Mid-Life Modelling
Crisis? (or, A Not-So-Brief History of Me,
Vol. 1)
Writing up my '67
Camaro Z28 article recently re-awakened my thoughts
about just how long I've been doing this modelling thing,
and how my attitudes towards it have evolved (or devolved)
in that time. I guess what really brought on this latest
wave of nostalgia was the realization that it has been
at least 25 years since I built a car model. 25 years!
A quarter of a freakin' century!! It doesn't seem like
all that long ago that I was 25 years old,
never mind sticking bits of plastic together for that
amount of time.
Now, I don't really think I'm having a mid-life crisis
here. Though I'm not sure at what age it's supposed to
happen, if at all, I can at least say I don't have an
urge to rush out and buy a Porsche, get my hair highlighted
or date a woman half my age.
But I do seem to be doing a lot of self-appraisal these
days regarding this hobby which has all but obsessed me
since I were a wee lad. Perhaps it was my recent move
that really began this line of thought and the shocking
realization of just how many unbuilt kits I have accumulated
over the years. I mean, I knew it was a lot, but until
I had them all together in one gargantuan pile waiting
to be packed and moved, I didn't know just how bad it
was. It's a lot. It's a roomful in fact. And I'm finding
that a bit disturbing to be honest.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this or what
my point is so I hope you won't be disappointed if you
get to the end (if you haven't nodded off by then!) and
find that there isn't a point. That's an entirely possible
outcome I'm afraid, so feel free to jet on over to eBay
at this point to eye up your next must-have kit. I know
I will.
I would have
got away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kits
Like many modellers I'm sure, it was my dad who introduced
me to the world of plastic models. His unbuilt collection
consisted of one kit, a Lindberg Line Curtiss Goshawk,
but it was that box of models he'd built in England and
had shipped to the wilds of Canada that fascinated me.
The majority was odd scale stuff, though I had no concept
of scale at the time of course. A DC-3, a Ford Tri-Motor,
a B-58 Hustler, a Curtiss Condor on floats, a larger Laird-Turner
racer in bright blue plastic with moving control surfaces,
and a Gee Bee with its black painted solid canopy, made
back in the days when clear plastic wasn't an option.
I still have that Gee Bee, the white paint having long
ago turned into a dark cream colour and the red paint
flaking off the cowling to reveal the silver plastic underneath.
It is, I believe, the old Hawk 1/4" scale kit, but
I didn't know that then, nor did I care.
The first kit I remember him buying specifically for me
to build when I was, I think, about 5 or 6 years old,
was a Frog Boston, moulded in an insipid Pea Green plastic.
Alas, it was badly warped and way beyond my capabilities,
so he bravely built it for me. The next one (why do I
feel like I should be lying on a leather couch right about
now?) was a much wiser choice. It was, if I remember correctly,
a small and very simple Russian airliner kit (and I a
small and very simple child); having since found an example,
I'm fairly certain it was an odd-scale Lindberg Line Tu-104.
I built it with no help from the studio audience or any
parental types, and I built it very quickly and very poorly
as you might expect a 5 or 6 year old to. I'm sure its
life span was extremely short thereafter. Painting and
detailing was not a factor, realism was not in my vocabulary.
It wasn't a patch on the airplanes dad was turning out,
but I enjoyed every minute of it anyway, and it was the
start of a life long fascination.
A year or two down the road, I have fond memories of my
"Uncle" Lou, who would always have a kit stashed
away for me whenever we went to visit, and I went home
with a Hawk Plated Lysander or that cool Monogram Tri-Pacer
with the opening doors and detailed engine tucked under
my arm. I found out in later years that Lou was not my
uncle at all but just a family friend, a tradition I wish
my parents had never perpetuated because it left me extremely
confused about the whole aunt/uncle thing for a good long
while. Turns out I had far fewer relatives than I had
previously thought. But I digress.
