Superquick

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Superquick Models is the brand of a series of printed card kit buildings used mainly for model railways. Manufacturing takes place entirely in the United Kingdom.

There are several ranges of model kit - railway buildings in Series A; houses, farm buildings and industrial buildings in Series B; houses and shops in low relief (to line the backs of layouts) in series C and brick and stone textured paper in series D. Superquick models are equally suitable for the model railway scales of both OO (1:76) and HO (1:87).

The Superquick Model range was launched in 1960 by Donovan Lloyd, who was born in 1914, trained as an artist and illustrator in the late 1930s and died in 2009.

Mostly the buildings are modelled in the architectural vernacular of the 1930s British suburbs and provinces. Although likely prototypes of some of the models can be identified, there is no serious attempt to reproduce particular buildings. It was considered more important to provide full value from the materials of the kit than to model any details exactly. The industrial logic of print requires volume production, which means that the models must appeal to a wide audience rather than to specialist modellers.

The main selling features of printed kits are that they are inexpensive compared to moulded plastic kits and that the plastic kit manufacturers have not yet been able to achieve the exact surface detail to be had from print. Superquick uses specialist print techniques to heighten the models' realism in the context of the model railway layout. In Great Britain in 1960 this special printing and the practices of printing on fine paper, mounting the paper on card and die-cutting the result (to save the modeller from cutting the components himself) gave Superquick a great advantage over other makers of card kits; the other ranges from that time are selling at low volumes or now extinct. From the beginning, through being deliberately printed in volume, Superquick has always been competitively priced.

Many modellers have considerable fondness for the kits, because in the period 1960 to 1995 they were the obvious choice for the first buildings on their layout. That being so and as sales of Superquick rocketed in the late 1960s, there was criticism of the kits by leading modellers for whom “Superquick kits were a particular cliché and the Superquick low-relief buildings eventually came to blight any layout on which they appeared".^[1]

When the range was launched, there were several formats and scales. Whereas now the pack is virtually standardised at 320 mm × 200 mm, there were square packs 200 mm × 200 mm and at least one pack 280 mm × 200 mm. There were kits in the British TT scale (1:100) and kits in the MR series to go with the Scalextric slot-car track (1:32).

The TT scale kits were the first to be discontinued, in the late 1970s. These are now highly prized by collectors, and fetch large sums when unmade kits become available. Peter Denny's son made a complete set of the buildings for his 3 mm layout, pictures of which appear in Peter Denny's Buckingham Great Central: 25 Years of Railway Modelling.^[2]

Some of the current range are kits which were newly designed in the 1970s. These replaced discontinued kits but kept alive their model numbers. The discontinued kits still appear on eBay and at other outlets from time to time.

The only kit to be discontinued and not replaced was C3 "Low Relief Modern Shops & Flat" which made its last appearance in the 1985 catalogue . Mr Lloyd never admitted it, but others believed he terminated the kit prematurely for being too ugly.

The firm PEMS Butler Ltd, whose subordinate company had been the dedicated exporter of the range, took over the range in 1992 and extended it with additional railway, village and industrial buildings whilst adhering to the original design style and commercial policy. Reflecting family generational succession, the ownership moved in June 2016 to the firm Brickwall Works Ltd.

It was commercial policy to supply the kits directly to model shops and other retailers, a factor in keeping the retail price low. However, with effect from January 2011, this policy was changed so that supply was effected through dedicated model hobby distributors. As a result of this and the coincidental rise in the VAT rate, retail prices were noticeably increased. They remain competitive.

Superquick faced criticism for the rationalisation of the kits carried out by Donovan Lloyd in the 1970s. The original series included buildings found in many market towns around the UK, with the exception of the 1960s supermarket, and the modern low relief set (C3): indeed in original reviews, the Georgian Bank, and Elizabethan Cottages were noted as being very "twee".^[3]

However the changes in the 1970s introduced buildings that were much squarer, and plainer. In particular the loss of the old B28 Elizabethan Cottage, which had been profitably marketed by a Californian retailer as “Anne Hathaway’s Cottage”, was much regretted. The new B28 pair of Elizabethan cottages was a lot more “twee” than ever the original had been.

There has been criticism that the kits issued after the change of ownership in 1992 included buildings that really were not suitable for the majority of model railways, which were based on the branch lines. Still the earlier kits are all available as ever and no significant branch line subjects remain to be modelled in the range. While it is true that the Coaling Tower and the Ash Plant would be mainline features and would tend to tower over most model layouts, critics would be (and the company has been) surprised to learn that sales of these new kits have proved better than at least one of the staple railway kits.

Superquick gained some exposure from the title sequence of the UK TV Series "Homes under the hammer"^[4] where all 13 series ran a sequence showing a selection of the vernacular Superquick buildings, with some minor changes to add chimneys covered with UK currency.^[5] A large quantity of the superquick buildings were also built for episode 6 of James May's Toy Stories.

A number of Superquick models are destroyed in a scene in the film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, where Sellers stamps on them in retribution for his son having "fixed" a paint blemish on Sellers's Bentley by painting a "go faster stripe" on the side.^{[citation needed]}

The Railway Terminus Building appears at the start of Landscapes music video ‘Einsteins a go go’.^{[citation needed]}