First Models

My first model was a Revell stock car of some sort bought for me by my dad. We built it together, and the he woke me up that night to show me that he put 'dents' in it with a wood burning tool to make it look 'like the real thing'. I thought that was so cool and so began a 40-year hobby...

I can't even guess what my first model was, but it was built sometime in the late 1960s. I was maybe 6 years old so most of the actual building was done by my brother. What I do know is that it was but the first step in a continuing obsession. One with gaps, but never ending.

Still remember my first - Late summer of 1953, a Revell USS Missouri - a year or so later, it tangled with a battery of BB guns on Rock Creek and lost!

My first was the Airfix Scharnhorst in 1967 and my dad helped me put it together. She went down in the Platte River near Overton Nebraska not long after she was launched.  I've tried to list all the kits I built and no longer have--too bad I didn't know then what I know now :(

I still have a handful of Pactra paints left in my paint box. I think the newest of them is about 15 years old. some are perhaps twice that age from their "International" paint line.

Allan, to answer your question, Testors is alive and well.They gobbled up all their US based competition:Pactra, Floquil/Polly S, etc. and have been discontinuing those lines.

Tarn, I guess that an Ankylosaurus was a sort of dinosaur tank... And yes there are all those other ironies and puns (and our ages) to consider... ;-) And I loved those 1/720 kits as well. Especially the battlewagons...

PJ, that was eons ago.... dont ask me why I wanted or got that kit... I just remember that box art, and the finished build with that green Testors paint glopped on it...

I remember Pactra getting started.  They started with dope for flying models.  They were the go-to paint for fuel-proof dope for use with glow plug engines. It was awhile before they brought out plastic paint.  Same thing with Testors.  Testors was around when I started, and they did dope and cement.  Added enamel for plastic when plastic models became popular.  With my first plastic models I used hardware store enamel paints.

first model......................earliest I can recall was the

HAWK Spirit of St. Louis

No paint used on that model as it was molded in "silver" plastic.

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The paint I always used was Testors enamel and usually mixed my own colors to match what i thought the actual colors were supposed to be..........

stikpusher

 

and this was my second...

 

Darn Stik, that cruiser brought back a lot of memories. I built that eons ago.

Wow,I can't remember my first one.i honestly can't remember not building models.must have started at age 6 or 7.I'm currently 57. I do remember doing a lot of battleships.no need to paint as they were molded in gray..and when your 6 or 7 that's good enough.

hmm, Dinosaur models made of plastic is almost like some sort of time loop. It must be very close to feeding a chicken some eggs for breakfast.

(the Dino/Oil line was the *second* thing I thought of, Stik, the first had to do with "being so old we modeled Dinosaurs, tanks came along a longgggg time later")

I remember the Revell 1/720's well, my favorite part was fitting that lower hull to the upper hull ridge, lol, I had to build two of each one I tried, just to learn how to get one built right.

Rex

Haha!  Stik, do they even produce Testors paint nowadays?

I remember having Pactra bottles in my desk back in the 80s (I even had some Pactra-Tamiya bottles). I still remember distinctly how they smelled.  Haha

This was my first model...

and this was my second...

and both painted with this color... (I think)

Both are long gone...

I remember my first kit like it was yesterday, Was 1965 when my mother bought me an Eastern Airlines DC3. And remember my brother buying for me the Aurora U505 for a couple of bucks. Nice memories!

There is the first model I ever tried to build, and the first I actually finished.  Don't remember the former, but do remember the later. I started getting kits when I was about five years old, as presents.  These were the stick and tissue flying models.  I couldn't read well enough to build them. I was about seven when I finished the first one. It was a Guillows Aeronca Champion.  That would have been 1945.  Continued to build both flying models and shelf scale (first balsa "solid models" and then plastic).  After moving to an area of bad weather and notoriously long winters, I gave up on the flying models and build mostly static scale models now.  Every few years I do build a rubber flying model, though.

I build my first model when I was 5, together with my late grandfather. It was a 1/144 F-15.

Here is another very early model that we build. Notice how my grandfather cut out all the decals and glued them on with the backing paper!

But he did taught me the basics like test fit, observe the instructions, clean up before glueing etc etc. I also remember building a 1/144 B-17 and 1/72 P26 together. My first solo build was an 1/144 F-14.

