I mentioned this on another thread and someone said they'd never heard of it, and lo, here is one on the 'bay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5957973379 (http://www.qksrv.net/click-1606754-5463217?loc=http%3A//cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll%3FViewItem%26item%3D5957973379)

Oh, man, I remember that! I think I HAD that one.

What does the photo scope do? Do you look down the perri-scope(sp?) to see inside?

Looks like a neat kit!

MMM

I have built 2 of them in my time but not the Photo-Scope version, a easy build. But $70.00 that is too rich for me.

AZbuilder
John Davis

What does the photo scope do? Do you look down the perri-scope(sp?) to see inside?

Looks like a neat kit!

MMM

That's it exactly, MMM. Aurora had this feature on their sub kits and at least some of their tank kits. There was a little photograph inside the scope attachment. When you looked inside you could see the inside of a submarine or tank. Depending of course on what type of model you were building.

Judging by the photo of the parts and decals, it looks a lot like the 1:230 Revell Skipjack. That might even say "1:230" on the instruction sheet.

Now, what's a phota-scope?

Judging by the photo of the parts and decals, it looks a lot like the 1:230 Revell Skipjack. That might even say "1:230" on the instruction sheet.

Now, what's a phota-scope?

Aurora came first. Then monogram(later Revell/Monogram) bought the molds. RC/M has reissued the kit a few times since.

As noted earlier a Phota-Scope was a built in very small, maybe 8mm, film slide mounted at one end of a short tube, with a magnifying lens at the other end. This tube was built into the kit. On the sub kits it was pretty uninspiring in that they just bored a hole through the side of the hull and you mounted the tube there so you looked thorugh the middle/side of the sub, not the conning tower, to see the picture. On the subs it was a photo of the bridge on a sub, painted white, with all the stuff. I was a bit disappointed as a kid that the bridge looked a lot more cramped than it did on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea :).

On the Aurora tanks, the square box ones which came with the vacu-form terrain bases, the scope was mounted in the turret, and you could look down the commanders hatch to see a slide of the inside of the turret.

The scopes worked well, looking just like one of those old 35mm slide hand viewers if you had enough light behind the image. It was a great selling gimmick too, as I bugged my dad to get me at least two.

Aurora had four Phota-Scope kits in its catalog in 1971-1972. The Tiger Tank (611) and Stalin Tank (612) had the photo tube down the turret hatch with a color film showing an explosion. The Skipjack (614) had the photo tube down the hatch that once opened to show the nuclear reactor. The Nautilus (615) had the tube through the hull from starbord to port. Both subs had photos of the interior of the U-505, now based at Chicago's Museum of Science and Technology. (Recently put in out of the weather to save its old metal skin.) Aurora's director of model development Jim Keeler (earlier at Revell) asked the US Navy for photos from nuke subs, and when the Navy refused, Keeler went through the U-505 snapping photos for Aurora's kits.

I had the Nautilus one, far longer ago than I would care to admit. The novelty of the picture didn't last too long and I have no idea whatever happened to the model other than it's long, long gone.