Absolutley OT: Growing Up

[wdolson]

I was aware of Airfix before the 1980s. Well stocked model shops would carry a few of their kits, but being imports, the US made kits of the same subjects were usually cheaper.

I think it was 1978 or 1979 that General Mills bought Airfix and created the MPC brand which were Airfix kits molded and re-released here. The markings of the American editions usually only had decals for one version rather than the wider range usually provided in the Airfix versions.

I always liked larger scale kits and got most of the Airfix 1/24 scale aircraft reboxed as MPC. They had these points you could collect from the side of the box and get free kits from the points (you did have to pay postage). I managed to cobble together enough points for one 1/24 scale smaller plane like the Spitfire and one 1/24 scale Harrier or Stuka. I sent in my points and they must have screwed up somewhere. They sent me three Harriers and three Spitfires. I was in hog heaven. I later sold a couple of them unbuilt on Ebay, but I still have a complete set of the Airfix 1/24 scale aircraft and a few duplicates.

My now ex brother-in-law gave me a few more 1/24 scale kits when he divorced my sister and sort of walked away from everything. He was prone to dramatic gestures like that. At that point she was just sort of "whatever".

I never built much 1/72 scale and that was Airfix's primary aircraft scale. Some of those early Airfix kits really went overboard on the rivet detail. You could file your nails with the rivet detail on some of them. I was more into Monogram which had a wide range of 1/48 scale kits. I lusted after my father's 1/32 scale Hasegawa kits, but those were really expensive. I'd get some Revell 1/32 scale kits from time to time.

In ship kits the Europeans standardized before the US did. A lot of the American made ship kits out there are still old "box scale" kits originally released in the 1950s. You see Revell-Monogram kits with listed scales like 1/437 scale. That's because the kit was scaled to fit into a standard box size instead of to a standard scale.

A lot of the European ship kits are 1/400 scale, but the Japanese and Chinese have kind of established the two major ship scales at 1/700 and 1/350 which makes the European scale a bit of an odd duck these days. I did get an Airfix Ark Royal in 1/400 scale. She was probably one of the nicest looking pre-war carriers.

And then Tamiya set the scale standard for armor at 1/35 scale. Many others followed their lead. Before that Airfix and Monogram released a few armor models in 1/32 scale which is close, but I think Tamiya eclipsed them. In the US we had Aurora with 1/48 scale armor and some companies did 1/72 or 1/76 scale armor (Airfix, ESCI, and Fujimi primarily), but 1/72 scale armor today is a sort of also ran scale.

I started building models at three and I went through a lot of them. Thinking back I don't know what my parents were thinking letting a three year old use liquid glue for styrene. I never spilled it, but I did flick it into my eyes a few times. I learned very early how to wash out my eyes. After the first couple of times I also learned not to say anything about it. My mother was a worry wart.

Most of my early modeling was aircraft. They have always been my favorite and it was my father's interest too. Though I did branch out into armor and ships. I remember obsessively building a 1/48 scale Churchill from Aurora in my room pretty late at night. I may have snuck out of bed. All those small wheels were doing my head in.

Bill

[Kull]

Since we're traveling in the way-back machine and the topic has morphed rather dramatically away from TV shows, here's another tangent. How many of you guys collected "War Picture Library" comics? It was a British publication so no idea if there was any penetration of the US market, but I just loved these things growing up as a kid overseas. Still have 15 of them in varying states of disrepair. Here's the cover of one I'm actually holding right now:

[warspite1]

Required reading to take on holiday to Devon as a kid [:)]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: mullk

Boy I remember all these shows with fondness. I also remember playing with the G.I. Joe dolls errr I mean action figures with the kid across the street. His parents had set him up a sand box just for playing with the figures.

Yep, I had one of these babies.....

Yeah, I had one too. I eventually detached the cannon and made my own projectiles. They were matchsticks with sewing needles sticking out of them. Pretty good velocity and they stuck in just about anything. [X(]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

Favorite character-without a doubt: Ziegfried. Schmart!!! [:D] Gets me every time.

Favorite character who, as a pre-teen that I was, evoked certain "stirrings": Barbara Feldman as Agent 99. Wow! [X(]

Ok...so some of the attire was ridiculous, but she was a sultry bombshell...

http://io9.com/5310191/the-bizarre-hist ... ted-for-tv

Yep, I definitely watched that show because of her. [X(]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: crsutton

I know that I am taking this to a whole other level, but what the heck? I still get a little warm when I see an old photo of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I preferred to watch this show alone, without my pants around...

I fixed that for you, crsutton. [:D]

[:D]

[witpqs]

Even more OT. Not about growing up, maybe about not growing up. [:D]

I saw a pair of shorts at a store, on sale for like 75% off. They were way too large, but a glimpse made me take a closer look at the pattern:

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: mullk

Boy I remember all these shows with fondness. I also remember playing with the G.I. Joe dolls errr I mean action figures with the kid across the street. His parents had set him up a sand box just for playing with the figures.

I was never into GI Joe much, but my brother and I each used to get one of these sets every Christmas. Man we had some epic struggles in the back yard with our little green army men armies lol.

Jim

I had about a company of these little Japanese WWII soldiers in various poses. I took one end of a tin pencil lead holder (looked like a Contac capsule but larger) and made a stand to hold it out of a paper clip. I made a number of these assemblies. Then I loaded them with match heads and wadded up some aluminum foil to make the projectiles. Sometime I used a big one or other times a number of smaller ones like cannister. I lined up the Japanese troops like they were assaulting and set up my battery facing them. All I had to do was hold a lit match under my tin cannons and they would fire. The soldiers would melt and the aluminum balls would melt into them. Maybe I would've made a good General LeMay.

Genius! [:D]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: oldman45

I built the motorized Hood, lindberg model, pushed it out into the lake and realized I didn't do a good job on the shaft seals .....

I built the very same model! The main turrets would rotate and the guns elevated. Sadly, she never made it past the bathtub. She was destined to sit on the windowsill for all eternity. For all I know, she's still sitting there.

[Mike Solli]

Anyone remember this? I wasted a significant portion of my childhood on this until my sister bought me Panzer Blitz one Christmas. [:D]

[TOMLABEL]

My two favorite war comics as a kid in the 70's.

TOMLABEL

[witpqs]

Remember these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: TOMLABEL

My two favorite war comics as a kid in the 70's.

TOMLABEL

YES! Sgt. Rock rocked!

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Remember these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

[:D]

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Remember these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

Ikea catalogs? I never heard of Ikea until the 90s.

Bill

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Remember these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

Ikea catalogs? I never heard of Ikea until the 90s.

Bill

Nerds! [:D]

Apparently it's a point for point mckery of either an iPad or a dedicated ebook reader advertisement. It's not an ebook, it's a bookbook! [:D]