I grew up building models, and kept buying them even after I had no time to build them. I no longer have the ones I built, but I have boxes of models that I’ve bought over the last 30 years that are waiting to be built. Alas, I have no time for this hobby. Even if I had the time, I don’t have the space to display them.
I have plastic planes and plastic ships and balsa-and-cardboard Estes rockets and Guillow’s balsa flying models, and one resin kit of the Orion spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’d love to build them all and display them. But out of them all, these are the ones I really would like to build and display:
I have a couple of RC plane kits sitting around, not really good stuff though. I had a visible V6 model and a Corvette and Mustang models that sat around so long I gave them to a friend who promptly built them, and the same with an RC truck. There are a whole bunch of non-model projects sitting around unfinished. Every 10 or 20 years I go through them, throw away or disassemble some, get interested in the others and keep them on the list for the next 10 or 20 years. Maybe one gets completed. I’ve realized if I don’t finish something in less than a year then I’m not really that interested and it will never get completed. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy getting it started, and if I have enough space I’d never throw anything away.
I have a Saturn V sitting here; I desperately wanted one as a kid and I’m almost as happy having the kit as I am having it built. (I also have a Gulf lunar lander - still an unbroken sheet of die-cut. I built dozens as a kid, as a friendly Gulf station was just down the street.)
Still have about half a dozen incomplete F1 cars from the 1970s, mostly Mamiya. I never did get a six-wheeled ELF because my buddy bought the only one I ever saw on the shelf.
I built balsa models as a kid, lots of fun at the time, but the little gas engines were problematic. I’m more interested in copters and spent plenty of time on earlier RC models, building them, then repairing them after employing my awful flying skills. My first electric was so fragile it needed repairs after every flight. Now I have several cheaper electric choppers that keep me amused, and they’re quite a bit tougher and more stable. Starting an original helicopter design has been intriquing me lately, hopely I’ll find some time to get started on it so I can put it on the shelf for the next 10 or 20 years.
I have these two at home, waiting for the right time to have the time. I buit the first one when I was a kid in the 1970’s, and I’m a bit dismayed that it’s not quite the same kit, but looking forward to it none-the-less.
Lots of cars, including several JoHan Turbine Cars, a spectacular kit, and a lovely little 1/32 Mercedes Gullwing by Bandai that my dad bought for me many years ago.
And lots of figure kits; a bunch of styrene (Moebius Creature & Girl; Moebius Dracula (both with and without girl); Bachmann Bowlers, Little League, and Gone Fishin’; a large number of ToyBiz Storm kits (great basis for re-posing); and a couple Auroras) and resin (mostly girl kits, including a great Zombie Queen kit from Greece).
During a brief resurgence of interest in WWII wargaming bought a box of poorly built Airfix tanks from some guy which were going to be stripped back and clever things done with.
Also bought a model of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, but in the form of a rectangle of cardboard cut into 1000 pieces. What on earth was I thinking! There are something like 800 bits of colour on each piece. Just doing the edge took me nearly a month to the exclusion of all else. By the end of a year I had 5 - yes 5 - non-edge pieces joined. Well, 4 and a maybe.
I have 1/24 scale kits of the SR-71 and YF-12A aircraft. I guess if I came across an A-12 and an M-21 I’d build them all at once so you could see the differences between the planes. Of course then I’d have to build the mutant variants of them.
Speaking of which, does anyone remember those aircraft models from the early-'70s (probably existed in the late-'60s) that had extra parts so you could build a ‘battle damaged’ version?
I have a starship Enterprise (original, no bloody A,B,C or D) model that has been kicking around my closet for about 5 years now. Every time I take it out to sit down and put it together I’m either out of paint or glue. So it gets put away again and forgotten about until I remember I have it, then I realize I’m short on supplies and the cycle repeats itself again.
I have an old AMT USS Enterprise that I picked up at a yard sale. I’d built an identical one as a kid but it’s lost in a box in my basement somewhere. I may never build this second ship, as I just like looking it over and handling the pieces.
I have a 1/48 scale AC-130 gunship sitting in my Mom’s basement. It’s been there almost 30 years and the chances it will ever be assembled are practically zero. I should call my mom and see if it’s still there or if she’s thrown it out.
I’m going to have to find a 1/350 CVN-65. That was my ship when I was in the Navy and seeing the pictures of her being demolished have been heartbreaking.
A friend of the family was Ordnance Officer when I was a kid. He gave me the ship’s patch,which still said CVAN-65; and patches for VF-1, VF-2, and VA-196.
Tamiya 1:350 scale USS Enterprise CVN-65 on Amazon. Note that the Tamiya model has the new superstructure. There was another 1:350 scale model that was considerably cheaper – it may have been by Aurora and cost $10 or $20 at the time, but I don’t remember – that had the older, conical part on the superstructure.
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