Changes
Aurora’s founders retired in the late 1960s and the company was sold to outside investors in 1969. After expanding into the toys and games market with limited success, the new owners sold the company to Nabisco in 1971. Nabisco in turn sold the model kit division in 1977 to Aurora’s one-time rival Monogram.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, toy and hobby company Playing Mantis created a division called Polar Lights (as a reference to "aurora") which reissued some of Aurora’s most popular kits. Other companies following in Aurora's shoes have reissued earlier Aurora kits. These include Moebius, Atlantis and Monarch, which mostly have focused on the Aurora trend of sci-fi and horror TV and movie figures and scenes. For example, Moebius, started by a former distributor of Polar Lights models in Glenwood, Florida, has reissued the large kit of the submarine 'Seaview' from the 1960s 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' TV show and the old 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' kit (Moebius Models website). Monarch models is based in London, Ontario, Canada - started by a doctor (Powell 2009; Monarch Models website 2011). Atlantis Models is based in East Northport, New York, and though also making sci-fi figures, has equal focus on animal dioramas (Atlantis Models website; Powell 2010). Polar Lights, Monarch and Moebius all use an oval logo very similar in shape to that of the original Aurora style. The Atlantis (see Zorro re-issue) logo uses a more abstract, though nostalgic, oval broken into six sections.
In the 1990s, the family of Joseph Giammarino announced the return of Aurora Plastics Corporation as a manufacturer of hobby kits under the name LAPCO, or "Lost Aurora Plastics Corporation", with a product line to include reverse engineered reissues of long gone kits. Nothing came of this. Again in 2007, Giammarino's family announced the return of Aurora, with their first offerings stated to include aircraft and figure kits from their original 1960s line (Giammarino 2007). Their web site lists products to be made available in May-June 2012, but as of September 2012 none are available to order.
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