The Little World

Again a good opportunity to build a by-gone kit has come my way – a legacy kit being cleared out at a very low price.

Part of that may have been prompted by the appearance of the box – squashed and scuffed, and of a Heller era that seems crude to our eyes. It debuted in 1967 and this one was purchased in the UK. The box art seemed wildly improbable, but more of that later. I note the back of the box ambitiously recommended other Heller kits of the same era.

The sprue trees are fairly good – no visible sink or ejector marks. There is a tiny bit of flash but very easy to trim away. Usefully dark grey plastic.

The basic parasol wing design is a little daunting but I see Heller have made definite socket holes in the wing and adequate lands on the fuselage – I hope that attention to geometry will yield a plumb and straight result.

The instructions are pure Heller francais, and the colour call-out no help at all, The box art is marginally better, but only if you have set the hues in your own mind from previous builds. I shall be following the lead of a previous Delage fighter to colour this plane.

The decals are…well…sixty years old, and look it. If they are bleached in the window for a week or trimmed closely and soaked for a millennium, they might work. Or just bite la balle and go to the spares sheets. The French were stylish but not complex, thank goodness.