Garage Kit - USA

USA

In the 1950s and 60s Aurora and other companies produced cheap plastic models of movie monsters, comic book heroes, and movie and television characters. This market disappeared, but through the 1980s an underground market grew through which enthusiasts could acquire the old plastic model kits.

In the early to mid-1980s, hobbyists began creating their own garage kits of movie monsters. There was a small but enthusiastic market for these new model kits. They were making flexible molds which could produce accurate reproductions of new figures which were sculpted more accurately and with more detail than the old plastic model kits, but often done without permission from copyright holders. They were usually produced in limited numbers and sold primarily by mail order and at toy and hobby conventions.

In the mid- to late 1980s the monster model kit hobby grew toward the mainstream. By the 1990s model kits were produced in the US, UK as well as Japan and distributed through hobby and comic stores. There was an unprecedented variety of licensed models figure kits.

In the late 1990s model kit sales went down. Hobby and comic stores and their distributors began carrying fewer garage kits or closed down and producers shut their doors.

As of 2009, there are two American garage kit magazines, Kitbuilders Magazine and Amazing Figure Modeler, and there are garage kit conventions held each year, like WonderFest USA in Louisville, Kentucky.