Models From Childhood

Idon't have pics but I remember the first models I built. A 1/72 Me 109 and then an f-102 that I painted (?) with magic markers. I used to kitbash (the operative word being bash) some rejects of my older brother. Have you ever seen an aircraft carrier with masts? The sailing kind? Look forward to pics.

relics have survived. matchbox 2-3 color plastic ones, a f-84 from arizona national guard with a dragon on the side, a mephis bell totally wrecked, a Corsair all of them unpainted, a P-40 with no decals since the scull was too scary for me then....vague recollection of matchbox kits only the overall shape.....need to do a search/ hypnossis to remeber them..lol thats 25 years ago.....

No, I'm afraid mine all disappeared in a cataclysmic reenaction of the Battle of Midway in my back yard. Nobody won the battle as I recalled...

I don't have any pictures or the model anymore, but the first model I did was the Deora when I was 12 yrs old. Great thread, brings back memories of the good old days when things were cheaper and easier, lol.

No I'm afraid not. I am starting to pick up a few that I had though. "Lil Coffen" , BB63, and a few A/C. I have no idea where they went. My parents moved about 5 yrs after I joined the military and got married.

Sad to say they are all history. I had my first model, an Aurora Catalina, up to about 1991. I used it as a airbrush test mule but it was accidently thrown out in my move to Missouri. I was entertaining the idea of "restoring" it when we got settled in here. I was more than a little bummed out to find it missing.

Sad to say, NO. My dad's 2nd wife was a true "wicked stepmother" who thought that the best way to "punish" my dad for his trangressions i.e. living, was to destroy ANYTHING his 2 sons had in the way of personal items. She want on a rampage one night and destroyed everything me and my brother owned (we weren't wearing), including my 30 or so models that had survived to that point. Shortly thereafter they divorced. He was her #4, but the first to get out alive. Her 3 previous husband were all dead.

All in all I'm just glad to have made it to adulthood.

Nope, none left. I remember Fujimi's Duantless and Monogram's Zero and Spitfire being some of my first kits. Oh, how I ruined them!

"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it."-R.E.Lee

This is a tribute to Tamiya's longevity - it's their 1/25 Tiger w/interior

I did this more than twenty years ago. (When I was a little younger) It got me hooked on armor modeling. This was back when I thought doing a good model was scraping sprue marks and not having any glue globs.

Any weathering is from being on a shelf. I dug it out of my parents house because of my son's interests in modeling.

The red-brown you see is actually rustoluem's red primer - notice the gloss. I don't have any interior shots - I would be too embarassed to show some of the colors I used for the interior.





Believe it or not - I think there's an old Tamiya Jadgpanther and maybe some more somewhere.

All gone but I think I was at the battle of midway in Hobs701's backyard. Some of the first models I built as a kid was the Rat Fink models. Remember Rat Fink ? Great fun.

Still have the 1/32 Baa Baa Blacksheep Corsair and Zero.
Rough but had a lot of fun with them. Found my Matchbox 1/72 A-4
that I won a ribbon with at the state fair. Wish I still had my 1/72 A-4
Skyhawk that the Blue Angels sold at the airshows . Does anyone
remember building that kit ?
Had a lot of fun with the Monogram 1/48th kits. Even today they're a great value for the money .
Fuzzy

Still got them. When I sleep in my old room the first thing I see is the blue and white 1/72 F18 I build when I was 7.

Still got most of 'em, and the ones I blew up in my quest to become a special effects technician were thankfully captured on super-8 film. Hard to watch some of those old classic explode, but at least their sacrifices were immortalized on film. Revell's P-47 Razorback...P-40s...Corsairs...Zeroes...I think I destroyed the entire Revell 1/32 lineup! Then there were the tanks, of course...

I've got some photographs of all my first Monogram 1/32 armor and 1/48 aircraft, plus some old Aurora, Bandai and Tamiya stuff. I'll have to scan them to post, so ya'll can have a good laugh!
I know I do everytime I see them!

Sorry, that one is long gone. I remember very clearly that it was in the early 1940's, and it was a paper F4F Wildcat that came printed on the back of cereal box. I think it was Wheaties or Rice Crispies. I had to cut it out, glue it together (with tabs), and put a penny or two in the nose for balance. After tieing about an eight foot string to one of wing tips and swinging it in a circle, it flew like crazy. What fun, I shot down every Japanese Zero in sight! I don't think it lasted a week.

Shortly after that, I graduated to those great Strombecker solid models that had to be carved out of balsa and sanded. Zero detail. But that's another story.

Pete

All of mine are gone too. I have puchased some of the early kits dad and I built together to build again, or just to keep in their boxes.

All my old stuff just broke through the years and ended up in the trash, nothing as interesting as how therrimans models ended up. Crazy story man. Glad your dad made it.

Yeah I remember Rat Fink (Don Garlits) ...
My first ones are long gone, as air force brats we were always moving, and blowing up models just before each move ...
Bruce

I still have many of the models that I built as a kid. I have a 1/48th B-29, 1/72nd B-36 (not painted of course), 2 Blue Angel 1/48th A-4's, 1/72nd A-10 and a XB-70 I think it was 1/144th not too sure. I would love to find a larger scale of that one. These are all at my parents house.

