One of the stranger chapters in plastic model kit history came in the mid-1970s, when MPC took one of its most famous 1960s television cars—the Monkeemobile—and gave it a second life as The Fonz Dream Rod, tying it to the enormous popularity of Happy Days. The result was a wonderfully shameless bit of model-kit recycling: a car created for one generation of television fans was repackaged for another with little concern that Fonzie had never actually driven the thing.
The story began with The Monkees. In 1966, custom-car builder Dean Jeffries was hired to create a distinctive vehicle for the new television series. Jeffries was working with Model Products Corporation at the time, and MPC president George Toteff helped connect the project with Pontiac. Two 1966 Pontiac GTO convertibles were supplied and transformed into the outrageous Monkeemobiles, complete with an elongated nose, exaggerated rear bodywork, an exposed supercharger, and room for the band. MPC received the rights to produce a plastic model, and its 1/25-scale Monkeemobile kit appeared in 1967. It became one of the company’s signature products, reportedly selling in the millions.
By the middle of the next decade, however, the Monkees phenomenon was no longer the merchandising powerhouse it had been. At the same time, Happy Days had become a massive television hit, and Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli was one of the most recognizable characters in America. MPC already possessed expensive tooling for a spectacular customized Pontiac, so rather than develop an entirely new dream car from scratch, the company dusted off the Monkeemobile tooling and adapted it for a new TV license. Model-kit histories describe the Fonz version as essentially a reworking of the earlier Monkeemobile kit.
Released in 1976, the newly christened Fonz Dream Rod came in a box dominated by Happy Days imagery and the enthusiastic slogan “Ayyyy… It’s the Fonz Dream Rod.” The kit remained a 1/25-scale customized Pontiac GTO and even included a figure of the Fonz. A surviving example held by Sydney’s Powerhouse Collection identifies it as an MPC kit made for Fundimensions, part of the General Mills toy operation that then owned MPC.
The funny part, of course, was that the Dream Rod had virtually nothing to do with Fonzie’s on-screen automotive world. Fonzie was identified primarily with motorcycles, jukeboxes, leather jackets, and 1950s cool—not with a flamboyant psychedelic GTO built for a fictional 1960s pop group. The connection existed mainly on the model-kit box. Yet that sort of creative repackaging was hardly unusual in the hobby industry. Tooling for a detailed plastic car was expensive, and manufacturers routinely found new names, decals, and licensing hooks that could put an older mold back on store shelves.
For collectors today, that is precisely what makes the Fonz Dream Rod interesting. Beneath its unmistakably 1970s Happy Days packaging lies the DNA of one of the great television custom cars of the previous decade. It is simultaneously a Monkees collectible, a Happy Days collectible, and a perfect example of the model industry’s habit of squeezing every possible life out of an existing mold. The Monkeemobile tooling would return yet again under its proper identity in later reissues, but for a brief and wonderfully odd moment in 1976, the Monkees’ wild Pontiac belonged to the Fonz.
