ELVIS LIVES! TAMIYA POSTER CAMPAIGN RECKONS SO, ANYWAY

SMN report:

We mostly associate Tamiya with top-line traditional plastic kits - and quite rightly, for they are superb products, as we recently showed with the newly-released 1:32 scale P-51D Mustang. But Tamiya doesn’t stand still, and the company recently paid the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Vietnam to create an ad campaign based around the catchline, ‘Tamiya Put It Together’. 

Print ad series

Ogilvy & Mather’s solution to the brief was a series of print ads featuring fictional kits based on popular and continuing conspiracy themes - Elvis Presley lives, Roswell UFO aliens, Moon Landing hoax, Who killed JFK, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. Fictional the kits may be, but O&M put much hard work into the visuals, which look really convincing until you look hard, and notice a few pointers to the truth - for example, the Lunar Rover sports a 1950s-era auto steering wheel, a cute in-joke we reckon, as the originals had side-stick controllers.

Request to Tamiya

However, and this is a big request Tamiya - why don’t you make these for real? The subject matter is endlessly fascinating, and the subjects are all begging to be turned from advertising campaign to plastic in a box. Any Elvis fan would love to add him to their collection, as would movie-buffs for Marilyn, space nuts for Apollo, UFO believers for Roswell, and politicos for a JFK set. A shelf-top diorama featuring a 1:24 or 1:12 scale figure, surrounded by relevant memorabilia would look terrific.

So come on Tamiya, please let’s have them soon!

While we’re at it, note the business card created by the team at Tamiya Siam - a card-sized runner, with detachable letters. Great idea!