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MJBivouac — Jupiter Two Aurora model box
Published: 2009-12-28 04:53:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 4276; Favourites: 48; Downloads: 569
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Okay, for the sake of you folks under 40, back when i was a kid LONG before 9000 channels on your cable TV, video games, IPODS, computers, Photoshop 3D Studio max and all that other crap, we had netwoek TV, pencil and paper and MODEL KITS you bought at the store! I built a lot of model its when I was a kid. AURORA Products was well known for their TV and Movie tie-in kits. They did all the Universal Monsters, lots of TV and Movie spaceship and vehical kits, BUT the one kit they NEVER did was the JUPITER TWO! Rumor has it, someone suggested it to some big shot at Aurora, who response was:"It's boring. Who'd want to build it?" And that was the end of it. Aurora did kits of just about every other Irwin Allen TV show vehicle, and made great profits off of them, but never the Jupiter Two. I know a lot of guys who desperately wanted to build a kit of the J2 but until the last few years there was never one available in the USA. ANyway I thought it would be fun to create a FAKE Aurora model kit box for a fictitious Jupiter Two model kit, usimg the Jupiter two artwork I have been working on for the last couple of months. The box style is from Aurora's 1970s period, a period, oddly enough, when Aurora did not offer any kits from any Irwin Allen shows. So it really is a work of fiction on many levels.Related content
Comments: 105
Well, be careful, or this Old Fart will bend your ear for hours about how great the good old days were. Ha Ha!
As much as I like the old stuff from my childhood, I have to sya that a lot of things are better today. TV is amazing today. So well written, acted and produced. Some amazing TV shows out there today. TV in my youth was often fun, but not as high quality. Scripts were much more simple, special effects were much harder to do in those days, and by today's CGI standards, they often looked rather bad. Also in those days there was very little continuity between episodes. The idea then was that anyone who turned on the TV and saw any episode of any given show, should be able to follow the story easily even if they had never seen the show before. Today, if you miss an episode of a lot of shows, you might be very confused as to what is going on. But I like the great attention to detail they do today in shows like MADMEN, the SOPRANOS, Desperate Housewives and many others.
I also prefer the medical care we have today...and the internet, and naked women, etc.
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i dont think i would mind, my grampa tells me storys and i always find them amazing! i guess everything does look better, but there isnt much to do, for instance people dont go out as much, and they seem to be getting lazier by the minute. naked women is pretty awesome, lol
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LOL! I'm probably about as old as your Grandfather. He and I would probably have a lot in common.
So please tell me, what was it about the fake model kit box art that made you comment the way you did? I'm just curious.
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hmm, i dont know, it just seemed cool, i guess i was remmebering when i brother used to put car models together and how cool it looked, and teh picture was really cool to, i guess im old fashio\ned for my age lol
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I guess you are.
Today kids learn to "model" in 3D Studio and other computer programs.
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i dont get that stuff, its really confusing to me lol. the only computer program i do use is paint tool sai, so i can color on the computer lol
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Hey! AT your age you should be embracing the computer and all it can do. Us OLD FARTS are supposed to resist it and bitch about how much better the old day were. Ha Ha!
A lot of things are BETTER today. I personally LOVE to shop on line. You can find just about anything! Of course I do like to buy cool OLD stuff like comics and books. But it's so easy to find it all today. The GOOD OLD DAYS were good for some things...Oh,and by the way, that Jupiter 2 model that was never available in the GOOD OLD DAYS? Guess what! Someone makes a really nice one today! So I guess today is the Good Old days after all. Of course it doesn't have MY Jupiter 2 artwork on the box....dammit!
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well you "OLD FARTS" are just ninja like lol. and i cant walk down the street without feeling followed. im sure the streets where MUCH safer then. but then again i heard that from my grampa, and he lived on a farm 
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Well I never lived on a farm. Just the suburbs, and my area was pretty safe when I was a kid. Today, I too am more careful when walking around in the city or even my neighborhood. You can't trust anyone. I think a farm is a nice place to visit, but I don't thing I would wantn to live on one...especially having to work a farm.
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i think it would be amazing. ive never liked the city or crowded places for that matter. so living in a big city is pretty hellish. its true. you really cant trust ANYONE. its sad in this day and age really.
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When I was a kid, my brother and I would go Trick or Treating pretty much all by ourselves, and no one thought anything about it. We never had anything bad happen to us, it was all just fun, and it's a great memory. If I had kids today, they would have to be carefully supervised for Trick or TReat, and when we returned home, every single piece of candy would have to be carefully examined for anything out of the ordinary. Too many weirdoes and crazies out there these days.
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yeah, mom was saying that she used to do the samething with my aunt and uncle. and now me and my brothers have to be watched uber closely. there are allot of creeps out ther. makes me wonder how anyone can live in this hell hole we call a "world"
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Theses days most people have kids parties, and don't even let them go Trick or Treating. When I was a kid it was called "Begger's Night".
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beggers night, thats awesome lol.
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I was...it was no big deal...except for the cool Aurora model kits.
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Very nice job! -- I can't remember because it was thousands of years ago, but I had a model of the submarine, Seaview, from the tv show "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" which was produced by Irwin Allen...I recall I did a really first-class job painting that sucker, but I'll be damned if I also can't even remember what happened to it!
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That was of course an AURORA kit. I had it too. Along with all the other Aurora TV sci-fi model kits. What memories.
