Model Power's Star Journal Building origin year?

Source: Model Railroader, Apr. '77

I was reading through a random stack of old Model Railroader magazines and stumbled across that announcement in the Off the train wire column in the April 1977 issue.

That N-scale Ramsey Journal Building is the so-called Star Journal Building that was the basis of my Ramsey's Garage conversion. Given the lags in publication, I speculate the kit hit the hobby shops sometime between late 1976 and early 1977.

As you can see the fire station* is simply the Ramsey Journal Building's shell with different add-ons. In fact, it would have made a better starting point for Ramsey's Garage given those big doors on the front.

Although we seem to have narrowed down when Model Power released the kit, I still wonder if all they did was repackage and market a kit created by some other company, which was a common practice then. Time will tell.

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*Speaking of fire stations, April 1977 is the MR issue with E. L. Moore's infamous Cannonball and Safety Powder Works project. Why infamous? At the end of the project he blew up the model with some gun powder and photographed the conflagration.

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Afternoon update:

Source: Railroad Model Craftsman, May '77

I did a little searching through Railroad Model Craftsman magazines from 1977 to see what I could find. The May '77 issue has a report on new products on display at the 40th annual Hobby Industry of America trade show held earlier in the year. There on page 63 is a photo of Model Power's three new N-scale structures. In the accompanying text RMC had this to say: Model Power now offers N scale versions of several popular HO plastic kits including a 1:160 version of RMC's former office building down by the railroad tracks in Ramsey, N.J.. So, based on this I'd further narrow down the release date to early 1977.