The Little World

Metro Models In Melbourne have a sale every now and again – chiefly the models that have sat in dusty neglect on their shelves.

I take advantage, as I am also dusty and sit on a shelf much of the time… In this case the original price was some $ 60 and they applied a 20% discount – so $ 48 delivered at the door – postage was free in those days. That’s $ 12 an engine and well within my economic parameters.

I have never seen so many sprue trees in a box. It contained the makings of a AS starter truck as well, so it was even better value. This sort of luck came before the current Ukraine war so it may not come again – Amodels have a mottled reputation as moulders, but the subjects make them well worth the risk.

This is also the case with Roden, though ICM and Miniart are moulders of greater precision and a safer bet. The last named can even go too far in the detail spectrum, rendering their builds problematical in a nice way. My personal preference is ICM for a balance of detail and plastic quality.

Our selection of Ukrainian and Russian kits is somewhat iffy at present, though the odder sort of ex-Soviet and current European aircraft are still to be seen in the shops. I think this is mainly because they ring no bells with the local modellers – there is little experience with Cold War types here and even less with modern jets.

If I were to go up to the factory gate, ring the bell, and hand in a list of desired kits, it would be long on inter-war airliners from European and North American makers in 1:72 scale. They have briefly appeared, and as quickly disappeared, but were far more prolific than the literature would aver.

I curse myself every time I remember letting odd little resin kits get away from me, though at the price of a bespoke resin kit seen recently at the last big local scale model exhibition – $ 109 for a single engine airliner that is also moulded by Special Hobby for far less – niche filling is a costly exercise.