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....."I drove out to Hawk that afternoon and met with the owners, Phil and Dick Mates, and with John Zawicki (who later became John Andrews). They looked at my portfolio and seemed satisfied that I could produce the needed illustration for their new offering. They provided the necessary plans and photos and asked if I could supply the art in one week."
Although Bill was never officially hired on at Hawk, he became a permanent freelancer. He eventually produced 200 kit cover paintings, sometimes completing as many as six in one week. Subjects included cars, aircrafts, spacecrafts, missiles, insects, one-off kits, and eventually, Weird-ohs. As he explains it, "Working with Hawk was a dream job, for they gave me a lot of freedome with the compositions and the handling of the subjects on the box tops. After a number of years I felt that the model companies had produced everything they could. In order to keep Hawk moving forward I came up with a new concept. I did some way-out thinking, drew some sketches, and proceeded to create rough models, using wire armature, balsa, marble dust, sculpting putty, and miscellaneous kit parts. The results? Digger,a dragster; Davey, a cyclist; and the unproduced General Fritzgruber Luftwaffle in his Sturmgrupen Eindecker, an airplane pilot. I presented these to the people at Hawk in 1963. They took one look and said, 'Let's produce them.' They asked me what I called my creations, and I told them 'Weird-ohs.' The name stuck, and Hawk prepared them for the annual model kit manufacturers' convention held in the fall of 1963 at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. "Hawk presented five or six different Weird-ohs at the convention, and the models were the hit of the show. They went off like gangbusters! I heard that they wrote orders for 246,000 kits in a few days. The factory had to go into overtime to fill all the orders. The kits were on the shelves by November."At first, Bill didn't consider his Weird-ohs particularly unique because of the drag monsters that Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and Stanley Mouse were creating, which were also produced as kits. Although the Hawk kits were not as finely detailed as the competition's, Bill felt that their stretched-out and distorted tires, tire smoke, twisted vehicles and frames, wheel-stand props, and diorama-like displays (complete with funny signs) all contributed to a sense of motion and dramatic action that gave them an edge.
"Weird-ohs were a resounding success," remembered Bill. "The buyers were looking for something new and different and Hawk supplied it. Much of the success was due to John Andrews, who cleverly promoted Weird-ohs. There were Weird-ohs games, decals, masks, gum cards, paint by numbers, records, paints-you name it. John played an integral part in creating the name for Weird-ohs and in suggesting ideas and details for the kits. We continued the trend of the first 13 Weird-ohs with The Frantics, emulating The Beatles and The Silly Surfers."
Weird-ohs owe their success to the times. Kids of the late '50s and early '60s were into cool monster stuff. The classic monster movies of the '30s and '40s were on the tube every weekend, and the monsters were also available as models. The sci-fi films of the '50s were moving from the big screen to TV, where they inspired such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, The Munsters, and The Addams Family.
Then, in February of 1964, Ed Sullivan introduced four young men from Liverpool, England, who changed American culture - The Beatles. Their popularity drew youthful interest away from model cars and monsters and toward listening to records and forming rock 'n' roll bands. As Bill described, "The Beatles signaled the swan song for Weird-ohs and monster kits in general."
Bill went on to produce many more projects with Hawk, leaving the company in the late '60s in order to pursue a career in corporate business, where he produced well-known images such as the Keebler elves. Today, he remains a busy man. "I have created a line of model figures called 'Aer-o-toons'©, 16 in all, done on a whimsical side. I am also doing a children's book called Putt-Putt's Adventure, about a small airplane that does a heroic deed."
Another idea being created through Bill's "Idea Works" is the Trackwhackys kits with alternate parts and the instructions to either "build it squirrely or build it scale."
Bill has fond recollections of his years working for Hawk, remembering it as an innovative company willing to take a risk and to trust his talent. Hawk is now owned by Testor's. John Andrews' enduring influence within the company led to a re-release of Weird-ohs in 1993.
Bill attributes much of his success to Connie, his wife of over 50 years, and to his biggest fans - his kids. His daughter Elizabeth recently recalled how she and her siblings would regularly rescue their father's "rejects" from the trash can for their own collections or to use as room decorations.
We asked Bill if he had anything to say to his fans. "My fans?" he says, laughing. "Just remember me! Weird-ohs were an exclamation point in my long career. And to me, it's been a dinger!"Special thanks to Bill for his time, talents, enthusiasm, and generosity in providing the essential ingredients for this article, to John Andrews (Hawk/Testors) for his insightful comments, and to Thomas Voehringer for his enthusiasm.
| Rick Ruhman is an excellent artist himself and is a member of the American Society of Aviation Artists and the San Francisco Society of Illustrators. He has previously published work on aircraft models titled "When Plastic Ruled the Skies". When he's not painting, writing, snapping photos, flying a warbird, playing and collecting guitars, working on cars......he finds a minute or two to collect and build models. |
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