The Little World

The Little World is blossoming. More and more models – in this case 1:72 scale  – are coming onto exhibition and more and more kits are being discovered. There are three themes current and they can all expand for a number of years.

This is all to the good. It’s sad to say, but sometimes hobbies can peak and then die – not least because the supplies and materiel dry up or the venues and the organisations are removed. This happened some decades ago with scale model boating here in Perth as metro lakes dried up or were taken for other activities. Thankfully, new lakes were found and new ship model societies formed – the hobby carried on again.

It is somewhat worse when you discover that the fad that you followed so eagerly as passed. I think the business of 1:18th scale die-cast cars has settled into a rut with the only new releases being stock and racing cars or impossibly ornate luxury items that would never be seen in real life. There are very few of the classic standard vehicles in this scale any more – most are repaints of repaints.

The smaller car scales are flourishing – the 1:64th and 1:43rd can supply all the vehicles that a collector could want. The annoying thing is that the two scales diverge along the centre of the Atlantic – the 1:64th being North American models and the 1:43 being European. It is as irksome as the OO vs HO scales.

Thankfully, there seems no end of plastic model kits in 1:72 that can be built – the shelves at my local hobby shop have barely been touched to fill my shelves. I need never lack for a new box to open. Mind you, some of them could do with being smartly shut again…

Side note to the blossoming: Display of things blossoms for other people too. I am 5 IKEA glass shelves shy for my aircraft wall. And they are out of ’em…with promised deliveries not appearing. It’s the virus again, I daresay…so we just out wait it and fill other shelves in the meantime.