Aurora Plastics Corporation
| Industry | Hobbies |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1950 |
| Headquarters |
Brooklyn, New York United States |
| Products | Model kits |
| Website | auroraplasticscorp.com |
The Aurora Plastics Corporation is a U.S. toy and hobby manufacturing company. It is known primarily for its production of plastic model kits of airplanes, automobiles, and TV and movie figures in the 1960s. Its principal competition in modeling were various other plastic modeling firms like Revell and Monogram.
Aurora Plastics Corporation was founded in March, 1950 by engineer Joseph E. Giammarino (1916–1992) and businessman Abe Shikes (1908–1997) in Brooklyn, New York (moving to West Hempstead, Long Island in 1954), as a contract manufacturer of injection molded plastics (Giammarino 2007; Graham 2007, pp. 1–2).
With the hiring in 1952 of salesman John Cuomo (1901–1971), the company began the manufacture of its own line of plastic model kits, efficiently marketed with a skeleton staff (Gosson 2015, pp 68-69). The target market were young hobbyists, similar to the kits of the rival companies, Monogram and Revell. Aurora profitably targeted a younger demographic than their competitors, creating smaller-sized, less detailed models at a lower price (Bussie 2007; O'Connor 2006).
The first kits came in late 1952 and were 1:48 scale aircraft models. One was a F9F Panther jet and the other an F90 Lockheed (Bussie 2007). The Aurora logo at this time appeared in narrow white letters and in a semi-circular form across the top of the script. The more recognized Aurora oval did not appear until 1957 (Bussie 2007). Boxes were a simply illustrated orange color. The slogan under the Aurora logo was "U - Ma - Kit" (You Make It)(Bussie 2007). Aurora's market approach was to make kits simple, thus undercutting the competition. Along these lines these first two kits appear to have been Hawk kits measured and copied to Aurora's own molds (Bussie 2007).
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