The Little World

A close cousin to the folding decal and distantly related to the ones that explode when they contact water.

They are not meant to decorate our scale models – they are a practical joke that the kit makers like to amuse themselves with. They sit there in the factory with a bag of these and every so often they throw a sheet of them into a box instead of the regular ones. They’ll never see the carnage as the modeller tries to make them work, but they can picture it in the mind’s eye. It is a refined sort of vice.

I would not suggest that these jokesters have investments in the secondary-market custom decal shops. That would be too criminal even for them. However, you can get some clue when a factory’s quality control builder who takes kits off the line, throws away their own decal sheet and orders a new one.

There are ways around most of these flaws – extra decal glue, extra coating films, extra bad language. In some cases all three, and then putting the completed model away at the back of an extra-dark closet.

Murder is always wrong, but try telling that to someone who bought an aircraft kit with a commemorative scheme on the tail that will not adhere.