The Little World

Said an advertisement for a reissue of an old kit. I opened the box and looked in…

My childhood was moulded better than that – and it was made in the same mould. I might have aged a lot and some of my edges have become worn, but I have avoided sinkholes in every corner and flash that looks better than my actual parts.

In addition, I am flexible where the plastic of this retro kit is not. And as bad as my eyes are, I can still see out of them – looking through the canopy moulding of this plane reminds me of the bottom of a Coopers Ale glass.

If this is recapturing my childhood, I am just as happy to let the jolly thing escape.

Modellers come in all sizes and shapes – and ages. I can count people in my club in their teens and some in their 80’s. They all had a childhood and can recapture it – the young ones because it is still close by and the old ones because it is far away. For them, childhood is best remembered rather than re-experienced – because time has removed the landscape and the culture that was there long ago and replaced it with fresh people, houses, products, and experiences. There is no crispy bacon like we got before the war…I suspect there never was.

I am as sentimental as the next modeller, and would welcome the memory of long-dead models. Indeed, I’ve made an extensive list of all the ones I once built, found illustrations of them on the internet, and calculated just when they were made. It cost me time and effort but no money, and is likely to be the best way to go. If I searched for those kits on eBay or through brokers I would be broke long before I got them.

For a die-hard sentimentalist there are always the re-issues from specialist makers who buy old moulds. Some of the Aurora moulds have been re-issued this way – Revell of Germany rehatches a lot of their old goods with new prices. Airfix has their Vintage Classics – and they are both good to build and good to buy – you can excuse what they were for what they cost. The Russians took to squeezing out the last kopek from old FROG moulds even in the Soviet era and I see there are still some echoes now from them.

But you cannot buy your childhood entire. I suspect the best compromise would be to build what you can remember from a modern maker using a new mould. If you are determined to re-enact your youth, put cement fingerprints on the canopy.