I hope that this isn't repetitive...

Basically, as I read it, the history of the company that Vern Estes started has had three phases, or eras: the Vern Estes era, the Damon era, and the Estes-Cox (or Barry Tunick) era. When someone mentions "the Damon era", I read that to refer to a certain set of years in the company's history, and not too much more than that. I got started in model rocketry during the first period, put my involvement aside for awhile right at the start of the second period, and then resumed my active involvement in the hobby at a time when the Estes company was well into its third period. So I don't actually "remember" the Damon era, but, FWIW, here are a few observations:

First, I don't think that the purchase of Estes Industries by Damon brought about drastic changes in the company or in its model line. As I understand it, almost all of EI's employees stayed on after 1969, the production facilities and the management offices remained at their same locations at Penrose, and, for most of the period, the company pursued the same mission, using the same basic strategies, as it did when Vern ran it. Yes, things did change, especially over the first decade, but they probably would have done so anyway; see the second, and especially the third, points below.

Second, as great as the Vern Estes years were at EI (and they truly were great years), it was during the Damon era that model rocketry, and Estes Industries, achieved its peak in popularity. When you hear old-timers and BARs talk about the "golden years" or "glory years" of model rocketry, they are almost always talking about the Damon era, especially the first decade of it (the 1970's). During the 1960's, Vern Estes, Harry Stine, Lee Piester and others were occupied with creating the hobby of model rocketry literally from nothing, and were working very hard to get it accepted and made legal. By 1969, Estes Industries had emerged as a leader in the hobby, but it was not alone in occupying that role. Vern Estes had been phenomenally successful in building the company and creating the market, and in 1969, the company was poised to really take off and become much bigger and more complex, perhaps, than he could personally manage. Thus, he sold Estes Industries to a company that had much deeper pockets and access to a much larger pool of investors, a company that could keep Estes Industries in the top spot as the hobby of model rocketry finally went mainstream and finally achieved widespread acceptance as being safe and legal. In the Damon era, Estes Industries went from being "first among equals" to being the undisputed market leader of a hobby that was enjoying incredible growth and was reaching the absolute zenith of its popularity.

Finally, I would argue that many of the changes in the way model rocket kits were designed, the materials that they were constructed out of, the way they were packaged, and the invention and elaboration if "Skill Levels" (including E2X and, yes, RTF) were inevitable developments in an evolving and maturing industry, and were not, as it is sometimes alleged, the pernicious consequences of the sale of Estes Industries to the Damon Corporation. A case in point: plastic parts. How many people realize that plastic components, including nose cones and fin cans, were featured in the 1961 Estes catalog, and that plastic parts continued to be included in nearly all of the EI catalogs during the Vern Estes period? And that the company that pioneered the use of significant amounts of plastic in its model rocket kits was not the Damon-era Estes Industries of the 1980's or the Tunick-era Estes-Cox Corportation of the 1990's? The pioneer and early champion of plastic-component model rocket kits was, in fact, the G. Harry Stine-era MPC company of the late 1960's.

Take a look at Estes catalogs at the Ninfinger site and compare those from the Damon era to any of the catalogs before or since. Note especially the number of catalog pages, the number of kits offered and the number of different motors being made. It truly was a golden age.

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

I just want to add one more thing. The Damon era at Estes Industries coincided the the first golden age of model rocketry.

The first golden age? OK, so when was the second golden age? W-e-l-l-l.... link, link, link, link, link... I could go on (and on, and on), but you get the picture.

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

Don't forget the Bomarc first started with a gold vacuum extruded nose cone; too fragile, so then they switched to a balsa cone, then plastic blow molded in the final parachute recovery version.

The Red Max and Patriot both started with a black blow molded 2 piece cone (shoulder and cone glued together). Later replaced by white blow molded cones in the final versions of the kits.

My understanding is that the Citation and Stellar lines were boxed so that they could stack on shelves in the Sears, Woolworths, J.C. Penney's stores.

PVHC on ebay has the Stellar kits in his ebay store. Either he is sitting on cases of them or they are not selling. I have seen people pay over $200 each for the Stellar kits, yet his pricing of $60 - $90 dollars 'buy now' isn't attracting buyers; (assuming he isn't relisting them after they sell).

