Your first kit

ChrisJH666

I don't know if this has ever cropped up before on here, but for some reason I thought about my first model, so I kind of wondered if anyone else remembered their first? I'll start the ball rolling, with an Airfix 1/72 Jet Provost when I was five!

 

Yes this thread subject has popped up here from time to time. Mine was a Pyro Brontosaurus before somewhere around 4 1/2 to 5. And my dad did the building.

Revell USS Pittsburgh. I was 5 and it was the first kit I built without parental supervision.  I finished it in one afternoon on the dining room floor, painting it Testors chrome silver and flat black because that is all I had.

Tom Daniels Street Cleaner Z-28 Snap-Tite kit from Monogram.  I was 7 years old - just back from living in the UK for 2 years where I was heavy into Matchbox cars.

Well, I do remember the first kit I ever finished, 72 years ago.  Relatives were giving me models for Christmas and Birthdays, I guess because Dad used to build some models before I came along.  However, these were stick and tissue (flying) models, and until 2nd grade I was not able to read the instructions well enough to finish a kit.  Then, at age seven, I managed to finish a Guillows Aeronca Champion.

I also remember the first plastic kit, about four years later.  It was a P-80- I believe it was a Hawk model.  The second plastic kit, within a year, was a Hawk Gee Bee racing plane.  That kit is still available as a Testors kit.  This would have been 68 years ago!  Must be one of the oldest kits still available at hobby shops!

Either TWA moon rocket from Disneyland, or Revell Caravelle.

My first kit was a solid wood airplane model, by Strombecker.  Probably a Piper Cub, but I built several various wooden models.  Crude, by today's standards.

I'm with Don on the Gee Bee but it could have a Navy weird scale Panther about a foot long and raised areas rather than decals to paint insignia. You're really testing my memory here!

Max

It was a little Tiger I, bought on a school fieldtrip to COSI.

I was 3 when I built my first plastic model, with a good bit of help from Dad (although I know I did the actual construction since there were glue fingerprints all over it).  The subject was Monogram's P-40B Flying Tiger.  I probably picked it out because of the box art (and then later discovered that Disney had a role in designing the tiger art the AVG used, and that appeal to a 3-year-old made a lot of sense).  I still remember the photograph of my P-40B sitting on a table next to a P-38 that my Dad did at the same time; his Lightning was so much better.

It amazes me you guys can remember your first kit. Sure wish I could. That would be a very nice memory to have.

Technically, my first was a Guillows Albatros at about the age of 7 some 60 yrs ago. First plastic kit was a Revell Fokker E-III Eindecker maybe a year later. I finished the Albatros, but it was a struggle with lots of help from Dad. Several more of the Guillows WWI set followed, each requiring progressively less help. Bought the E-III on a whim while at a friends house ($0.80) and decided I liked the challenge of the small scale detail. So now the stash is entirely 1/72 stuff, aircraft and vehicles, which I'll get to when my basement workshop is clear again. But then, I happened on an E-bay seller with the entire set of the Guillows 100 series WWI fighters, all 12. They now reside in my basement as well awaiting the day I gleefully pull the Albatros out...

My first kit my dad built for me was an Aurora 1/32 scale hot rod hot dog vendor truck called "The Wurst" that came with a surfer dude. I know one of the first kits I built was also an Aurora kit of the saber toothed tiger. My first tank model was the MBT70 kit by Aurora as well.

Mine was this. The U.S.S. Growler.  I built it with the help of my brother-in-law when I was 5.  As you can see it's had a lot of battle damage in 50 years.  I pretty much have all of my models I've built back then save one...a tiger tank. Don't remeber what happened to that one. As you can see I was of a mind that more glue makes them stronger.  I'm still battling that urge. My dad was in the war so he had no interest in building WW 2 stuff.  That's his memorial box in the background

IMG_1760 by Robert Pederson, on Flickr

One of the first kits I remember is AHM's YF-12A.  My dad built it for me out in the front yard because mom didn't want that stinky yellow contact cement(!!!) being used in the house.  She bought the model for me at the gift shop in Tokyo Tower in the late 1960s.

