Monsters of the Movies: Rodan model kit (Aurora, 1975)

I must have waited two years for one of these kits to pop up on Ebay--well, this is the second one, because I missed out on the first, but it was worth the wait.  This lovely kit comes from 1975, at a time when Aurora was beginning to push monster kits again, after a hiatus of several years.  Apparently, from my reading this weekend, Nabisco had bought the company and phased out monster kits.  At any rate, by the mid-70's, they were ready to try it again, and included two brand-new kaiju kits in the line, the other being Ghidrah, which you can see in depth here.

The box art is very nicely done, and I think it does a good job of tempting the buyer.  I actually prefer it to the 2000 re-issues.  "Downtown Tokyo gets run down again."

The lovely 1970's orange-rust color goes well with its counterpart, which is purple.  Interestingly, they don't include the "clack board" in the photos anywhere.
Now let's look at what's included!

Here's half of the pieces, some still on their trees!  And also the base...but what to my wandering eye should appear...?

Yep, sharp-eyed Marvelites have already noticed this, but my seller had stored the pieces for his kit in vintage bags for Marvel comic three-packs! I used to love these things.  (In case you don't know, you used to be able to buy 3-packs of old-stock comics in grocery stores, and probably others, at a discounted rate.  They were frustrating also, because you never knew what the middle comic was going to be!)  I was happy to see that these bags appeared to be unused, or at least very carefully used, because they are perfect, and I wanted to keep one separately.  I love buying things and getting a little bonus that you weren't expecting!

And here are the pieces of Rodan, as well as the trees that they came on.  If you look to the left of Rodan's head(s), you will see the movable tongue piece that the box mentioned.

Finally, here are the instructions.  I'm glad to say that the "Film History" section isn't full of glaring errors, so somebody actually cared to know their stuff.  After all, unless you watched the movies, kaiju information wasn't extremely easy to come by back then!