The Little World

Surprisingly, these last few years of international war ( as opposed to the internal sort practised in Africa and South America ) have yielded few scale model controversies and political arguments.

I did not expect this. Of course there are bound to be restrictions on the supply of kits from warring nations, but the ones that do get through get built pretty well as intended. No-one shrieks with disgust at the tank or plane from someone of whom they disapprove.

Even a large display of controversial models at WASMex seems not to have drawn a peep here in Perth. And individual tanks from the various combatants are on every hobby shop shelf. If you can afford ’em, fill yer boots.

At the same time, modellers have not shown quite the insensitivity that they might have been tempted to – there are a number of civilian casualty figures made by the modelling companies to accompany their tanks and trucks, but very few have been put on the competition table. Whether this is because the competition committees have a clause in the rules allowing them to censor entries, or whether people are actually better-minded…well, time will tell.

So far no-one has done a congressional insurrection, presidential debate, or potential assassination diorama here in our local area. There was one scale model of a local Australian member of parliament addressing a rally, but it didn’t score well in the comp. Still, it was interesting to see how many resin-cast and 3D printed figures you can get of people asleep.