The Little World

Here’s two parallel experiences; buying a plastic model kit in a hobby shop and buying a six-pack of craft beer at the local Dan Murphy’s. In both cases you are basically paying out for a pig in a poke.

The externals are generally confusing…the plastic model kit has either great box art or horrible writing, but the outside can bear surprisingly little relation to the actual contents of the box. In the case of the craft beer, the labels are no longer able to suggest anything to us, save that the brewery is infested with graphic artists. In both cases the actual purchase may have to be made with averted eyes.

The goods are also sealed tightly to prevent premature disclosure. You’ll find out what you bought when you knife open the kit box or pop the seal on the beer. By that time it will be too late to change your mind and take it back – unless you can prove that the contents are broken, poisonous, or not as described on the label. That is why the labels are either vaporous drivel or serving suggestions.

You are rarely allowed to go back to the shop and make your own serving suggestions…

I adopt a philosophical approach – no beer is too bad that it cannot be swallowed and no kit is too bad that it cannot be built. I have drunk German smoke beer and built a Mach 2 model kit and now there is little that the world can threaten me with. At the very worst I can shake my head at my own folly, but then go on to compound it and have fun whilst doing so. And I can always regard the worst glass or box as a lesson that – once learned – need not be learned again. The same goes for purchasing motor cars or sex.

Note from the heading image that there was little mystery about the Canadair Sabre. The masking tape price tag and the biro scribble on the front of the box – plus the fact that it was on the swap and sell table at the annual model exhibition –  declared that it was a product of the Caveat Emptor Company. Fortunately all the parts were there and one day it will be a beautiful display jet. Faith may sometimes be rewarded.