By this time I had discovered the wonderful world of model
paints, silver and black specifically because that was
pretty much all you needed for the wheels, engines and
propellors, the rest being left in whatever garish plastic
came out of the box. And that was part of the excitement
too, opening that box up to see what colour plastic was
in there. Wonderfully lurid colours like bright orange,
red, yellow, blue, that hideous turquoise that Hawk seemed
to favour, or those fantastic Matchbox kits - two lurid
colours in one box! If aircraft kits had been moulded
in that same boring nondescript gray we get these days
I wonder if it would have dampened my enthusiasm somewhat?
Quite possibly.
Of course, aircraft weren't the only things I built, though
they were always my first love. Cars, tanks, the occasional
ship, and those great horror kits from Aurora. Man, they
were a blast, and they had glow-in-the-dark bits too -
it just didn't get any cooler than that!! And by now I
had added different colours of paint to my repertoire,
and even started to experiment with camouflage, my initial
attempt being a marvelous gloss brown and orange(!) small
scale B-52. Call it a personal renaissance if you will,
but that was a bit of a revelation to me. Like that scene
in 2001 (sans imposing black obelisk) where our ancestors
discovered they could bash each others' skulls in, suddenly
I could branch out from the plastic colour dictated by
the model companies and finish them in a more realistic
fashion. Realistic in a gloss orange and brown kind of
way at least. I actually started paying attention to the
painting & marking instructions and tried to finish
the kit the way it was "supposed" to be, within
the limits of my meagre paint collection and talent, or
lack thereof. No more of this picking and choosing the
best looking decals (or better yet, just sticking them
all on!), from now on I was going to follow the instructions.
Was that the turning point? Was that where they stopped
being toys and I started being "a modeller"??
Probably not, but it's as good a place as any to place
the blame.
Unleash
The Monster
From this point on the
evolution is easy to see. When I was twelve, dad bought
me my first airbrush, a single-action Badger 200, which
I still have and use. No more brush marks in my paint
jobs thank-you-very-much. In my teenage years I started
getting serious about this modelling thing. I began to
buy the magazines, the specialist tools, decals, glues
& paints. I researched my subjects to try and find
that different paint scheme, or a photo of the cockpit
so I could put something more realistic than Mr. Blobby
the pilot in there. I began to realize how short-lived
models were on the hobby shop shelves - that Aurora Gotha
that I really wanted last month but couldn't afford was
now gone, and before I could say "Damn, I really
wanted that Aurora Gotha", the company was gone too.
And that's when the hoarding mentality crept in. Buy it
now if you want it, then it'll always be there when you
want to build it. Problem is, I wanted them all, and I
wasn't putting them together in 20 minutes anymore. The
monster was born.
A few kits stashed in the closet in my late teens turned
into quite a few kits stashed in a couple of closets by
the time I started college. When I joined the Vancouver
chapter of IPMS Canada in 1988, the kit stash was now
taking up more room in my apartment than the major appliances,
and I discovered that not only was I not alone in my hoarding
habit, my collection actually paled in comparison to some
of the other club members'! Woo-hoo!! Justification to
buy more! Even better, they had swap meets and shows where
I could find all those long lost kits from my childhood
that I desperately had to have. To paraphrase the movie
"Hellraiser", my spending was legendary, even
in Hell!!
By the time the wife and I decided to move to England
in 1997, I had over 600 kits stashed away, and they were
beginning to feel like an Albatross around my neck. I
sold a good many before we left, but there were still
enough that I just couldn't part with to fill three large
trunks (and that's with all boxes broken down and kits
put into plastic bags), plus of course the accompanying
tools, books, magazines, decals and other assorted paraphernalia.
Oh, and the two boxes of models that I had actually built.
And when the wife decided she had had enough of marriage
4 years later, one of her parting comments has stuck with
me ever since: "When I look around at all these models,
I just see a down payment on a house". How could
I argue with that? She was, and is, absolutely right.
Where
does it all end?
