Remember when...?

I remember when model kits came in a palstic bag or a white bag with clear silofian so you could see what you where buying.They cost about .95 cents each and paints were .05 cents a piece.Brushes about .03 cents.Digger

I remember that it used to almost take longer to get the celophane wrapper of the box, than to assemble the kit.

I remember when I would hang all the external stores provided in the kit (rockets, bombs, torpedoes, drop tanks) not knowing that I need only to select one or two combinations for a particular version.

I remember when I was afraid to sand fearing that I might alter the kits dimensions or erase the oversized rivets and other off-scale details.

I remember when I would build a model straightforward in one sitting, no puttying, no painting.

I remember copying the box art paint scheme as close as possible not knowing its inaccuracies.

I remember the big kids building the Renwal kits with working suspension and pop up crewmen. Us little kids could only build the simpler, cheaper kits by Lindberg and Aurora (still my favorite).

QUOTE: Originally posted by trowlfazz I remember when a pot of paint cost 15 cents and a Revell 1/32 scale p-47 was $2.50. Waah!!! Dan

Sheeesh, and I thought I had it good paying 82 cents for paint at the dime store when I was a kid.

Remember when obtaining a natural metal finish on your B-17 meant you sat down with four bottles of Testors silver and a 1/2" brush and just went at it? Also, remember how cool it looked when you were done?

Also, remember when your folks bought you a model and when you openned up the box you were saddened that it was all in pieces and you had to put it all together? I never realized that when my folks bought me my first kit!!!

hmmm i remember painting my first auto kit...................

...........then two weeks later painting it again...................

...........then two weeks later again.............

.........and again...............and again........................and again..............


still have that little sucker.


joe

QUOTE: Originally posted by ajlafleche I remember when Revell made box scale aircraft that came with a cool base that had a clear base with a raised map of the northern hemisphere with a smooth spot to put the identifying decal and the arm was topped with a two piece socket closed with a c-clamp and the ball was attached to the fuselage so you could pose the model in a bank, dive climb as well as level fllight.

Wow, I have not thought of those in....... decades{?}.

I remember after finishing my latest, I would hang it from the ceilling with thread. Stiil have a couple hanging in the back room. Old habits are hard to break.

I remember trying to assemble 1:700 battleship models in a single sitting, with great gobs of tube glue. The good news was that once you got halfway through adding parts to the deck you really didn't need the tube any more as there was enough loose glue on the ship already :-)

I second the notion of "Molded in authentic colors", as my painting skills were somewhere between Awful and Nonexistent.

I Remember when ...
Mom gave you some $ (less then $5.00) and you hopped on your Schwin and went down to the local Hobby store and came back with a Kit, some paint and had enough $ left over to stop at the corner store and get some Candy on the way home.

I remember when about the only thing in color in FSM magazines was the cover.

I remember sitting in the open garage next to a table with all the kit's sprues scattered all over the table, numerous paint spills and drops all over the table....

I remember my Mom complaining because every paring knife in the house was dull and missing the tip from working on my models....

I remember mowing lawns for $5.00 then coming right home, getting on my bike and riding down to the local convenience store, buying a model, some glue, some 15-cent bottles of Testors paint, a Slurpee and some candy and coming home again to start building.....

I remember asking my mom for extra money when she asked me to ride my bike down to the store to buy her cigarettes so I could buy a model when I was down there....

I remember sitting side-by-side next to my friend Emmanuel in his room building and painted our two most recent acquisitions and talking about how we were gonna kick butt in the next War Game with our newest additions to our forces....

I remember the thrill of our fifth (war game) campaign, seeing Jason's shock as my Army that I'd been secretly building totally 'destroyed' his Army before he knew what had happened...

I think I've remembered enough for now.....

I also remember painting coat after coat after coat of spraypaint.

I remember my grandfather bringing me my first ship kit for my birthday, a Revell Fletcher, as the USS Radford I think. He served aboard the USS Cushing (DD-797) in WW2, and we spent days building it. I was coming unglued (no pun intended) because I wanted to play with it, but he had other intentions. It ended up on a bookshelf in his study. Cancer took him 5 months later. I never found out what happened to that model. I have one in the collection but just can't bring myself to build it.

I remember only building the Monogram kits that were equipped to work with the 'Flightstick', only to find that I couldn't get the Flightstick itself. I still have the SBD and F4F in their original shrinkwrap, had them since about 1975.

I remember my Dad coming home from Vietnam in 1973 after his 3rd tour and taking my picture with my younger brother on the living room with all our models lined up in front of us. We were in our PJs (footie sleepers, blanket sleepers, Doctor Dentons, etc.) and I remember he was still in his Class As, since he'd just come home and brought a new Polaroid with him. Maybe someday I'll post that up and share. Then again...maybe not...I think I'll save that one for me (to quote Capt. Miller in S.P.R.).

I remember as a kid, just how big a 1/32 F-4 Phantom was...

Jeff

That is such an incredible set of memories Jeff. I am speechless.

I guess that's why I never stopped building...I've had a lot of hobbies, and still do...1:1 planes for awhile, WW2 reenacting, 1:1 military vehicles (M35 and M43 halftrack), skiing, music, hockey, shooting...although I still dabble in all but 1:1 planes and vehicles, model building is the one thing that's never slowed or waned.

