![]() Incidentally, Heller re-used that Santa Maria hull several times as the basis of other kits, each of them more ridiculous looking than the last. My impression is that the Heller kit isn't significantly better - or worse - than the Revell version. I built the grand old Revell Santa Maria (vintage 1957) when it was brand new - and several times later. My general impression is that it's on about the same standard as the other two. I haven't built or bought the Heller Santa Maria kit, but I've looked at it - though not recently. We don't know much about Columbus's ships, but it's a safe assumption that two of them didn't have identical hull lines. I'm not sure, though, that I'd be comfortable displaying the two of them side-by-side, thereby making the identical hulls obvious. Since we know so little about the real ships, either one of the Heller kits, considered individually, looks pretty believable. The Nina and Pinta kits use the same hull, with different upper bulwark components to make the finished models look different from each other. I remember being pretty happy with the Pinta I built - after I dressed it up a bit with aftermarket deadeyes, crew figures, etc. The "wood grain" detail is indeed pretty coarse Heller in those early days wasn't trying to reproduce actual wood grain (with knots, etc.), but simply making scratches in the molds to keep the parts from looking smooth. These kits obviously can't be expected to come up to modern standards. I think the terms "fair" and "quite decent" are pretty accurate. I bought the Nina and Pinta, and built the latter, quite a long time ago - when Heller ship kits were being sold for the first time in the U.S., under the Minicraft label (the mid- to late sixties, I think).
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