Even at age 77, I can fairly well recall my first model build. I know I was age 8, that was my age when my Grandma died, a relative who came to the funeral brought it to me, I guess trying to help me feel a bit less sad.

I think it was an Aurora kit, a swept wing fighter, maybe called an F-90. No paint or decals at that age, but it looked wonderful to me. I also recall, I was actually able to get some of the tube glue on the model. Mom not impressed. ):>(

That was my start, still at it all these years later, love the hobby just as much now, plus my cement application has improved greatly.

Patrick

I cannot remember what I did as a kid,it was probably Aurora's Godzilla and King Kong

When I started up as an adult,it was Tamiya's T-34 and Pzkw IV

The oldest builds I have on my shelf are from 2000,Hasegawa F-15C Satellite Killer and Jolly Rogers Phantom

Mine was the old Airfix 1/72nd F-86. It was bought by a neighbour as a welcome gift when my dad moved into his flat after seperating from my mum. He got me the kit and helped me build it. For some reason it got painted all black.

We had a GB a few years back, where people re-built there first kit, or the first they could remember. This time i did it in the proper NMF, thoguh the decals were probably worse this time round.

When I was seven, my parents bought me the Monogram Tyrannosaurus Rex snap kit. I believe the kit was later repackaged as a Revell offering. 

My dad bought me my first kits. The first one, if I remember right, was a B-25. Might have been a Doolittle raider kit. This was in the 1950s. Another kit he bought me was a Boeing 707 kit. The model had a button on the top that when pushed, the landing gear extended.

Hi,

I can't really remeber my first model kit, but there was a chain of 5 & Dime stores when I was growing up called "Motts" and they stocked some old car models, so it may have been one of them.  I don't recall the manufacturer (it may have been AMT or Lindberg, or someone else) but I seem to recall the cars didn't usually come with chrome parts, the plastic sometimes seemed kind of grainy, and the tires were typically hard plastic (like the rest of the kit, instead of rubber, and came in two pieces that you had to glue together.  

Most of the subjects were fairly old (even in the 1970s) and the two that I specifically recall having built were a 1936? ish convertible of sime sort and, I think, a 1940 Ford sedan. 

Pat

Mopar Madness

When I was seven, my parents bought me the Monogram Tyrannosaurus Rex snap kit. I believe the kit was later repackaged as a Revell offering. 

 

I built cropdusters out of tinkertoys first, then I graduated to stick and tissue which never flew except in my hand as I ran around the yard. This was my first plastic model, in 1955.  I still remember being sad because I cracked the plastic frame that fit over the canopy.  I have a replacement kit in this photo, and I built another more recently, pictured below.  This time the canopy frame survived.

Bish

We had a GB a few years back, where people re-built there first kit, or the first they could remember. This time i did it in the proper NMF, thoguh the decals were probably worse this time round.

Sounds like a fun GB.

Mine was the Cessna Skymaster from Hawk I think at age 5. I put so much testers tube glue on the wings that they melted.

The only model I rememer as a young kid around 10 yrs old my parents bought me a visible v-8 engine model kit you put togther and it had a little electric motor where the starter would be you could see the piston and valves working my dad help me put it togeher other than that all I remember is my parents bought me a erector set for chirstmas one year and my dad and i mostly dad built a ferris wheel that actually worked with electric motor.

Tinker Toys.

Is that a Constellation?

modelcrazy

 

Bish

We had a GB a few years back, where people re-built there first kit, or the first they could remember. This time i did it in the proper NMF, thoguh the decals were probably worse this time round.

 

 

Sounds like a fun GB.

Mine was the Cessna Skymaster from Hawk I think at age 5. I put so much testers tube glue on the wings that they melted.

 

It was, the My First Time GB back in 2013. Can't recall who ran it now.

1/72 Monogram Snap Together P-40 when I was 5. My dad took me fishing and I got bored pretty quickly. He must have expected it, because he pulled it for me to work on.