Jeff

Ok, enough mushy stuff...

I remember trading a Reggie Jackson rookie card for a partially-built 1/32 Monogram Stug. (boy, was that a dumb move)

I remember stuffing a C6-5 rocket motor into a 1/32 scale F-104 and launching it off a makeshift ramp. (It didn't fly)

I remember cutting my brother's hair and gluing it to a pencil to make a paint brush (I got whupped for that one)

Jeff

Okay! I remember glueing rocks together to make bigger rocks!

Dan

I remember when battle damage came after the model was finished, not before.

I love trying to build nice models now, but there was something really great about just putting them together so I could play with them. What seam lines? Paint, what's that? And I still have most of the full decal sheets from when I was a kid - never used 'em. But I try to find a use for them now (20 years later), and sometimes they're even still good.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Jeff Herne I remember my grandfather bringing me my first ship kit for my birthday, a Revell Fletcher, as the USS Radford I think. He served aboard the USS Cushing (DD-797) in WW2, and we spent days building it. I was coming unglued (no pun intended) because I wanted to play with it, but he had other intentions. It ended up on a bookshelf in his study. Cancer took him 5 months later. I never found out what happened to that model. I have one in the collection but just can't bring myself to build it. I remember only building the Monogram kits that were equipped to work with the 'Flightstick', only to find that I couldn't get the Flightstick itself. I still have the SBD and F4F in their original shrinkwrap, had them since about 1975. I remember my Dad coming home from Vietnam in 1973 after his 3rd tour and taking my picture with my younger brother on the living room with all our models lined up in front of us. We were in our PJs (footie sleepers, blanket sleepers, Doctor Dentons, etc.) and I remember he was still in his Class As, since he'd just come home and brought a new Polaroid with him. Maybe someday I'll post that up and share. Then again...maybe not...I think I'll save that one for me (to quote Capt. Miller in S.P.R.). I remember as a kid, just how big a 1/32 F-4 Phantom was... Jeff

What's a "Flightstick?" I don't remember those.

I do remember the first model I ever built; summer of 1972, when I was ten. It was a car (I forget what kind) and it was the typical first model. Glue smears all over. Fingerprints in the paint, which appeared as if it had been poured on from the bottle, it was so thick. Misaligned wheels. Oh, and GLOSS black tires! I don't remember what ever happened to that model. The cats we had when I was a kid probably got it.

Jeff
No amount of money could ever but your memories

I remember when I was a kid building aircraft models, and it was important for the prop and wheels to spin.

Dave

Great topic! Brought back a lot of memories and made me laugh out loud a couple of times. (Careful, I am at work!)

I can remember using my dad's propane torch to heat up a metal wire to put bullet holes in a Dauntless dive bomber. Then learning that I could put real exhaust marks with the same flame. It was my first atempt at weathering and my last with the propane torch when pop saw the handy work.

Also remember dad installing a vent in the air conditioning duct in our basement so that I would not get too high on the glue fumes.

I remember one of dads razors to cut parts of the sprue and embedding it halfway into my thumb talk about a mess,

Or building a plane without painting it ,glue everywhere and thinking it was the best or even trying anything and not worrying how it would turn out

I remember when I fought with one of my best friends because he took the pilot figure out of a little box-scale (Revell?) P-51 my Mom had just bought me at the store. I just remembered this because I am about to build my son's first P-51 model, and I almost left the pilot out, until I remembered just how important it was to me back then.

I remember spending a week in the hospital for food poisoning, at probably age 5, and my Dad coming every day after work and building and painting a new model for me. I don't remember them all, but I remember an Aurora C-119 Flying Box Car, and a small F-4, that he painted in Vietnam camoflage colors for me, right there on my hospital bed. I played with those models for years. I wonder how he got away with all the fumes without getting in trouble with the nursing staff...

Brian B.

I can remember at 8 or 9 years of age collecting discarded pop bottles in the neighborhood, returning them to the drug store for the 2 cent deposit and walking out the proud owner of a 29 cent Frog or Revell 1/72nd scale aircraft. I'd build it that evening (with tube cement of course) brush paint it with 10 cent a bottle Testor's enamel and head out the next day to repeat the cycle. Now I have advanced modeler's syndrome, build maybe 6 or 7 kits a year, have a stash of 800+ unbuilt kits and probably enjoy the process a lot less than I did as a kid 45 years ago...

I remember when I just started building at age ten geting about six model tanks and building them in a two days now it takes me a year!

I remember when I did not have to dig out ten books to plan my next build and read reviews.

I remember when the only scale modeling magazine around was "Scale Modeler". Then, a couple of years later, I discovered "1001 New Model Airplane Ideas". I don't believe it lasted more than two or three years, though.

I remember gluing the canopy onto a Revell 1/48th Couger with tube glue. Several times, as it kept coming off. You could have used the inside for sand paper, it was so rough.

I remember standing in front of the hobby shop window on the way home from school, looking at the Revell Missouri in its little plastic case. The 40 mm gun gallery was slowly melting from the sun, and sliding towards the main deck.

I remember going to the hardware section of the 5 and 10 and buying half pint cans of paint for my AMT cars.

I remember when I couldn't pass English or Math but built beautiful balsa wood airplanes. Semper Fi, Mike