurora Drácula, Aurora Creature from the black lagoon, and the 5 monsters in their cars, by Polarlights, also the Family Munster Model Kit and the customizer Monster Kit, King Ghidorah and Rodan. Also the reeditions of Monsters of the Movies by Revell: Frankenstein and Dracula, but never an original from the years 60's.
This is my first one... The Glow in the dark Wolf Man from 1962 with box and instructions. I'm very happy with this
Which was your first original Aurora Monster Kit???

[poseablemonster]

That's a nice one, congratulations!  Those square glow boxes were the ones I had as a kid in the early 70's.  They are by far my favorite.

[mike c]

Hey Morkai, nice acquisition! The square box glow kits were my first kits too, so they have a special place in my heart.
And what's this about merit? I say any single item you can get because you love it, is as big a snag as anyone else's collections. I think we all feel that way in here. It was hard to get, so congratulations my friend!

Box looks like it's in pretty clean shape, too!


Mike C.

[Morkai]

Thanks Andy and Mike!!!
Really I'm very happy with my Wolf Man. This night when I go to bed, I go to display near for see how glow in the dark is his face, hands, feets and rats, hehehe, I'm like a kid
I have seen the instructions, and is written that was printed in UK. Must be the british edition, Inside appears the date, 1962, Aurora Plastics Corp, Universal Studios... etc.
I lost the Original Mummy, but was selled very veru expensive

[poseablemonster]

I fell asleep to the soft glow of those Aurora kits every night of my childhood!  My dad helped me put them together and paint them, and he put up shelves in my room just for them.  It's one of the few things I did with my dad as a kid, and they are fond memories.

[misterhorror]

Very nice item.I'm very happy for you.

[michblk]

Very Nice Morkai, I don't actually remember which one I had first.  Maybe Godzilla and that's probably because the Creature wasn't available that day.  I still have them today, but they are in a box in pieces.  Hopefully someday I'll reassemble them and repaint them.  I always used the Glow parts and before I went to bed at night, I would shine the flashlight on them about 1 inch away and fall asleep to them glowing brightly...

BK

[mike c]

Sometimes I would shine a flashlight onto them, then with all the lights out, I'd get into bed, and pick one of them... and I'd place the glowing head or hands or rats, etc., right on the bridge of my nose, or next to my eye, and just stare at the glowing field of vision, for an eternity. Just staring at the hands or eyes of my Mego monsters, or the skull on the Wolf Man base, or the Mummy's head, etc. It was like LSD for little monster kids.
And you know, I never freaked myself out or got scared in the dark with a glowing monster. These were my friends, after all... some of my flesh-and-blood friends would ask if I wasn't scared going to sleep under these creepy models, and I'd tell them "Nope, these guys keep watch all night long!"
AH the days of glowing monsters.

Mike C.

[Wich2]

"I say any single item you can get because you love it, is as big a snag as anyone else's collections."

Ditto!

"I think we all feel that way in here. It was hard to get, so congratulations my friend!"

DITTO!

-Craig W.

[raycastile]

Congratulations on your meritorious acquisition.  He is a very fine looking specimen.  I love the glow kits.  The only ones I had as a kid were the 70s glow-in-the-dark kits.  I didn't even know the 60s ones existed until I was an adult.  My first Aurora was the Creature, I think.  It was certainly the first one I saw at the store.  My favorite kit was the Forgotten Prisoner.  I had three of the Prisoners when I was a kid.  My mom kept throwing him away because he was too scary.  She would be cleaning my room, take one look at that skeleton, then whack him off the dresser and toss him in the trash.  A month or two later, there would be another Prisoner standing there, staring at her with his empty sockets.  In the trash he'd go.  After three Prisoners, I gave up.

