Beyond Banthrico
AMT was the most successful company in the mid-1950s to mold accurate plastic models in 1:25 scale and sell them to auto manufacturer dealerships, but it was not the first promotional automobile model maker.
National Products of Chicago, Illinois, starting manufacturing pot metal promotional models in the 1930s. Among their models were the 1934 Studebaker, 1940 and 1941 Buick 4-door sedans, and a variety of other cars and trucks. National Products was purchased by Banthrico in 1949. Banthrico started making promotional banks of animals and buildings in the 1930s. After World War II, Banthrico continued with a focus on precision metal replica banks of cars, accurately painted, and mostly in 1:25 scale. According to promo aficionado Clarence Young (accessed 2010), these car models were used as 'paint chips' to display real car colors to prospective buyers. Through the early 1950s, Banthrico was the leader in metal promotional models.
Nevertheless, the use of plastic was on the rise and would become dominant by the mid-1950s. At this time, AMT and its competitors began making plastic promotional models. These were Scale Model Products (SMP), Product Miniature Company (PMC), National Products, and Ideal Models which later became Jo-Han because of the name conflict with the Ideal Toy Company. PMC may have been the first to actually produce a model in plastic, but among these companies, SMP, of Birmingham, Michigan, is the most significant to AMT. Gradually, Banthrico, PMC, and others faded while AMT and Jo-Han gained momentum on the promo scene.
About 1958, SMP started what was to become the plastic modeling craze by introducing the 'annual' kit, often with a 3-in-1 theme where the model could be built in stock, custom, or racing versions. When Aluminum Model Toys bought SMP in 1961, it adopted SMP's logo, then a diamond shape (Doty 2007, 86). Also, the universally recognizable red rectangle with rounded corners shifted from SMP to AMT – with a simple change of the diagonal white letters. Thus, SMP seems to have created the 3 in 1 annual kit and logo, not AMT. It appears that AMT may then have marketed both the SMP and AMT names simultaneously for a couple of years. On promo boxes, the diagonal SMP logo was copied by AMT but that style did not last.
Read more about this topic: Aluminum Model Toys