This is the original Bama painting, based on a publicity photo of Anthony Quinn in the then-latest movie version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Mr. Quinn sued for the unlicensed use of his likeness, and Aurora had Bama add hair and change the face a bit to do away with any simliarities to Quinn (see Bama painting on the far right).

"Quinn" boxed kits in excellent condition go for many hundreds of dollars.

My 2023 build-up. This was only the second time that I put this kit together in my life, because somehow an original that I built in 1965 survived through the decades. Even after all those years, putting it together reminded me of all the stuff that was wrong with the fit of parts.

I used purple and grey/blue paints to make his lashes look bruised. Pretty yucky!

You need to put all the ropes into position, add some glue to the waist, and then push the pins into the holes on the wood while pushing the waist into position over the hips. I does come together well at that point; if you try it any other way, the tension in the rigid plastic ropes pops the waist off of the hips.

I was DETERMINED to paint the lettering on this one. It was tough and involved a 0000 sized brush.

 

My old build-up from the sixties. I repainted it in 2000 and also added the hair, which I took off recently.

 

This is the "corrected" Bama version from the 1967 catalog. Even this corrected version is lost forever due to the 1969 paint-overs.

Polar Lights, who did modeling fans a great favor by re-releasing all but two of the original models in the original boxes messed this one up badly, They released it as "The Bellringer" to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit from Disney, who had a feature-length cartoon of "The Hunchback" in release at the time. In addition to the ridiculous name change, Polar Lights also used a terrible scan of the corrected version as the cover art. However, in light of their other modeling efforts, they have been forgiven.