Acquisitions and partnerships
In 1949, Nils Testor began talks with Charles Miller, president of Duromatic Products, regarding a possible partnership. Duromatic was the manufacturer of the McCoy hobby engine, a popular motor for self-propelled models. These talks culminated in a joint marketing agreement of the McCoy engine with Testor model airplanes, as well as an agreement for each company to design its respective products to be interoperable with those of the other.
By the 1960s, plastics had risen to prominence in American life, including the hobby industry. Almost all model kits on the market were plastic, necessitating paints (the square, glass Testor paint bottles were sold in almost every dime store, department store, hardware store, toy store and hobby store in the US in the 1960s, making them truly ubiquitous) and glues different from those used for wooden models. Although Testor had been producing such chemicals since the 1940s, it had resisted producing plastic model kits for quite some time. However, the company could not stick to its tried-and-true line of wooden models indefinitely, and so in the early 1970s it purchased IMC and the Hawk Model Company, both well-respected manufacturers of plastic model kits. Later that same decade, the Italian model kit manufacturer Italeri was acquired, further expanding Testor's line of plastic model kits, usually repackaged with photographs rather than paintings on the box.
In 1984–87, Testors sponsored a video series "Adventures in Scale Modeling". The program featured half-hour segments on detailed model building with an on-location shoot featuring the item being modeled. The shows were produced by WSWP-TV.[4]
From the late 80s through today, Testors partnered up with diecast brands such as Bburago, Jouef, Racing Champions, Lincoln Mint, Maisto, etc. to rebox them as model kits, usually for younger modelers as an alternative to the traditional plastic models also reboxed at the time.
