I love this picture. Sums up this entire thread!
I’m sitting here contemplating all of this, and I remember trying to build an AMT (I think) Starship Enterprise from the OG TV show. Trying to assemble the spars that hold the nacelles to the hull at the correct dihedral was impossible due to poor design by AMT. I took a couple of photon torpedos (M80’s) and blew it to smithereens!
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MrB., I have a feeling that a lot of AMT/MPC kits end up that way.
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Heck, every New Year’s Eve was “house cleaning day” for the models I built during the year! Anything that was “meh” was blown up. I built a lot of “meh” models.
This is not a “failed” model. At least not yet. 
Until someone else does a decent 1/48 Vigilante, Trumpeter’s kit is the only injection molded game in town.
You practically need to be a super-villain mastermind (or is that Megamind - ollo) to overcome the many shortcomings of this kit. Plus, some things like the cross section of the forward fuselage are just too much trouble to deal with.
But the Vigilante is such a cool looking plane that the kit, despite all its miserable failings, it is not headed for the bin. It just sits on the Shelf of Doom, waiting for a return to the workbench.
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I’ve never had a trashed model, but I did have the Revell/ICM Mustang III in 48th that was left inside its bag for spares because I thought it unbuildable. One year later, I remembered I had it, and on an impulse I grabbed it and built it. Painted it as Ole II since I didn’t want to paint D-Day bands on it.
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I built the AMT Enterprise waaaaaay back in the last 1970s. I remember dumping a lot of superglue into the slots to hold the nacelles close enough.
I’m certain someone has developed a good technique since then. I would like to build a USS New Jersey, NCC-1975, out of one of those. They’re about 1/650, so only slightly out of scale with my 1/700 USS New Jersey ships.
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If my memory serves, I got around the problem by attaching scrap sprue to the bulkhead that the slotted nacelle arms were supposed to fit to. This solved the problem. I only remember because I fought the model every inch of the way and never completed it. Firecrackers and lighter fluid was a satisfying finish at the time. I may revisit an Enterprise build in the future.
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I just trashed a SMER SU17/22. I ruined it because I got inyo a hurry. Lesson learned…
Take my time. When I rush I screw up badly.
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I have a new entry of my list - Dora Wings’s 1/48 P-63E Kingcobra. I should have known. It was a disaster from the word go. One of the foot pedals boinged right out of tweezers to parts unknown in my workshop. Then it was a battle to get as far as I got. Parts fit was terrible - and yes, I know it is a short-run mold but have successfully built several of their releases. The final straw came when I had to cut away a significant portion of the nose gear bay to get the wing to fit onto the fuselage, and then it still would not slot into place.
I won’t discount builder error on my part here, but everything appeared lined up properly. The wing roots were way too far inward to allow the fuselage to slot into position, and there was this awful upward point along both sides of the air intake (located right at the forward wing root). Even cutting those points away didn’t allow the wings to fit.
At that point I deep-sixed this POS. I’d still love to have a P-63 in my collection, but the only other available choices are reputationally not better than the Dora Wings kit.
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Maybe I am the odd one, but I have never given up on a model. No matter how bad, I am finishing it! 
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Usually, I’ll shelve a model for awhile if it’s giving me fits but I usually plan to get beck to it eventually but AMT’s 1/25 Autocar 64 semi truck might just be the first model to never get a second chance with me.
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Back in the early 1990s I tried to elevate a 1/48 Monogram F4F-4 Wildcat to a semblance of modernity.
I rescribed the airframe, built a cockpit, redid the control surfaces, and tried really, really hard to make this model special.
And then Tamiya came out with their very nice kit. That dropped like a bomb and my enthusiasm for this project was snuffed out like a candle flame.
Those were dark days for super detailing projects, as pretty much the only aftermarket available were decals, True Details flat tires, and Falcon vac canopies. Nowadays, you can get all sorts of stuff like props, engines, landing gear, 3-D printed cockpits, and whatever else you can dream up.
I had started some scratchbuilt landing gear, but now you can just buy them.
The items at the top center of the photos represents my attempt at the Wildcat’s complex landing gear, surrounded by SAC’s white metal aftermarket gear.
I am not sure if I want to ever restart this project, as I have other kits that I am more interested in now.
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Looks like you’re doing a great job on that old 'cat.
I did something similar much more recently, when I had 4 different Wildcat kits to build (one of which was the Tamiya you mention and one was an ancient boxing of that Monogram kit). I backdated the Monogram to an F4F-3 and built it as a yellow wing pre-war Wildcat. But I also added details to bring it up to more modern standards, such as scratching a cockpit and filling in that big opening where the gear retract into.
As it so happened, back in the 90s I had first built the Tamiya Wildcat. Flash forward about a decade - a shelving collapse claimed that build plus many others. At the time I decided to keep the remains of everything, stashing them away in case I ever needed anything. With that Monogram build, that day came. I scavenged a few parts from that destroyed Tamiya to augment the build.
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Sadly I had to toss my A&A Beechcraft Super King Air; I just committed screwup after screwup on it until it was unsalvageable. I just want to emphasize that it’s not a bad kit, it’s just not a forgiving kit. Like, at all. Like if you misalign something in the cockpit in step 2, you’re screwed over in step 10 when you’re joining the two halves of the fuselage. I really want to see what someone much much better than me can do with this kit.
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I’d love to get my hands on the King Air kit. I spent 5 1/2 years flying one in the arctic, it was a bit of a hot rod plane when it was mostly empty. 
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This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. The genius behind it is you’ll need the pint of vodka to get properly angry enough to use the hammer to smash your kit into pieces before… well yeah
well done 
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this is a Trumpeter BTR to convert in a Mexican Navy vehicle. I didn’t know how to paint it and it was a disaster when I started painting it, I think it has so 7 or 8 years. I am include the real one as reference.
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That pilot is just so bad looking. 
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This was years ago, but the only model I really remember ever throwing away is the Revell Hot Rod 57 Chevy Nomad. I had cut part of the roof off to make it like an El Camino and had nothing but problems with it at the time. I put it back in the box to get back to later and then I pitched it out a few years later when I moved.
That’s scary, I have two of those that are on the docket next year. A and D, though I’m only planning on building the D at this time.
It’s so bad you gave up? I’m not sure I want to go down that rabbit hole.
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