Old Plastic Models. Is it worth building?

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[thehobgoblin]

I loved the figurines, One of the best ways to learn how to paint flesh and fabric.

[stevecausey]

I love building old kits.
With modern glues and supplies they can really be trophies!

[sholtham]

I find it a real pleasure to build an old kit, usually after I've spent ages building and detailing a more complicated model.

[charlie]

They were made to be built. I hate seeing them on a shelf like a trophy

[bougeac]

Great clip, the Roy Cross artwork made me part with a lot of my pocket money as a child and STILL does today! Subscribed!

[tonyrobinson]

Aurora monsters with luminous parts the 70s were good times.

[kevinnorthfield]

Two reasons to build, one is the nostalgia and secondly to hone modelling skills.

[gunner]

I built Ann Boleyn for my mother for mothering sunday back in the 70s and she loved it. Pretty certain it is still in the display cupboard and it still looks good. Blue dress 😊

[willowtree]

It's fun building a 20 piece kit from the 60s. Now you get 20 pieces just for one component, like the engine, lol. Also, a good paint job makes it look great, despite it being old.

[JanivarNorbeck]

Many thanks 😊.I totally agree.Building is about having fun and as i am older nostalgia.

[markstainton]

Making up an old kit that was never designed to be built to a high standard, and producing a well presented model is very satisfying.

[maxsmodels]

You just gave me an idea for my next livestream. WHat old kits should be built vs saved. Also Roy Cross boxart vs. Jack Leynnwood boxart.

[davegoldsmith]

In 1970 I worked in the Hannants model shop in Lowestoft. I remember these kits well, I remember the little slip in the Airfix kits to send off when things go wrong, which was often with badly formed parts.

[maxipluszwei]

Nowadays I almost exclusively build ancient kits, the older - the better. I really enjoy the nostalgia and the challenge of making a kit of limited quality look as good as possible just with a careful and intricate paintjob. Another reason is just to "stand out". I see so many perfectly built new kits online and in club meetings or exhibitions that it gets a bit boring and I don´t want to add to this. Two years ago I finished the Airfix Sunderland from 1958 and won our yearly club contest with it, that´s my proudest achievement. 😁

[jimplaysric]

I started building models again in 2020, in the lockdown period. I can only think of a few kits from the 70s or 80s that I decided I wouldn't bother with at all, because of inaccuracy, including a 1:72 Revell Spitfire or the old MPC/Airfix Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter. The gatekeeping in the hobby now is at a very high level, and modelers seemingly feel like they have to dig 100 meters deep into their pockets for all manner of convenience products for weathering, etc. I'm not doing it to compete with anybody, or win prizes, I'm thinking of myself as big brother to 8 year old me that was gifted my first kit in 1975, and I'm trying to do builds that would have impressed the younger version of me.

[andyb]

I think it depends on the type of modeler you are as to whether or not something is worth building. Some modelers don’t like high parts counts, so if you pick up some Dragon tank that has 3 or 4 parts per track link, you might easily look at it and put it to the back of the queue if you can’t find some one piece tracks online. On the other hand, if you are great at assembling and painting but don’t really do scratch building, I can see such a person buying Tamiya’s Panther Ausf A, looking at it, and putting it to the back of the queue, never to be completed. For me, if something has the basic shape right and the fit is not preposterous bad, it is worth building. I have a whole box of styrene sheets, so I can probably fix anything. Tamiya’s Panther Ausf A, is objectively quite poor, but I had a blast building it, and it looks quite handsome in my display cabinet. Regarding box art, I don’t really care about it much. From this video, I gather that a photo of the completed kit would be deemed as uninspiring, but for me, I always liked kit photos because I could get a sense of the kit before purchase. There is no right or wrong answer. The key is to figure out what you most enjoy about building and try and find kits that mesh best with that.

[wkelly]

The old Aurora X-15 kit looked very unlike the real X-15, but it had a huge ‘cool factor’, like the mystique of a company trying to push out top secret information through protected back door sources, etc. Yet, even after the real X-15 became known, Aurora continued to market the same inaccurate mold, paired with a more accurate box art. The fact that Aurora did not try to revamp the mold almost made it more special. I got it as a kid. I was a little surprised the model didn’t look like the box art, but I didn’t care. I loved it, and I’d still build that kit if I had one.

[vaughanlockett]

Thanks for covering this topic. I like so many others made model kits in our youth 70s 80s and 60s kits were also available.
I stopped making kits around 16 -17 as other interests, education, jobs, family, sports extra. Just stopped me from making time.
Now i am approaching my 60s and have started building again. And o boy has the hobby changed .
However i picked up the Airfix Hercules kit and thoughly enjoyed the build it's a simple kit but enough of a challenge.
And has plenty of scope for improvement a great subject and not many companies covering early civil air transport.

[PanzermansBunker]

Cool video....and a trip down nostalgia lane. Hahaha 😆. A tough kit see it as a challenge and a way to improve my skills.
Thanks.
Bill

[jan-eric-schacht]

I like the Matchbox kits. Also Heller Cadett. When I was young, I regularly bought them in our local supermarket as some kind of starter kit with two paint bins, glue and a brush. Almost all my pocket money went into this.
Unfortunately now, supermarkets don't have kits any more.
Greetings from Germany