Most of my models went the way of Black Cat firecrackers oh and then my friend and I discovered that plastic will catch on fire so a few were melted in the backyard. We also found out that when plastic burns it melts and drips and will still burn when a glob of it lands on the top of bare feet. Boy that was fun!

My Dad still has a T-33 and 2 B-66's that he built as a kid in the late 50's or early 60's? No sure of the time frame there.

Steve

Still got them at my parents house.

The first one, a Revell or Monogram Snap-Tite F-4 Phantom with a hand painted camo scheme on it.

My dad still keeps it in with his models, which are waaaaay better than anything I've done to date. And the F-4 was built in the 70's....you'd think I'd actually get better at this sooner or later huh?

None of mine survived my coming of (fireworks) age either. I started with the Monogram armor kits in the early 70's. Glued together and played with till there was nothing left. Then during middle and high school age I got in to a/c kits and those also went the way of the firecracker/pellet gun/lighter fluid. Many battles fought in my yard also, and like the others, no one seemed to win!

Eric

My first model(a Lambhorgini Diablo) was never finished. After that, I made a bunch of star trek models, and a model of the SeaQuest DSV(anyone else remember that show?). But, those have all found there way to the trash, sooner or later...
I then took an eight year hiatus, and got back in about two years ago. My first new model was a Revell AG F-8 Crusader, and it was pretty good(as first models go, anyway), but that finally bit the dust when I accidentally stepped on it(that's the last time I leave a model on the floor!)!

Ahhhhhhh,
Memories of all those great kits I trashed when I was young and stupid.............
I'd like to have some of them today.
All those Monogram 1/48 scale bombers, the Revell 1/32 scale fighters,
all those 1/48 scale Willys Jeeps (yes 1/48 - Bandai I think) that copped a cracker up the tailpipe (boom!) - the HUGE Saturn V rocket - it was almost as tall as me..........
None of them exist today - regrettably.
Cheers
LeeTree

Well all my early ones are from Matchbox, sadly not many around now. Strikemaster in RNZAF Colours, and A4M (re painted later as a RNZAF K), also the Lysander.

I wish! When I left for college, my devoted(?) mother took advantage of my absence to clean my room. I did find two of the old Aurora "gladiator" figures when I got home from my sojourn. Unfortunately I got married and had children!!!! It's amazing how those short little arms can stretch to the top of a bookcase and reach those items you thought were safe!

It was a TBD-1 Devastator. I was something like 6, and I built it with my dad. I remember that we painted it with a silver fusalage and yellow wings (I have NO idea if that was historically correct, but to a 6 year old, it just didn't matter) I loved the fact it was a dive-bomber...I used to stand on a chair, then jump down dive-bombing my GI Joe guys...

Ahhh...life was so simple then...

-jon

I was cleaning out mom's house a couple of weeks ago, and found a couple of mine from about 45 years ago. I've got an Adams LVT(A)4, and maybe a 105mm howitzer, and Revell 1/40th Sherman, jeep, T34/85 and a set 18 combat infantry. There is a minimal amount of paint on everything. I also have a Revell Missouri.

Yeah, i still got a couple of them... None of them are in one piece, but i have them. They didn't survive the trip home when we moved back to Manila from New York... The drawer where i keep them looks like a plastic junk yard with odds and ends that will, maybe, become part of another model when i get around to kit bashing or something... amazingly enough, i still have the 2nd model i ever built... a Revell RA-5C still relativly intact except for the landing gear and one of the horizontal stablizers.

When I moved out, my parents "donated" them all to my young nephew, and one
way or another they're all landfill now. Oh, the humanity!!!!

Well I got the photos in of my models, its too late to do much tonight, I'll get them up as soon as I can tomorrow. They got some bad shadows (dang Northern Canada noonhours, suns already setting) but they still show what they need to. Its not very easy to see some of the bad details on the Harrier (thankfuly) but theres enough that you cant miss some.

The very first models I can recall were c 1962 a Boeing 707 (the window decals were a devil for a 9 year old), Fokker Friendship an Airfix vintage car of some sort and not long after a Capri (because Dad had the 1:1). A couple of years later it was into balsa model boats and scrathc building. In the late 60's I won an award (the only award ever for my modelling efforts) for a scratch built Ton Class minesweeper, the Bofors elevated and turned and the lifeboat davits worked and I still have it although in a very much worse for wear state. About 1971 I got my first decent car kit, Airfix's 1/12th Bentley again which I still have and a year or so later the Tamiya Lotus 72d again which I still have and I became totally hooked. Interesting in those days I used a general household type glue from a tube and had never heard of a decal softener, hand painted (although I wouldn't paint the body). That 72 D was a fabulous kit, still is, and my attempt still looks OK against its more recent breathern (well I think so I'm sure others would have contrary views!). As I was an active rally driver in the late 70's early 80's when Esci started producing their rally car range I stepped up my modelling (actually still have the Mk2 Yale Escort partially built). In the mid 80's I was introduced to the world of 43rd and that's where my main interst lay until about 5 years ago when I returned to plastic. Sorry no photos as I haven't mastered the digital camera bought last week yet.