proved enormously popular, and enabled Testor Corporation to survive, despite its inability to produce its flagship chemical products in any significant quantity. On February 1, 1944, a fire broke out at Testor's main Rockford facility. In addition to totally destroying the upper two floors of the four-story brick building, production lines and equipment suffered severe damage from both the fire itself and from the water used to douse the flames. Total damage was estimated at over US$200,000; however, in less than a year a new, larger plant was built and production continued. With the end of the war, the company was able to resume production of its trademark glues and paints, including adhesives for the plastics that were quickly becoming popular. Additionally, surpluses of ultra-lightweight balsa wood left over from the war enabled the company to begin producing flying wooden aircraft models as well as provide raw balsa wood for builders of custom-designed models. 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