What's What
(A Polar Light BB
Glossary)
Companies and
Organizations
Playing Mantis
The
parent company for Polar Lights formed in 1994 by Tom Lowe. Playing
Mantis brands also included Johnny Lightning and
Memory
Lane.
Polar
Lights
A
subsidiary of Playing Mantis originally intended to re-release
Aurora
monster model kits.
Dave M:
This is a photo taken from the doorway of the Polar Lights office at
Playing Mantis World Headquarters. This was fairly close to the end,
the roll of drawings at the right is a 1:350 Refit set. This was My
office, where the staff of Polar Lights got it all done. Please note
that there were two chairs - one for guests and one for the "staff". I
was sitting in the "staff' chair pushing the shutter release on the
camera!
The
Clubhouse
An
alternate BB set up after Lisa’s firing from PL in November 1998.
http://theclubhouse1.net/
TAY666: History of the clubhouse.
It all
started with Lisa's firing which of course led to a storm of
questions and posts on the PL BB, most of which got locked or
deleted. Some talk migrated to the general modeling forum (aka the
Pirate Ship) but a lot of people still didn't feel comfortable posting
there and several others didn't want to have anything to do with
anything associated with Polar Lights since feelings for Lisa ran
strong and ran very deep. Lots of people felt betrayed by the company
that they had come to know and love and by what was seen as a cold and
heartless move by the company and especially the way it was handled.
Harry (aka Spock) came riding to the
rescue. He already had a site he set up about Polar Lights, complete
with a webring of members sites. He quickly found a place where we
could post to talk about what happened and show our support for Lisa.
One problem though was
the place only kept a certain amount of posts. After that limit, any
time a new post was made, the oldest post got dropped. So he set us
up on EZBoards. He talked a few others into joining who already
had boards of their own. Mark M, Kitman, and a few
others became staff, and moved their boards and their membership to
the new location.
Lisa was the moderator of the Monkey Bars, our
general board, with almost any kind of discussion This way she could
hang out and talk with us, and we could recapture a bit of the old
magic. She couldn't really talk models, as she wasn't allowed to say
anything about PL but it was good to just shoot the breeze. Lisa
moved on with her life, and kind of drifted away from the board.
Meanwhile the board just kept growing and evolving. It suffered some
growing pains and a few heated battles on the forums that changed the
landscape even more. Eventually it moved to it's new location
http://www.theclubhouse1.net/
and is
still growing strong, with over 3000 members now.
Johnny Lightning
The
original Playing Mantis subsidiary that re-released die-cast cars
originally produced under the Johnny Lightning brand.
Memory Lane
Introduced at Toy Fair 2000, Memory Lane was an addition to the family
of brands at Playing Mantis. Memory Lane embodies the nostalgia of
Playing Mantis as well as the collectibility of Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer, the Island of Misfit Toys, and Peanuts action figures.
LAPCO
[Summarized
from the CultTVMan website – for the full text go to
http://www.culttvman.com/aurora_faq_pt_2.html - item 12]
In August of 1999, a
person named Gennaro Giammarino aka Jerry Giammarino
started contacting a number of Aurora fans online. He told a
fantastic story about his grandfather being one of the founders of
Aurora Models. He claimed to have a warehouse with a number of molds
for models that were never issued by Aurora, as well as box art,
instruction sheets and other materials. Over 80 different
unproduced models were said to exist. Some of the molds he claimed to
have were the Man Made Monster, The Invisible Man, and Dracula's
Daughter. Giammarino was looking to resurrect Aurora, and issue these
so-called "lost models".
In October 1999, Giammarino appeared at Chiller and announced the
return of Aurora with great fanfare. He repeated the story of the
"lost molds" and said the first models would be in styrene as well as
resin.
In the spring of 2000, advertisements appeared announcing "The Lost
Aurora Plastics Company" now known as LAPCO. An advertisement in
Scarlett Street magazine showed new models of Gandalf from The Lord of
the Rings, a bust of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster, and a
reissue of the old Aurora Fokker Eindecker.
In the meantime, there were problems reported and LAPCO began telling
people the molds were deteriorated and needed restoration work. LAPCO
began to contact sculptors, commissioning new sculpts "based on the
lost molds." Several of sculpts were displayed at the spring Chiller
in April 2000.
Jerry Giammarino appeared at the spring Chiller Theatre show. LAPCO
was selling resin models of Gandalf at their table in the dealers
room.
After May 2000, LAPCO quit responding to email and phone calls.
AutoWorld/Round
2
Slot
car company founded by Tom Lowe after his release from RC2.
AutoWorld is a division of Round 2, LLC.
AutoWorld
is the home
of Thunderjet and X-Traction slot cars with Thomas
Lowe, Founder and President of Round 2. In June 2005, RC2 offered to
sell Tom the slot car line back. He purchased it and started AutoWorld/Round 2.
The office and warehouse are located in Mishawaka, Indiana.
The slot car lines (Thunderjets and X-Traction) will be are marketed
under the "Auto World" brand name. Auto World is the name of a
famous mail order catalog from the 1960’s and 1970’s? Website
should be up and running by January 1, 2006.
RC2
Aka
Racing Champions, ERTL, AMT
RC2’s
principal activity is to produce and market collectibles and toys. The
Group's product line includes automotive, high performance and racing
vehicle replicas, agricultural, construction and outdoor sports
vehicle replicas, sports trading cards, racing apparel and souvenirs,
pre-teen vehicles and role play activity toys and collectible figures.
The products are sold through more than 25,000 retail outlets located
in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia Pacific. Major brands are
Racing Champions (R), Ertl (R), Ertl Collectibles (R), Learning Curve
(R), Britain (R), Eden (R), American Muscle (TM), AMT (R), Outdoor
Sportsman (TM), W. Britain (R), Press Pass (R) and JoyRide Studios
(R).
