The Little World

I am often puzzled at the selection of model kits on the shelves of my local hobby dealers.

They’re good dealers and I love them dearly – just as I love the dealers in the eastern states when I visit them. Every one is different but they all have a certain feel to them that recalls the best days of my childhood. If they had a book shop and beer garden attached to their main shops I would probably never leave.

But back to the puzzle. Why do the manufacturers make what they do, and why do we buy what they make? Of course the answer to the first part of the question is money. It is always money. They make, we buy, and the money flows to them. Perfectly good rationale.

And there is an intermediate point to be made; we buy what they make. Even if we do not particularly want it, we by it nevertheless. Leave out any idea of need – we do not need plastic kits. But we want them and we buy them.

But why do we buy things that are grim. I mean every warplane, warship, tank, or box of plastic soldiers. If we saw the real objects or people coming over the horizon we would run in terror as they would portend death and destruction. Yet we celebrate this with a kit and half a dozen paints.

Or we buy space robot anime monsters that do the same death and destruction in brighter colours and with bigger teeth. And tits, in the case of the Japanese doll figures.

Buying a civilian airplane is unusual – buying a civilian light plane even more so. Buying a civilian light plane in the 1:72 scale that encompasses so many other kits is so rare as to require a blood transfusion and day off work. We value colour, kindness, and culture in the rest of our lives but so often buy a box of exactly the opposite for our hobby.

At least the model rail people don’t go down the same grim trail – even with raggedy narrow gauge layouts and pottery little English branch lines, they pursue peaceful scenes. They save their warlike tendencies and vulgar language for the switches that don’t switch and the couplers that let go unexpectedly.