The Little World

Depends on who they were and when the day was…

I well remember seeing an Aurora Famous Fighter kit sold in Canadian hobby shops that purported to be a Soviet plane – variously touted as a Yak 25 or a MiG 19, that was nothing like either aircraft. It may have been drawn up and moulded from assumption, false information, or pure imagination. We bought and built them in full confidence that we were seeing the real thing in plastic.

We might have taken a clue from the box art – depicting a fictitious Soviet plane in combat with a western proposal aircraft. The only thing authentic was the cardboard in the box…

The same may well have applied to many more of your treasured kits. I have a 60’s Blackburn Buccaneer by Airfix that appears to be a prototype. Many more types were on the cusp of production in the real world as their scale models flooded the market. As kids we didn’t care. As adults we care too much.

Witness me with a freebie kit on the bench – a Revell baggie still retaining its 50¢ price tag – and desperately googling to see how accurate the colours scheme and decals are. These are graphic elements that were designed to catch the kid’s eye on a shelf back then.

In the case of the Revell Albatros D.III, there was a fairly close historical plane – and a lick of trim paint here and there brought it into line. As I have said before, I don’t mind being a kid again, as long as the bottle shop is open.

Indeed, I would build the dear old Famous Fighter if it appeared in a stash sale. I would not go so far in my search for nostalgia as to put cement fingerprints on the canopy, but I would be prepared to paint inside the raised insignia outline on the wings.