I think my first kit was a snap-tite F-14 Tomcat. I did that one when I was in 4th or 5th grade. My first paint/glue kit, I believe, was the Jupiter 2 from the crappy '90s Lost in Space movie (well, I liked it). I was probably about 11 or 12 at the time. I still have it somewhere, and for my being 11-12 years old, it wasn't that bad. I did a couple kits after that, but completely dropped the hobby shortly thereafter. I didn't get back into it until just a couple years ago, when I picked up a Revell F-14 Tomcat. That one is still on my shelf. Compared to more recent efforts, it looks like hell, but I was (and am) proud of it for my first effort back into the hobby.

Have no idea what my first kit was but I know my dad bought it when I was just a kid 40+ years ago.  I can be safe in saying it was either shot up with my BB gun or blown up with firecrackers......probably both.

Rex,  

Great to see you still have your first model kit.

This is my first model, a 1/700 Matchbox HMS Exeter.  She turned 30 last August (Mom got me the kit in 1983).  I completely restored her in 1998 (15 years after I first built it), and here's how she looks now.

Hard for me narrow it down to the first, but, I'm thinking in the mid to late 70s, it would have been a Revell van model. It was back when customized vans were all the rage. I remember it was a beach themed van with surfboards on the roof and a full interior. My brother and I both got the same one. I think he tried to paint his just 'welded' mine together with, I'm sure, an entire tube of Testors glue.

I do remember my first military model. It was a MPC 1/72 P-47 I bought at a local variety store. I do remember that it was built in 1980 and I painted it by hand with Testors brown on top and Testors Flat light blue underneath. It was my first painted model.

MPC Pacer Wagon. Dad helped be glue it together. I painted the body testors square bottle silver.  About 1977-78

My first model was an F101 voodoo that my mother got me, probably about 7 years old (this was in the early 60s)

My first kit was a 1/72nd Hasegawa RA-5C Vigilante kit back around 1970/1971 (I was either 6 or 7 years old at the time). My dad bought it for me, and helped me build it. I still remember that it had the removable engines, the vertical stabilizer swiveled, and it showed the weapons release cone on the tail. Don't remember painting it, and I kept breaking the nose gear strut on it almost constantly.

My first model was a Revell 1/72 Corsair. My Aunt bought it for me for my 8th birthday in 1965. I built by myself, with "detail painting" only, and sticking the decals on the bare plastic. Around 1973 or so, when the MPC Profile series came out, I painted it in Testors square bottle Flat Sea Blue paint, and a Reserve's band in Testors Square bottle Orange.

A couple of years ago, Jeffrey Harrison was talking about "retro modeling", his idea was to build yesterday's kits with today's technology and paints, but, without any aftermarket parts.

So, I dug this out of an old storage box, my first model.

The prop was still okay, but, some of the landing gear parts were pretty broken up, so, I took some spare parts from the "Corsair spare parts box" and found a couple of bottles of Testors Square Flat Sea Blue. I cleaned it, sanded it, filled the fuselage seam better, and painted it with a brush, decaled it for the last time, and handbrushed Future over it.

The model is out in front of some of the more expensive models in my display case,,,,,,after all, it is a tribute to Jeffrey, now, as well as my Aunt.

I still have my first model ship from a few years later on in life, I plan to refurbish that old Revell flat bottom Carrier to honor Uncle Fritz, he gave that to me even as my Dad protested that the kit was "too expensive for a ten year old to ruin"

Rex

My first model was an Aurora Zero that was molded in yellow.  I guess I built it myself but I was only around 6 or 7 so it couldn't have had many parts.  I do remember that my grandmother sat on it while it reposed on a chair!

Gary

Back in the early 70's, my first kit was a 1/24th scale Mongoose dragster and I asked my dad to help. What'd I do? I literally took every single part off those plastic trees by hand. Thinking back on it - no wonder my dad couldn't put it together. Some of the more delicate pieces, I broke and rendered it useless. LOL!

Fast forward when I made another attempt only this time with a snap kit of a dragster. then I bought another and from then on I was hooked and before you know it, I moved up to using tube glue and paint.

Well for me this would be about fifty years ago,so I can't say for sure,but it probably was an Aurura monster kit,like Godzilla,King Kong,Frankenstein,or The Creature.I had them all at onetime or another.