The Little World

No, I don’t mean my parents or the school teachers or the rock and roll industry – I mean who decided which prototypes to make into the plastic models that I built?

Bear in mind it was a childhood in a part of North America that was under both American and British influence. Airfix, FROG, Hornby, and Triang vied with Revell, Monogram, Aurora, and Athearn for our plane, boat, car, and train pennies. They all got some of them by giving us models to build, but that was what happened – we did not choose what to build – they chose it for us.

Airfix and FROG gave us British aircraft and ships. Hornby and Triang supplied British railways. Revell gave us a variety of American and other goods – though Like Monogram and Aurora their catalogues were prominently of US protoypes. Athearn was North American railroading all through.

Had we better communication with Europe we might have benefited from Rivarossi, Jouef, and Märklin plus others, but shops had to be very special to carry their goods. The eastern provinces perhaps…

Our knowledge of the modelling world was restricted by business – if it was a sure sale it sold…if it was a possible flop, the opportunity to buy was never presented.

Lord, how the landscape has changed today. Everyone and his small yappy dog has a company that can computer-design a good model of some obscure thing and kit it out. We are overwhelmed by choice and variety – to the point where making an actual money decision becomes difficult. I do not decry the full shelf, but I need to psych myself up to it with a definite idea of what I want to do. Otherwise I just spin out of the kit aisle dizzy.