Anthony Taylor (disclosure time: Anthony is a friend) is a keen observer of pop culture and genre fiction and for this entry in The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide I’m going to revisit a couple of his books that I reviewed in this blog earlier this year, plus one additional volume.

These are great gift ideas for fans of pop culture, as well as people who love the art and craft of comic books, toy making and model kits.

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 1 – The 1960’s
compiled by Anthony Taylor
APT Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8312227680
Paperback $35.99
Hardback $64.99

Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs: Volume 2 – The 1970’s
compiled by Anthony Taylor
APT Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8312227680
Paperback $35.99
Hardback $64.99
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8309355167

These two volumes are the perfect gift for fans of Aurora Model kits as well as purveyors of pop culture of a certain golden era.

Model building was a huge, mainstream hobby from the 1950s into the 1970s, and is still a popular pastime today. One of the most creative companies making these assemble-it-yourself kits was Aurora Plastics.  In each of these books, after a brief intro by Anthony Taylor, you get over 320 pages of pure gold–ten years worth of retailer sales catalogs from Aurora from the 1960s and 1970s.

These catalogs were available in most hobby shops so kids (and adults) could make wishlists and see the full product line. The catalogs are reproduced in full color, close to their original size, and they trace the evolution of the hobby over the course of the 1960s. The early years see the catalogs dominated by airplanes and cars, with just a few historical figures in the mix.

As the years progress, we see a virtual explosion of pop culture topics, as Aurora’s selection reflects the passions of the day, from the space program to James Bond and spies, to superheroes, Batmania, hit TV shows and movies and even “original equity” creations designed to cash in on the burgeoning counter culture.

And we can’t leave out the monsters. “Monster Kids” loved model kits, and one of the major forces driving the hobby was the Universal Monsters, with additional kits featuring Godzilla, literary horror and other scary subjects. At one point they even combined the monsters with hot rods. The package art shown here is incredible and the product descriptions priceless.

Both volumes of Aurora Plastic Models Catalogs make perfect gifts for any model kit collector, and will be of great interest to anybody interested in pop culture from the 1960s and 1970d, and one of the most creative ways to ever play with toys…building models.

You can order these books from Amazon, through Anthony Taylor’s website, or from most booksellers by using the ISNB code.

The Art of George Wilson
by Anthony Taylor (Author), Daniel Herman (Editor), George Wilson (Artist)
Hermes Press
ISBN: 978-1-61345-288-2
$75.00

The Art of George Wilson is an absolutely gorgeous hardcover coffee-table book that collects and celebrates one of the most widely-distributed artists of the 20th century, who sadly did the vast majority of his work anonymously. It’s a great gift for comic book fans as well as folks who appreciate commercial art and gauche painting.

Anthony Taylor has managed to uncover the life story of a very private man who would probably be extremely pleased, and equally perplexed to be getting so much recognition. Along with Taylor’s great bio, the book includes the only known interview with Wilson.

Taylor even relates a secret from his past that Wilson couldn’t talk about during most of his lifetime. This book is an invaluable and long overdue recognition of a man who was part of the lives of millions of kids who never knew his name. It’s a missing piece of comic book history.

Let me quote the book’s PR blurb:

What made many of the great adventure comics of the 1960s so attractive were their fantastic painted covers by artist George Wilson. Unlike other comic book covers of the era, Wilson’s covers harkened back to the era of pulp magazines and were spectacularly eye-catching. He turned in efforts for literally hundreds of comics titles including: Classics Illustrated, The Twilight Zone, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Dr.Solar, Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok, Son of Stone and Star Trek, to name but a few.

This new art book focuses on over 300 examples of his cover art and features numerous examples of Wilson’s artwork scanned from the originals together with many of the book covers he created including his extensive run on Avon’s The Phantom (as well as his work on the Gold Key version).

The reason Wilson is so deserving of the accolades is that his work is just so damned impressive. There is a long standing snobbery in the world of fine art that looks down on commercial artists. Despite the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, even today we find resistance to the idea of commercial illustrators and comic book artists being considered alongside the artists who play the gallery game.

Unless, of course, those artists had their work traced by Roy Lichtenstein.

Seeing so much of Wilson’s work in one place, most of it free of the text and trade dress that obscured it on comic book covers, reveals that Wilson was a technically brilliant painter, working mainly in gauche, who had a mastery of light and shadow in a league with Edward Hopper, mixed with a sense of drama and fantasy that rivals the best of the surrealists.

The Art of George Wilson is relevatory for art lovers, and is a nostalgic treat for those of us who grew up seeing those spectacular comic book covers that captured our imagination…and made us wonder who painted them. Also of note is a great introduction by contemporary artist, Joe Jusko that really illustrates the influence that Wilson had on a generation of artists, most of whom never knew his name.

The Art of George Wilson can be ordered directly from Hermes Press. You may be able to order it through your favorite bookseller by using the ISBN code.