So here I am, back in Canada, with a large section of
my basement dedicated to building models, and the storage
room next to me nicely insulated by a thick layer of unbuilt
kits. I stopped trying to count them so I have no idea
how many there are. And still I buy more! Ebay
is an Aladdin's Cave of plastic treasure. Limited run
kits (insidious marketing tool that one!) must be bought
before they disappear forever. New releases of subjects
I never thought I'd see and absolutely must have, or subjects
I never thought I was interested in until a shiny new
kit appeared. A particularly attractive set of decals
catches my eye, and then of course I have to buy the kit
that goes with them. A state-of-the-art offering to replace
that ancient Frog or Airfix kit that will now never get
built (a fate which probably awaits the replacement as
well). Model shows where the buying fever runs high, and
kits are snapped up because the price was right or the
one on display looked good. Of course, I then have to
buy the resin, photo etch, decals and research material
to go with them.
Will there come a point I wonder, when I can say "The
collection is complete, now I can concentrate on building"?
I somehow doubt it, and I can't help thinking that a good
many of the kits in my hoard came from estate sales; vast
personal hobby shops owned by folks just like me, full
of grand plans for each and every model. Alas, science
failed to find the secret of immortality they needed to
realize those plans.
Have I missed the point of the whole thing? Maybe it's
just having them that's important and it really doesn't
matter whether I build them or not. And even if I could
build them all, where would I put them? Kit boxes are
a lot more storage friendly than fragile built-up models.
Perhaps
I need a 12-Step group, or I need to start one. "Hi,
my name is Andy and I'm a kitaholic". "HI
ANDY!" "It's been three hours since my last
model purchase and I don't know if I can hold out any
longer. My wife left me, my cat was crushed by a stack
of Fujimi Spitfires, and I've sold both my kidneys to
pay for that 1/32nd scale Academy F-18. Please help me.
Oh, by the way, does anyone know when the new Revell Popemobile
kit will be released? I really must have one...."
Well, I was right. There wasn't a point to this. Sorry
about that. But I feel much better if that's any use to
you. Maybe I'll go get my hair highlighted.
No model
airplanes, cats, kidneys, or 12-Step groups were harmed
in the making of this article.
Like many modellers I'm sure, it was my dad who introduced
me to the world of plastic models. His unbuilt collection
consisted of one kit, a Lindberg Line Curtiss Goshawk,
but it was that box of models he'd built in England and
had shipped to the wilds of Canada that fascinated me.
The majority was odd scale stuff, though I had no concept
of scale at the time of course. A DC-3, a Ford Tri-Motor,
a B-58 Hustler, a Curtiss Condor on floats, a larger Laird-Turner
racer in bright blue plastic with moving control surfaces,
and a Gee Bee with its black painted solid canopy, made
back in the days when clear plastic wasn't an option.
I still have that Gee Bee, the white paint having long
ago turned into a dark cream colour and the red paint
flaking off the cowling to reveal the silver plastic underneath.
It is, I believe, the old Hawk 1/4" scale kit, but
I didn't know that then, nor did I care.
So here I am, back in Canada, with a large section of
my basement dedicated to building models, and the storage
room next to me nicely insulated by a thick layer of unbuilt
kits. I stopped trying to count them so I have no idea
how many there are. And still I buy more! Ebay
is an Aladdin's Cave of plastic treasure. Limited run
kits (insidious marketing tool that one!) must be bought
before they disappear forever. New releases of subjects
I never thought I'd see and absolutely must have, or subjects
I never thought I was interested in until a shiny new
kit appeared. A particularly attractive set of decals
catches my eye, and then of course I have to buy the kit
that goes with them. A state-of-the-art offering to replace
that ancient Frog or Airfix kit that will now never get
built (a fate which probably awaits the replacement as
well). Model shows where the buying fever runs high, and
kits are snapped up because the price was right or the
one on display looked good. Of course, I then have to
buy the resin, photo etch, decals and research material
to go with them.
Perhaps
I need a 12-Step group, or I need to start one. "Hi,
my name is Andy and I'm a kitaholic". "HI
ANDY!" "It's been three hours since my last
model purchase and I don't know if I can hold out any
longer. My wife left me, my cat was crushed by a stack
of Fujimi Spitfires, and I've sold both my kidneys to
pay for that 1/32nd scale Academy F-18. Please help me.
Oh, by the way, does anyone know when the new Revell Popemobile
kit will be released? I really must have one...."
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