Stellar line kits are much harder to come by than the Citation kits, so its interesting to not see those kits sell. I remember when Centuri had a final close out of Stellar kits in their coupon promotion. You would buy a stellar kit through the mail and it would arrive without the box, but in a plastic bag, no header card, just parts and instructions on the bag.

My guess is that to save on shipping, Lee and crew decided to shell each kit down to bag so that they wouldn't have to kit the larger boxed form of the kit into larger mailing boxes. This saved on shipping I am sure.

Bob

Mark,

You are right about the plastic. Stine's Dirty Birds and other rockets were plastic fin cans. This was because they were already available from the fireworks industry and inexpensive.

The 1969 ~ 1975 catalogs are among the best Estes ever made with regard to the divesity of products within and quantity.

Popularity of model rocketry started to wane after Apollo 11. Damon thought it had a 20+ million dollar company when it bought it from Vern and others, but that soon turned out to be wrong after they took over the company. Notice how from 1973 - 1979 the number and diversity of products reduced sharply.

This reduction paralleled the computer age: Pong, Atari, and hand held computer games made by Mattel and Coleco; not to mention the introduction of the old IBM 8086, Atari, and Tandy personal computers.

Well it will be interesting to see what the next 50 years bring. I think its a good thing that High Power rocketry came along because it gave the old timers something new to latch onto and automatically swept millions of kids into model rockety (low - mid-power) in the process; what father is going to let their 10 year old handle a K motor? I know some 10 year olds can Instead the majority of BARs introduce their kids to Estes and Quests kits because it easy and economical. Then later they can advance up to Aerotech kits. Just my opinion

Bob

Back in the late 90's before PVHC learned about eBay and the "real" value of their old kits they used to send out a list of all of their OOP kits in newspaper format. They were selling them at basically retail prices. Needless to say I stocked up on lots of kits from them back then.

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Scott D. Hansen
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

Here's some info I got from my hobby industry insider pertaining to this:

"The best sales year for Estes in the 60s and 70s was 1978. The best selling hobby items of the year were MPC Star Wars plastic model kits, followed by Estes Star Wars kits. As for diversity of products, in the 60s Estes sold mostly everything by mail order, and they needed to sell paints and tools because of that. In the 70s, mostly everything was now sold by hobby shops, so those items weren’t necessary anymore."

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Scott D. Hansen
Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe - Your One Stop BAR Shoppe!
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

I was a young kid in 1979 and early 80's, this is when I was exposed to model rockets. That is probably "my golden years of rocketry" and thats why I collect that era's kits. All I remember is the huge presence of Estes model rockets in the toy stores and local hobby stores. Estes would have an entire aisle of their kits and parts, and at the end of the aisle were the free catalogs. Like I said this was late 1979 into the 80's and I don't recall ever seeing Centuri or any other brands.

Bob, I just did a quick look-up at Ninfinger and compared the 1968 Estes catalog with the 1976 edition. I chose the '68 catalog because it was the last year before the sale of the company to Damon was announced, and I chose the '76 catalog because it was in the middle of the following decade. A quick count on my computer screen shows that in 1968, Estes featured 31 kits in its catalog. In 1976, during the Damon era, Estes Industries showed 75 kits in its catalog. They were offering more than double the number of kits in the mid-'70's than they were in the late '60's, which supports my thesis that the popularity of model rocketry was actually booming at that time, which was the decade after the Apollo moon landings. It is all the more interesting because the hobby actually reached its peak during a period of economic recession and inflation in the US, as well.

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

Bob,


Yes, it started with those, but there was much more to come, even in the PRE-Damon era. See here (magazine pp. 27-29, PDF pp. 29-31), for example.

I also recall seeing ads in issues of Model Rocketry from about the same time (late '60's) for MPC (or was it MRC? - I always get them confused ) in which they were touting their use of plastic parts in their kits. I think that GHS was involved in one of those companies, too; as he described in his "The Old Rocketeer" article, he liked the idea of using molded plastic because it allowed the reproduction of accurately scaled parts, textures, etc.

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

G. Harry Stine was a consultant to MPC (Model Products Corp.).

I seem to recall that Bill Stine was involved with MRC (Model Rectifier Corp.) a while back.