Okay, I’m beginning to think this was all some kind of weird '70s fever dream, because nobody else remembers it. You guys are my last resort.
Back in the 70s when I was a kid, at this store called “The Akron” (I don’t know if it was local to Ventura CA or a chain, but it had all kinds of weird and eclectic stuff) my parents bought me two plastic model kits. Both were horror-movie scenes, and one of them had a guillotine. In order for the guillotine to work right, the box at the bottom had to be weighted down. The instructions suggested using, of all things, *chicken fat *as a weight. I, being the literal-minded kid that I was, dug through our fridge looking for chicken fat and was bummed when I couldn’t find any–it didn’t occur to me until much later that I could use something else like…oh…sand.
Anyway, I think the models were from a reasonably reputable brand. But even after all this time, I still wonder why the hell they would pick chicken fat as their weighting substance of choice. If nothing else, it would get smelly in a hurry.
It was a horror-movie model, though. Maybe that was the point.
I had the original back in the '60s. The little guy’s head had a peg at the bottom that stuck into a socket in the neck. The impact of the falling blade caused it to pop off. Great fun. My aunt, the nun, was not pleased about my having it.
Don’t remember anything about chicken fat, but i think I would have assumed that was a Mad magazine-type joke.
Maybe the instruction was something like “weigh the model down with some available substance like sand or clay or chicken fat” and your young mind wasn’t attuned to the intended irony.
I recall that model. It was originally made by Aurora, which made all those Universal monsters (and others, like Godzilla). Unlike most of the others, I didn’t buy this one. My cousin did, though. His worked, and chicken fat never came anywhere near it. It didn’t need weighting of any sort. The only context I can imagine grease being used would be to lubricate the track of the guillotine blade, but I think that’d be likely to make it stick, rather than to travel more easily. And it’d make it stink after a while. I certainly don’t recall anything like this in the instructions.
I’m with the rest of the guys here–I think you’re hallucinating the “chicken fat” bit. :dubious: (Although I remember a Monogram “Big Deuce” '32 Ford kit that advised lubricating the working steering bits with Vaseline, and an AMT “Dream Rod” kit that used some kind of goofball silicone grease in its rotating display turntable.)
And your model was obviously the old Aurora Guillotine kit (which has recently been reissued). Aurora had planned some others ( I think an Iron Maiden and maybe a rack) but about that time parents raised a big stink (the big sissies) and they dropped the idea.
Some other outfit came out with an Iron Maiden later, done in a half-comic manner (!), but it’s really really rare and I’ve never seen one in person–only pics on the Internets.
But all this is beside the point; what I’m really interested in, though, is: What was the other model?
Nope, that’s not the one. I remember that the two I had were part of a series, and they definitely had a horror movie theme, not a French Revolution theme.
I’m afraid I don’t remember! This was a long time ago, and they’re long gone now. This is driving me crazy, because I clearly remember the chicken fat. Maybe those who suggested that it was supposed to be used as a lubricant were right, and I’m just getting it confused. I’m sure that if it called for chicken fat as a lubricant I wouldn’t have confused that as using it for a weight–though I was a rather sheltered kid and could possibly have missed the irony in directions, I was also pretty smart and capable of following those directions.
Glad somebody else remembers The Akron! I was beginning to think I was hallucinating that too, since I couldn’t find any references to it online last time I looked.
I think we have a winner! That stuff would make great ballast, small enough to fill the cavity but not able to fit through poorly matched and filled joint. And since it was already used to simulate track ballast by train modelers it was likely that a kid would have some.
And devilsknew, Aurora models were made in the USofA so there was no Chinglish involved, though its Brooklyn origins could account for a schmatz suggestion.
Oh? And you’re saying people stopped eating schmatz when when they moved out to Long Island? To a town of only 18,713 people in 2000 that is the home of four–count 'em, FOUR–synagogues? I don’t think so!
And since the model division was eventually sold to Monogram, in Morton Grove, IL, another town with a large Jewish community, the tradition (cue Tevyeh) continued.
