'Model Aircrafts' balsawood kit : Artillery truck and jeep

Boxed balsawood kit of an Artillery truck, with an extra Jeep kit included. Box obverse is illustrated in two colours with a PT boat and a jeep with the legend 'MODEL CRAFT'. The sides are illustrated with patrol craft and trucks, accompanied by the legend 'Manufactured by Model Aircrafts 1 Bond St Sydney'. Reverse is printed in red and blue with a listing of the other model kits available. Contents consist of three thin printed balsa sheets, a small block of balsa and thirteen stringers of assorted thickness, all wrapped in the plans for the kit. Plans are signed 'J Mercer'. Instructions are damaged. The Jeep plans consist of two printed sheets and four stringers of varying thickness, all wrapped in the plans, again signed 'J Mercer'.

Little is known of Model Aircrafts Ltd. A Sydney-based company established in 1928 and operating from premises at 1 Bond St, Sydney, they manufactured a series of boxed balsawood aircraft, truck and ship kits. The evidence of their production is based on their wartime output, which is imaginative and extensive – and includes contemporary subjects such as the Mitsubishi Zero and the Hawker Hurricane – but extremely basic and evidently restricted by Australia’s wartime austerity drive and materials rationing. Thus, wartime contents for aircraft frequently provide merely a simple block of balsa and a 2.5 cm square of sandpaper with instructions to ‘shape fuselage according to the illustration’. Wartime plans are often signed ‘J Mercer’.