Doug Drexler and his AMT Kits – The AMT Enterprise at 55
by Glen Swanson
You never know what impact those early AMT Star Trek models will have on your life.
Here is a photo of academy award-winning artist Doug Drexler at age 15 in 1968. The walls are festooned with Star Trek and especially Leonard Nimoy. That’s Doug’s friend Mitch Green on the right holding an Aurora model Orion III Space Clipper from 2001: A Space Odyssey. That model came out shortly after the film’s April 1968 release. Green is a chiropractor now. Drexler and him were building model kits in Drexler’s room when Doug’s sister snapped this photo. Drexler was kitbashing a spaceship from spare parts (note the AMT Enterprise model box next to Drexler and the hanging AMT Klingon ship model). According to Doug, the submarine model is the George Washington. The books on his shelf above the typewriter were Tom Swift, John Carter of Mars and the classics. Just Google “Doug Drexler” and you will find how much Star Trek has played a role in his life.
This posting is one in a series designed to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the very first Star Trek model kit. In June of 1967, Michigan-based Aluminum Model Toys (AMT) Corporation began selling an 18-inch injection-molded model of the starship Enterprise. Before the year was out, AMT would sell over a million copies of the kit. Since that first release, AMT and its successors went on to release at least 23 unique kits making it one of the longest running and most successful product licenses in the history of the Star Trek franchise. A close-to-the-original 1:650 scale model kit is still being manufactured and sold through Round2 LLC, the current AMT license holder. Just in time to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the kit’s first release, Round2 has reissued the kit in the more commonly seen second long box (S951) form that first appeared in 1968 which features on the box top an assembled model kit orbiting the Earth.
