What’s your notable reactions, amazements/disappointments, etc. when you opened up your early model kits?
When I opened my 1/72 Airifix P-51D - Oh, no seat for the pilot! no cockpit, you can see down through radiator scoop opening. hahaha
Airfix Boston III - The box art showed it dropping bombs. Upon opening - Oh, no bombs and the bomb bay is closed! Wow! there’s a decal for the small ‘Fire Extinguisher’ marking.
No drama. Kits were all pretty standard, at least in early sixties. Pretty basic. However, by late sixties some had advanced a lot, added cockpits, wheel well detail, etc. So on a few kits there was delight, and hope for what was to come!
The glue, man! The glue!
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Rob - that’s why I liked the Matchbox kits back in the nineties! I was 12 years old when the first shipment of “western” kits came to Poland and it was Matchbox - so much cooler then the “Plastyk Pruszkow” kits we had! Now I see it differently… Thanks for reading and have a nice day
Paweł
OOOO - YEAH!!! I remember sniffing my fair share of it!! Umha goo-gah-gah igfnew igjarr4hn g4a4ut8 rgnqafhcj48jfugnvrafh48afjnc!!! huh - AHAHAHA!! You know what I meadnsu? Tha’st whay Ium so ahpppy!!! Goooooo…[:P][:P][:P][:P][:P][:P][:P][:P]
~ Cobra Chris
What, you painted your kits?
That makes them really hard to build in an afternoon after school.
And the smell of Testor paints…back then there were no warnings like ‘vapors/fumes hazardous to your health’.
Amazement- When I finally found the Lindberg Stuka at Kmart. The only company we knew of that made the Stuka.
Dissapointment- When I opened the Lindberg Stuka from Kmart. Thin brittle plastic. Flash!!! Everywhere there was flash! The flash was so bad small parts like antenna, and landing gear were impossible to clean up and not destroy the part. This was before x-acto knives and sanding sticks. All I had was a small pocket knife and a cheap steak knife from the kitchen drawer.
Ahh yes, the smell of Testors enamel paint. I kept all my paints in a small cosmetic suitcase looking thing. Opening it always produced that destinctive odor.
I’ve said it before, one of my favourite caveats from model boxes of the 70’s, when they had photos of the completed model on the box cover.
“Model may be painted to match details on box. Cement and paint not included”
I can recall building some Airfix kits in the 70’s which had crude instrument panels printed on the instruction sheet. You had to cut them out and glue them in place.
I needed a note from parents to purchase glue.models were only .50 and i almost always stopped at park on the way home to build and complete model wih no paint.
the glue never caused dain bramage.
The stuff that really had the good smell was Testors dope, for those building balsa models!
I remember tube glue back in the 70s that smelled like citrus. LOL! I thnk it was Pactra tube glue.
It was from testors and took longer to set than the banana oil glue.
Yes! I had completely forgotten that. I modeled with my dad’s SAK.
This one’s about a '79 vintage. It’s still liquid.
I remender tht nonsence aboot the ceemet cauzing bran darage… I ussd it al de tim an se hrow wel I tured out!