What were some of the common paint brands that prop makers used back in the 60's and 70's?
Thanks
FB
What were some of the common paint brands that prop makers used back in the 60's and 70's?
Thanks
FB
I haven't heard of Pactra.
I'm helping a friend match some paint from part of the Valley Forge.
FB
Pactra was a hobby paint brand in the 60s-70s, they were bought out by Testors around the late 80s.
Yep! Thanks Rob, for chiming in! The paint bottles were plastic (i think?) and had a distinct shape to them and had a "P" on all 4 sides made into the bottle, also they had the now long gone stormy sea blue that was used on the ESB tie fighters.
Pactra bottles were glass actually (I think I still have a couple of them in storage). The Pactra stuff tended to be the main brand used that we don't see today, although Floquil colors were more likely used on the bigger projects since that stuff would dry so quick thanks to the DioSol thinners (don't light a cigarette around that stuff). Pactra was doing a lot of different military shades long before Testors started their FS Model Master color line in the mid 1980s. I believe it has been documented that at least one of the colors used by ILM on TIE Fighter models was a Pactra shade.
Over in England, Humbrol and Airfix colors I believe were more the norm in the 1960s and 70s and you tended to see them used more on things like the Gerry Anderson models. Not all the colors available back then are around today though. Revell paints from the 1970s I've never really seen, but model markets tended to be a bit more regional back then compared to today. So one part of the country would be more likely to have Pactra paints while another would more likely carry Testors. Given that California was Revell's home state though, it wouldn't surprise me if Revell colors were common there.
When we were cleaning out my grandma's house to prep for the estate sale i found an old barely started model kit my grandpa had that i can't even remember the year. It was almost like brand new and inside were several bottles of Pactra paints. I remember when he did his model railroad buildings he'd use it because he bought it before it stopped being produced and would forget about it. The stuff was still good when I opened it back in 2005.
Humbrol was the Cadillac of paints back then, especially if you were working on anything that would have a flatter finish to it (military equipment, well-used farm equipment, weapons, etc.)
Floquil was more of the choice for airbrushers as it was one of the best paints in the 70s for using with an airbrush.
Ain't that the truth. I am curious how many combined brain cells modelers killed back then spraying Floquil thinned with Diosol?Bruzilla said:
One thing I will give a hand to Floquil on is they have maintained the railroad color racks for quite a while with many great colors that one typically doesn't see these days and they haven't messed with the formulas. Plus I also like the fact that you can still get them in bigger bottles, which comes in VERY handy for big projects.
There are some cool old Pactra colors that I wish still existed, but several of those fell by the wayside when Testors bought them out. Pactra paints still exist today as a Testors division (Floquil is owned by Testors as well), but they are just a rack of RC bottle and spray paints for painting Lexan bodies and they don't have any of the old colors from the good ole days of model building.
Exactly this. Ok I wasn't alive back in the 70s but I remember Humbrol being good, now they're awful since corgi bought them out. You used to be able to get a flat and even finish using a brush with gloss paints, now you get brush strokes everywhere and bits and bubbles. That is if your paint has even had any solids put into the tin. Massively inconsistent too these days :/Bruzilla said:
I think that Floquil would likely be the correct paint.
Having said that, there is one major model paint line that seems to have been missed in the discussion, which is Polly S - one of (if not the first) hobby acrylic paint.
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