The Little World

I’ve been buying model kits since Eisenhower was President and Louis St. Laurent was Prime Minister and I think I’ve seen them offered in every form of packaging save a lard barrel; cardboard boxes, plastic packets, plastic bags, sleeves, and even one memorable lot in paper envelopes. As I sit at my desk typing I can see the stash and there are six separate sizes, shapes, and consistencies of package represented.

Looking back, I wonder now whether there was an influence upon us as buyers with the different forms of packaging – whether we gravitate or were steered toward one product over another by the quality of the outer cardboard husk. I think we were.

Part of it was the box art – we generally responded well to the dramatic colours and stirring scenes on the top of the box – and the manufactures learned early on to repeat that scene on the ends as well to get us to slide the kit off the shelf and hold it in our hands. ( Half a sale is getting it into a pair of hands. )

Part of it was the familiarity of a logo. Just like today’s dependence upon logos on every product to ensure we know we are having a good time, the logo on the 1950’s kit told us that the world was alright and that a familiar standard of the industry was there for us. That familiar standard of the industry might be foisting a misshapen lump of frustration on us but we weren’t to know that until we got it home and tried to fit the two halves of the fuselage together.

Part was the feel of the box – Revell boxes were better constructed than Lindberg. Aurora were crude but sturdy. Airfix boxes were flimsy, but those of us who had watched ” Hancock’s Half Hour ” knew that you had to excuse the British for a lot of austere products. They made up for it in the magnificent crude thickness of Triang trains.

Oddly enough, we fully accepted Airfix plastic baggies. At 1/4 the price of a US model we could afford to have a new one every three weeks. The picture on the folding flap had a charm of its own, but you had to be artistic to see it.

Well, we’ve been through re-boxing of everything since then, and in some cases several times. I’m impressed with the way the Chinese Hobby Boss puts crude kits onto sophisticated trays and wires the main components in so they can’t move. You have confidence that you’re going to get what you pay for.

The Mach 2 is an abomination and the Czech kits that are somewhere in between on contents are also somewhere in between as far as art and box. I find myself longing to see something reassuring like the red of Airfix. It might be a 60’s re-box, but is at least a real box.