Added a 1974 Revell advert for Pactra paints in UK to the blog article Pactra Authentics and the Japanese Air Force published in September 2010.
Added a 1974 Revell advert for Pactra paints in UK to the blog article Pactra Authentics and the Japanese Air Force published in September 2010.
7 comments:
Nice to see this treatment from the past. I had purchased this very set as the first one from Pactra and recall feeling cheated that they included silver as a color, I had plenty of that paint already! I had earlier bought the Japanese aircraft paint set from Humbrol. Still have four of the original Pactra bottles from this set including both of the greens, Violet IJ19 and the Brown IJ18 which still holds up in accuracy.
Although I didn't have that that IPMS Japanese color guide the neighbor kid had one that I could borrow. Same kid that I bought the Hasegawa Rita from. Thanks again Nick for a rare look backwards into the history of model painting from our youth.
Thanks for pointing us at your 2010 article, Nick, published when I was not yet aware of AoJ and of the Zero colour controversy. I was lucky that I hadn't built any early IJN aeroplanes between then and now that we're much more educated about their appearance.
Very true is your statement on the degradation of hobby colours, partly owed to "value engineering" on the part of the manufacturers, partly to the abolishment of certain solvents by the EU. What a pity and what a constant nuissance!
Nice commitment to updating such an old entry.
Woody
I also used Pactra Authentic International Colors exclusively in the 70s and 80s - my recollection is that they sprayed like a dream in my Paasche airbrush. Very fine camo edges and no clogging. I could never say that about Testors (the only other paint I could get back then). Of course, when Testors acquired Pactra, it didn't take them long to stop producing all Pactra paint except those for Lexan RC bodies. Most unfortunate.
Cheers,
Bill
Thank you Jim and Bill for your recollections of using Pactra paints. I never tried them in an airbrush but was satisfied brush painting with them. I thought their US Olive Drab was very good and applied that and the Neutral Gray to a Hasegawa P-47 'Razorback'. I was surprised by how dark the latter was as it seemed 'full scale'. I recall that straight out of the bottle they dried to a smooth and hard texture in one coat like Humbrol Authentics, with no indication of brush marks.
Isn't it always the way that a bigger corporation swallows a smaller one and then either deletes their products or 'improves' them for the worse. I'm thinking Google and Blogger here. Now having to scroll through a single long list of posts to update an old one is a pain. Previously the posts were listed in manageable sections on 'pages' by number and date so it was very quick to select and update an old one. Now that simple task has been 'improved' into a tedious one. It is not even possible to select a post for correction or updating from the archive list when signed in. Just dumb, clunky and not at all user friendly, which just about sums up Google.
Late to the game here (as usual, ha), but man do I have happy memories of Pactra paints in my youth. I was so dismayed when I came back to modeling and found out that the "new" paints didn't seem to behave nearly as well.
I bristle when I hear "new and improved", for sure it'll be new, but . . . .
Thanks for this notice, Nick.
Ken Glass
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