Before There Was Lead, There Was Plastic

Wait, what? That makes no sense. Well, it does when we are talking about what I did BEFORE I started collecting lead miniatures. And that was building plastic model kits! I loved building WWII models of all types and scales, although I seemed to prefer 1/72 tanks and 1/72 and 1/48 airplanes.

My mom brought over an old picture (my kingdom for a scanner!) that showed a wall of new kits I received one fabulous Christmas from days gone by. It really brought back great memories of time spent huddled over my workbench, poring over instructions, and trying my best to stick together all the right parts with the heady scent of Testors plastic cement filling the air. Good times!

There were three Revell kits and three Monogram kits in said picture, and they are as follows:

1/72 Revell Nieuport 28 (Collector's Choice)
1/72 Revell Focke Wolf 190A (Collector's Choice)
1/32 Revell Ju 87B Stuka (H-298:300)
1/48 Monogram P-38 Lightning (6848)
1/48 Monogram TBD-1 Devastator (7575)
1/48 Monogram B-26 Invader (6818)

The Collector's Choice kits let you build an airplane in one of three different schemes. MPC also did the same with their Profile Series, if I recall correctly. The Monogram kits were all big, solid, excellent models. I can still picture the gloss yellow enamel paint on the folding (?) wings of the Devastator. And the Stuka...it was huge! It had to be one of my first 1/32 kits. The massive snake decal on the side of the fuselage really set it apart from just about anything I recall building.

Sadly, most of my models fell into disrepair (after literally falling - I used to hang some of them from my ceiling, with varying degree of success) and were sent to the battlefield. The battlefield was around the exterior perimeter of the house, where famous battles were re-created, complete with special effects. OK, so I was limited to firecrackers and gasoline, but it was enough to blow apart and melt hours and hours of work in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. My parents would unearth bits of plastic or blobs of melted plastic in the years after I stopped the carnage. Fun 'til the very end, I guess.

Makes me want to go out and buy a bunch of Tamiya 1/35 tanks! I would, but I have too much lead to paint...