What Happened to MPC Model Kits? | The Free Car Detroit Gave Away

The car on the showroom floor was not for sale. That was the point, and it is the whole reason MPC existed. Model Products Corporation started in 1963 in Mount Clemens, Michigan, when George Toteff left AMT and took four of its best people with him. The business sat on one object: the small plastic car a Dodge or Pontiac dealer gave away with the new model year, and the kit version of the same car that a boy could buy at a hobby shop for about two and a half dollars and build himself. This video follows that object from a Detroit lawyer's aluminium desk model in 1948 to the steel moulds that are still being run today. What it was doing inside General Mills' toy group, why the first Star Wars model kits came from the same factory, and the three separate forces that ended it, in the order they arrived. One note on what this is not. MPC did not die because boys stopped building models. Every force that ended it was decided by adults, and none of them ever mentioned the company by name. Figures and sources used in this video: MPC founded 1963 by George Toteff and Dick Branstner, Mount Clemens, Michigan, after Toteff left his post as a vice president at AMT, along with Phil Sheldon, Ed Dietz and Paul Simon. AMT was founded in 1948 by West Gallogly Sr. in Troy, Michigan. Its first product was a cast aluminium model of the new Ford sedan, sold only through Ford dealers. MPC's first kit was a one twenty fifth scale 1964 Corvette Sting Ray coupe. A kit, not a promotional car. MPC's first promotional models, for the 1965 model year, were Dodge cars: the Coronet hardtop and convertible, the Custom 880 convertible and the Monaco hardtop. MPC took the Pontiac promotional contract from AMT in 1966. General Mills acquired MPC in its 1968 fiscal year, the year that ended in May 1968, according to the company's own annual report. The commonly repeated "about 1970" appears to refer to when MPC was folded into the toy group's later structure, not to the purchase. Lionel production moved under MPC in 1970, and the General Mills toy group was reorganised as Fundimensions in 1973. MPC and Kenner were both part of that group. Lucasfilm split the Star Wars licence between them: Kenner took the action figures, MPC took the model kits, and MPC's first Star Wars kits were the droids, followed by the X-Wing and Darth Vader's fighter. General Mills spun its toy group out in 1985. The tooling went to Ertl, which had already acquired AMT. Ertl itself was bought in 1999 by Racing Champions, which became RC2. Round 2 owns the MPC brand today and reintroduced the Zingers line in 2009. On the model year: styling changes were already thinning by model year 1970, when the new Chevrolet was reported to look much like the previous one, and sources credit the end of the dealer promotional to rising plastics prices and to Detroit sponsoring fewer and fewer of them, rather than to a single decision. The script presents the model year calendar as the reason the promotional existed, which the sources support, and does not claim it as the sole cause of its end. Detroit later began charging model companies for the use of car names and designs. A 1960s model kit for a youngster is put at between two dollars twenty five and two dollars fifty by MotorCities National Heritage Area; that is the basis for the price in the script. The estimate of roughly eight million kits a year at MPC's peak is the figure repeated in hobby histories and is presented as an estimate. 0:00 The Dealership Display Cars 2:18 The Rise of MPC and Model Kits 5:56 Inside the Mount Clemens Factory 8:03 The Golden Age of Toy Cars 10:12 The Retail Shift and Decline 12:05 The Quiet End of an Era 13:09 Collecting MPC Today