1/25 Orange Crush-Revell Ford Country Squire Station Wagon
Plastic Model Kit, Box Condition: Fair++
Very rare kit with a fascinating history. Around 1958/59, Orange Crush of Mexico offered a promotion. They offered free, colorful, plastic model cars if you collected correctly-marked Orange Crush bottle caps. The most common set is the 1/32 scale Revell Highway Pioneer series - although there is no mention of Revell or Lodela anywhere on the box. Orange Crush had the boxes and even the instructions specially made for them with no mention of a manufacture. What most people have never seen is the other cars the Crush offered beyond the Highway Pioneers. Again, these were from Revell (Lodela) molds and this time 'Revell' is listed two short box sides in addition to Orange Crush. Inside is the classic Revell Country Squire Wagon molded in glossy dark brown plastic. The kit has never been started and all parts and instructions are still in the factory sealed bag. I can see from the instructions that this is a Lodela (Revell of Mexico) kit. Once you had your bottle caps, they could be redeemed one of two ways - at the Orange Crush truck and at a Modelandia Hobby House. Orange Crush also released two full-color booklets and a complete paint set for the cars. A colorful cardboard box held 7 colors of paint in glass bottles, complete with 'Orange Crush' screw-on caps! Robina S.A. was the bottler or distributor of Orange Crush in Mexico at that time. The box side shows three sizes of OC - Family Size (Familiar), Grand (Grande) and Normal. You could also obtain models with Titan bottle caps. Titan was also bottled by Robina and came in large (Titan) and smaller (Titancito) sizes and apparently more than one flavor, judging from the box side illustration. It is not know for how long the promotion lasted, but Orange Crush was one of the most dominant soft drinks in Mexico at that time. Here is one clue: some boxes claim that Modelandia had 13 locations; other boxes, which obviously came later on, claim 19 locations. This indicated that the promotion went on for a significant amount of time. Oddly enough, this box does not mention Modelandia, although we know they were deeply involved in the Crush Highway Pioneers. This kit must be shipped insured.
This item has been sold.
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