Category: box scale
-
The New Kit Box

You do not have to be an 18th century rake… To recognise the experience of being captured by the appearance of a smartly-dressed courtesan with a painted face and patches on her cheeks. The ample bosom and the curled hair may be missing, but the end result – bitter horror at the raddled creation encased…
-
If It Is Not A Pleasure…

Does it need to be a pain? I am brought to this question by the effort of completing a 1/400 scale model of a very small naval vessel. It is well moulded. It is presumably accurate. It may be relevant, but then the well-mannered never mention the relevant in the room… It is not excruciating,…
-
Is There A Mathematical Formula For Fun?

Or is it all just numbers? When you see scale model kits offered for sale at different prices, is there a correlation in those figures with the size of the scale and the degree of happiness that will be generated? Can we do the maths? a. If you never build the model, there is no…
-
It Is Hard To Sell A Poisoned Chalice

Especially if you have been killing off people’s enthusiasm with it for years. This sentiment applies to a lot of things; hobby publications, exhibition organisation, and box-scale kits come to mind. The magazines we loved to buy are slowly giving way to YouTube presentations that take up hours of our time for minutes of information.…
-
Équipe Super Mystère – Part Two – Fleur de Lis

Well, what else would it be for French aircraft… The concept has become reality. Three Heller kits, a base from Spotlight, and a length of 3mm brass rod. The kits are of a period and at a low price. I am grateful that the ancient Heller decals worked perfectly and that the factory moulded guidelines…
-
Équipe Super Mystère – Part One – L’idée Dormante

For years these Heller kits have lain on the shelves. Ignored, discarded, unconsidered. Rather the story of many lives, eh? Well the reforming zeal of the SMCWA committee swept them from the storeroom and into my stash cabinet. Whence they have flown to the workbench and photo table. They are 1:100 scale – not a…
-
The Commander Of Leftover Air Base

The home of the 103rd Tactical Kit Boxes. Our motto: ” What The Heck Is This? “ It is a heavy responsibility to be the grate at the bottom of the scale modelling drain. To be the hobbyist that follows the parade of kits with a broom and a shovel. To be the person under…
-
So Good That…

That the makers of 1:64 scale cars and trucks don’t make their construction equipment in the same scale. That the cars they do make are nearly always brightly coloured race cars and rods. So useful for normal dioramas. That the die cast factories employ pantograph design machinery to produce the same thing in three scales.…
-
Extraordinary Models

Out of the ordinary. Unusual. Remarkable. Etc. The devil is in the etc. Manufacturers of kits are sometimes thrown to the edge of the cliff when it comes to the selection of a prototype for their latest kit. In their various divisions they have usually fallen back upon a well-known kit to get quick money.…
-
If It Was On The Box Top…

It must have been real. If it was in a book, it must have happened. If it was an illustration, it must be accurate. Right? Well, that is how I used to predicate my modelling. I bought the kits, read the library books, and thumbed through the magazines at the drug store to get my…
