Category: Toys
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Yes, They Really Did Think It Was A Good Idea
And I, at 7, agreed with them. This was in 1955 – just after the suspension of the Korean War, and just at the start of the Cold War – at least the start in our local area. In truth, it had been going on since 1945 but the locals did not realise it. The…
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Yellow Sky In The Morning…
Modellers take warning. Have you ever looked at the box art of the plastic kits and wondered at the meteorology of it all? I took some time last week to survey the skies displayed inside the kit aisle of Hobbytech and found that they were predominantly yellow. Well, three colours, actually; yellow, orange, and lurid.…
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The Five Dollar Model
Earlier in this column’s history I introduced the Glorious $ 5 Plan – the construction of an ICM Polikarpov Chaika in 1:72 scale that only cost me $ 5 to do. It was a one-off opportunity provided by a discard box sale at the annual WASMEX show…and you can be certain that I’m going to hover…
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The Eternal Question…
To spray or brush. Whether ’tis nobler to dilute the paint and shoot it onto the tiny row of parts in a minute and then spend 5 minutes and 10ml of cleaner getting the airbrush clean again, or spend ten minutes brush painting the little suckers…and the next week trying to ignore the brush marks.…
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The Airport Under The Tree
Now that we are approaching Christmas – warily – it is time to put up the tree with the traditional toy train set circling underneath it. But for those of us who build different little worlds we have some alternative suggestions: a. Santa’s Little Airport. CIrcular runway and an airliner with a severe right bank…
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Going Into Business Sale
Not as common as the opposite – the ” going out of business ” sale, but infinitely more useful to all concerned. I’ve seen both types and from both sides of a sales counter and I much prefer the former to the later. The Chinese have a commercial tradition that says the first customer in…
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No Stash
Gasp! Shock! Horror! What kind of monster would say that? No stash? No collection of model kits carefully stored for the future? No hours spent gloating over future happiness or profit? What sort of world…? Well, a world of immediacy – of freshness – of learning and instant gratification. A chance to be a kid…
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1931 Ford Model A – Part Five – Did I Come Here To Dio?
No, you came here yesterdio…* Well, I am going to have a model, instead of a pile of parts in a box. It has been staring me out of countenance for three years and I am finally getting to grips with it. And as these things go, the grip gets just that little bit more…
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There Is No Humour In Scale Model Building
I do not mean to suggest that the activity cannot lighten the heart – that people cannot devote their spare time to it and come away happier. Many of us do, and want the good feelings to continue…in spite of the unwise purchase of kits that have gotten very bad reviews. No, what I mean…
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Serious Money For Lighthearted Spenders
When you enter a hobby shop, do you do it with a happy heart? Do you skip in with a Tra La and a happy whistle? Do you greet the proprietor as an old friend? Or do you slink in round the corner of the door and growl at the staff behind the till? Do…
The Little World 