The Little World

We are to have our scale model exhibition in a few months and I will be there showing some of my builds and taking pictures of other people’s efforts. I’ll also browse the trade stands and the second-hand sales that go on. Of the two, I think I’ll have the most fun with the junk.

It’s not that I’m allergic to brand new kits and expensive triumphs of the moulder’s skill; I love a Tamiya kit as much as anyone. But I discovered a long time ago that the humbler offerings are just as tasty as the expensive ones. And poor old neglected disasters can be the most fun of all.

It’s sort of like saving fallen women from lives of sin. I like to rescue neglected kits that would otherwise never have fulfilled their potential. Not so much sinned as binned.

That potential may have been a very limited possibility in the first place. I’ve seen some 50’s and 60’s kits sold in backwoods hardware stores that were stultifyingly awful. With poor workmanship, bad packaging, and senseless choice of subject. The plastic kit equivalent of the runt of the litter. Yet some runts can be the best dogs ever.

The only downside to buying and building the beasts is that you must get them at a price commensurate with their low status. I have seen very bad things put up for very high prices by very foolish sellers. Fortunately I am a cheap-john and do not pay them.

Once you have possession of the thing that no-one else ever wanted to build you have to ask yourself what level of satisfaction will be gained from it. What potential does it have? Is there a actually a kit in the kit?

I have decided that there are several levels of this:

a. Good subject – bad kit. A model of a desirable prototype that has been botched by the maker. If you can un-botch it you may have what no-one else has.

b. Bad subject – good kit. A dreary prototype or something that has no appeal to anyone in the known world, but has been carefully measured and faithfully reproduced. Well, if you build it you can at least say that you’ll know what it looks like. You may share that knowledge with only one other person in the world, but I should advise you to avoid meeting them…

c. Bad subject – bad kit. That’s why it’s on the remainder table, dummy. Why it has sat on the shelf of the Wagin hardware store for 4 decades. Why the seller has been putting it on the trade table for the last 5 exhibitions. It is scale-model merde.

Despite these flashing red lights, you may still elect to build it. And spend a considerable time correcting the flaws, faults, errors, mistakes, and downright nastiness of the kit. Do it right and you advance up a level in life. And you’ll have bragging rights.