[fmofmpls]

The glow kits bring about fond memories for me as well. My brother and I had Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Mr. Hyde, and Hunchback. I have warm memories of my brother and I painting them all at our kitchen table. Mom had laid out newspaper over the kitchen table to prevent spillage from enthusiastic master monster model makers. To this day I can still recall painting the base on the Frankenstein model a Testors gloss yellow! I guess I interpreted the ground to be that of hay or straw as it had a fair amount of texture. I would give anything to have that particular model back, but I'm afraid it met a fiery death when I discovered fire.     

[ProfGriffin]

Everything about that picture takes me back to my wonderful childhood.

The glow...(as many here have stated)...it's all about the glow!  I can close my eyes and see my mother, working very hard on building and painting ALL the Aurora Monster Models for us as kids. 
She worked on a TV tray while my bother and I hovered around her watching intently as she painted them with INCREDIBLE detail. 
I remember the blood that my mother painted on that poor unfortunate soul in the cell of The Phantom of the Opera...and the bloody eye and hand of The Mummy...I remember the difficulty she had when she put the Hunchback's torso on backward and thought the model was defective when the ropes wouldn't reach...The Hunch-FRONT of Notre Dame!
We tried to tell her but she was so focused that she didn't believe us...we all laughed about that later. 
I remember an experiment she did with the Aurora Frankenstein and fluorescent paint. That monster glowed green and beautiful under the black light in our room...with fluorescent pink scars!!!

Mom would paint the glow parts with a thin coat of black and thinner.  She would paint the wash on it, then wipe it with a paper towel...repeat....the detailed wash would seep into all the details but still glow.  It was beautiful.

My first Aurora was the Wolfman.  And I got him again and again and again.  The reason?  I kept playing with him like a toy, and breaking him.  Then on the next trip to K-mart or Gemco or TG&Y I would beg for another one.

Sadly, only ONE of my Auroras glow in the dark now.  Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde.   I reached a point where I thought that glow in the dark parts didn't look right.  So I replaced alll the parts and/or painted over them.  I wish I hadn't done that.
It might be time to fix that.

[Phantasm]

Ah the glow!

The square box glow wolfman was also my first.  (Seems like he got a lot of us!) 

My memory of this kit has a very funny and sweet memory for me.  It was 1971 and my mom and dad and I lived with my grandparents in the middle of nowhere.  (Just like Courage the Cowardly Dog!  I'm not kidding!) 

My mom had bought the glow wolfman for me.  One night, she and I were at the house together with nothing to do.  I was driving her crazy to build the wolfman.  We opened the box at the kitchen table and realized we didn't have any glue.  I believe my mom thought it was a snap together kit.  I was crushed.  A crushed 6 year old boy is a terrible thing in a mother's eyes so she figured out a way to make it work.

Now this gives a whole new meaning to a glow kit here:

She took out a cookie sheet and we began to put the sub assemblies together and put them on the cookie sheet.  She then heated up the oven and would put the cookie sheet in there until the parts kind of melted together.  I can imagine looking back this was a very bad idea with fumes and fire hazards, but my mom made it work for me.  I remember sitting at the table and feeling the heat of the oven as she carefully watched the parts melt.  The wolf man was forged in fire!

Little by little, we completed the wolf man.  Did he look like the incredible melting wolfman?  Yeah he did.  Did I care?  No!  My mom helped me do something I cared about and the most important parts was that she did it WITH me.  I'll never forget that misshapened lycanthrope.  I wish I still had him. 

I have literally hundreds of kits built and unbuilt now.  But that particular wolfman was the one.

Though a little boy's eyes, he was the best wolfman ever!

Chuck Jeffers

[NekroDave]

haha, that's an amazing story, Phantasm!

I love glow toys as well, but all I have at this point is vinyl kaiju. I know people who are really obsesses with it and have just an amazing amount of the stuff.  One of my favorite toys is a custom painted vinyl Daimajin that my friend painted with glow paints from "Ready Set Glo". Don't mean to derail the thread, but it's really breathtaking, especially in person. You don't see many red glow toys...



Anyway, congrats on your score, Morkai! I need to get some of that stuff myself (and learn how to build kits). I don't have ANYTHING from Auroro and that seems somehow unacceptable...lol