The Little World

Squeezing it is optional.

The free scale model kit may be a present or a practical joke. If it is your birthday or Christmas it’s most likely to be the former. If someone hands you a forty-year-old kit box that looks as if it’s been run over in the driveway, the circumstance may be different. The thing you have to remember is to be polite and grateful at the time.

Later you can open it and look at the contents. Some kits will be perfect gems – others will be perfect as well, but in their case not gems…germs. You don’t see modellers on YouTube wearing purple latex gloves for nothing.

If someone has made a bad choice in a good cause, accept the thing and build it. You may enjoy it immensely after the first shock wears off. Make sure they see your finished product so that they’ll be encouraged to buy you another.

If the kit is just…bad…you are under no obligation to break your heart over it. Some gifts are like that, and if it is a random thing you can decline to start it. Save it for a swap meet or modeller’s revenge. Just don’t refer to it again and soon it will be forgotten.

The deliberate white elephant needs a special effort to build it and make a good job. Then the donor is forced to admire it and realise that their joke backfired.