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I was gonna say I could have sworn remembering building it. But now that I think about it, I was thinking about the Monogram UFO from the Invaders! [link]
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The "UFO" was indeed the "INVADERS FLYING SAUCER", made by AURORA years before Monogram got a hold of the molds. No kit of the Jupiter 2 was ever released in the USA. There was a Japanese one, but it was pretty inaccurate I am told. I also do not belive any examples of teh actual japanese kit survive. Only an instruction sheet have I ever seen.
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You're right. I most likely built the Aurora UFO. and they made the Seaview, too, and a nicely done Flying Sub.
My cousin built all the Aurora Universal Monsters, I built the all the superheroes. LOL!
I still have my Batman model from way back when!
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I had most of my old AUrora kits into my 20s, BUT my Mom managed to loose them for me. It was MY fault really! I asked her to make sure to keep them during a clean out of my Grandmother's house. I trusted her and that was my mistake. So they all went away. I think I built just about every Aurora genre kit they produced. I was VERY fond of teh sci-fi vehicles
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Yeah, I wanted a kit of the j2 so bad as a kid! Aurora and AMT kitted almost every other TV spacecraft except the Jupiter! You even got the chariot with then deluxe cyclops kit! But NO J2!
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that is seriously awesome, Aurora products were great, too bad they never did this one.
I still have some boxes from their race sets, the art is pretty sweet!
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Yes, some great art on model kit boxes in general back in those days. The Mort Kunstler LIS Cyclops and Chariot box art was always a favorite of mine. Even when I was a kid. The LAST SUPPER of model kit box art.
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a printer I used to work with had contract to design and print the Aurora speedway sets...he told me that he had a bunch of the original artwork in his attic for a while but he threw it away!!!
met one printer, you've met them all...
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Ouch! I have read that Bantam threw out all the Bama DOC SAVAGE cover art originals...Stupid bastards!
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sad, they really should have known better...a childhood friend's father owned one of the factories in NY that molded for Marx and they used to give me lots of figures. during the 73 oil crisis they shit canned all their molds and switched to making fiberglass Knights and coats of arms for long island house wives to hang in their living rooms ={
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No Shit! I lOVE Louis Marx toys! They rocked! You had some great connections! Ever see the Campus Cuties line they did?
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Oh, but the connection were before knowing what they were, had like three sets of the Disney Marx figures, since I was living in a palm frond house the other kids in the nieghborhood ended up with them, they we're all in little boxes with drawings of the character on it. The campus cuties are great, I have a set of the bathing beauties, cool 54mm fig cast in pink.
Geez, the right side of gov just forced the Sithsomian to remove a bunch of art.
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???? Palm Frond House?????I thought you were in the USA?
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Haha I am now! That was in the "back to the land days"...yea, when your seven and running the palm groves barefoot, it doesn't really matter if your plastic toy go away, they aren't half as fun, right?
In fairness the roof was tin.
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Wow! When I was a kid, my parent's idea of roughing it was staying at a cheap hotel.
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Nice, there's a lot of up side that.
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I like this idea of yours a lot! 
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Thanks Much! You're going to give me a big head!
I recall the early days of Aurora too. I was pretty young, but my Dad got me and helped me paint and build the Frankenstein and Dracula kits. He knew nothing about military flats so both were quite shiney. He also gave me my first lesson in mixing colors. It was all new to me at that time. He also got me some military kits but I liked the monsters the best. I had never seen the original Frankenstein, but I had seen the MUNSTERS, and I was always calling The Frankenstein kit Herman Monster, until my Dad finally made me understand(yelled at me)the kit was NOT of Herman Monster, and the name was Herman MUNSTER! Stupid kid! In the 70s I had all the Aurora kits! and I used the dumb glow in the dark parts! Stupid kid! When I got the Lost In Space cyclops kit(with chariot) I was amazed by the box art. It was just incredible and only a year or two ago did I learn it was artist/illustrator Mort Kunstler who painted it. I'd love to own THAT original!
All the Aurora sci-fi kits decorated my room as a young pre-teen and teen. I still have the chariot from the cyclops kit as well as my original LIS robot kit! I'm such a nerd!
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Yeah me too about the nerd part, although in my case geek or weirdo might be more appropriate.
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You're very welcome!!
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Ha Ha! DBF are YOUR initials! Dino Bat Fan. But the Deviant Best Friend alternative is very cute. It just might catch on!
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Whoops! Oh duh! I just never thought of my name as just the initials, but you're right. Thanks for the reminder!
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I frequently address people with JUST their initials because I'm just too lazy to write out the entire name! And this is not the first time someone questioned WHAT the initials mean.
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Very cool! I actually like it. It makes sense. I just hadn't seen my Dinobatfan name done that way before, and so it just caught me off guard.
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I was going to correct you and say that there was a kit, but it was my memory playing tricks on me. It was The Invaders model kit which I remembered (had a cool interior, too). I have some vague memory of handling one at a friend's house.
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You are correct. AURORA never kitted the Jupiter two. The INVADERS UFO was a s close as they ever got.
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Wow. This really does look like one of the old Aurora model kit boxes. Very authentic!
Y'know, I read somewhere that the second largest industry in the world is product design, because of how everything everywhere has to be packaged and made appealing. I think you have a flair for such work; perhaps a promising future as well, youngster.
When I was a kid in my hometown (about 100 years ago), there was a little mom-n-pop model store that carried hundreds of such delights. I used to visit them whether I had money or not, just to spend a few minutes in adolescent geek heaven. They burned incense and played muzak, and encouraged you to window shop. If there was a model kit from anywhere in the world, they had it.
Now I go to Hobby Lobby to look at all twelve of their kits, check out the prices and feel a vein pop in my head.
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