Your models from childhood/pre-internet days

[moffeaton]

Do you guys have pics of the stuff you made when you were younger? I love looking back and seeing how far I've come!

This was my first scratch build, from 1992 - I wince at how identifiable the Snowspeeder parts were. I also used a larger scale Yamato I found at a yard sale and bought it for the gun battery/conning tower shapes, so I guess I had good instincts - proud of my younger self (but also ooof - so Snowspeedery!):

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Jason Eaton » Blog Archive » Blasts from my past

I gotta check my mom's shoeboxes the next time I visit and see if she has pics of all my actual childhood models!

 

[Michael Bergeron]

Very neat to see where some of the modellers here "came from". :thumbsup

I've got a few of my old models hanging around. If I remember I'll snap a few pics.

 

[moffeaton]

I had so many models... I remember building a Mad Max truck being pulled by camels for some elaborate school project in middle school, and I know my parents took pictures. I need to dig up so much!!

 

[drrealartmd]

I had to replace all my childhood models due to my younger brother taking them and blowing them to bits with bb guns and firecrackers.:cry

 

[Wes R]

I wish i still had mine. Tons of Gundams, star trek, and star wars kits from the 90s when they were still in production. The one locally owned store was the best place to get the things. They'd have odds and ends. They've restocked but it's not the same now. I'd try cars and planes now and then but scifi was my favorite.

 

[b26354]

All scratchbuilt during 1983 - photographed in Jan 1984...

I still have them (click link below). Thinking of restoring the speederbike...
http://www.b26354.co.nz/oldmodels1/

 

[Martimous]

Interestingly enough, for the most part, I've been able to get a MISB version of all the models I had when I was a kid. Even ones made by "no longer extant" makers like Jo-Han and Hawk. Wish I had pictures of the ones I had....

 

[Blackbirdcd]

I had a tendency to build, but not paint my models. So many of them were just the base plastic with decals. I remember turning the corner with the 1/48 Revell First Men on the Moon kit, and did what I thought was a knockout job on the LEM. But it fell off my desk and re-kitted itself.

 

[Southern OR]

I didn't paint a lot of my older models as well. My 2 favorites I did got destroyed so all I have are memories. :angry The first was a kit based maquis raider and the second was the large Defiant. I did paint the defiant and convert it for lights. I had limited resources when I was 12 so it was lit with xmas lights and "gelled" with colored paper. I also did old iron sides when I was really young. So young I couldn't have an exacto knife and it shows young.

 

[JMChladek]

I've got some models from my pre-internet days. The first one is a Takara 1/400 Crusher Joe Minerva ship that I built in 1990. It was the first time I used an airbrush for a major project and it won a few awards, including my first Wonderfest bronze in 1998. Its paintjob still looks nice and pristine with no yellowing. I also have a Monogram starship Voyager that is showing serious signs of yellowing and an 18" TOS Enterprise that I used the old Shane Johnson decal sheet on which looks reasonably good, even if the warp pylons have gone a bit floppy on it.

There's also a 1701-D AMT/Ertl Enterprise that I have hanging from the ceiling at a local hobby shop, although I may claim it here pretty soon in order to recycle some parts off of it since the paintjob is looking a bit ratty.

 

[LMFAOSchwarz]

I have just got to get a picture or two of the tie fighter I built in 1978, all referenced from magazine photographs! I have one old friend who still has his from those days.

 

[Zombie_61]

I wish I still had many of the kits I had when I was a young modeler. I started building models in 1969; my first kit was Aurora's The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré (the Fright'ning Lightning version), and eventually had most of Aurora's horror/monster figure kits, Monogram's Tom Daniel kits like the Tijuana Taxi, Rommel's Rod, and Ghost of the Red Baron, all of MPC's Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion kits, several AMT Star Trek kits, Monogram's Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel kit, various other car kits like the Batmobile, Munster Koach and Drag-U-La, and a number of other kits I've long forgotten about--all of which were original issues.

Then came what I call "The Purge of 1981". I was packing up all of my personal belongings in preparation for my upcoming marriage, and when I got to my models I took a long look at them and thought, "She's not gonna want all of this junk in our apartment," and proceeded to fill five 55-gallon-drum-sized trash cans with them. The kicker is, as we were setting up our first apartment my new bride walked into the living room and said, "Okay, I've got the extra bedroom set up. Where are all of your models?" She had deliberately dedicated two full bookshelves for displaying the models I'd built over the previous 12 years. :facepalm :cry

I did keep 2 or 3 of them for reasons I can't recall now, but they're currently in a box somewhere in our garage.

 

[LMFAOSchwarz]

Then came what I call "The Purge of 1981". I was packing up all of my personal belongings in preparation for my upcoming marriage, and when I got to my models I took a long look at them and thought, "She's not gonna want all of this junk in our apartment,"

I wonder if that might have had anything to do with Aurora's morbid fascination with "girl victims"? :lol
Funny, how the ladies never seem to "get" our interests. :unsure

 

[Zombie_61]

Funny, how the ladies never seem to "get" our interests. :unsure

Actually, my wife has been very supportive of my interest in building models from day one. And, as I stated above, she deliberately set aside space for me to display my built kits, not realizing I had thrown them in the garbage; it was my own foolish idea to do that. In fact, she actually got a little angry with me when I told her what I had done, then felt bad because she felt she was somehow responsible for the loss of my "treasures" even though she'd never given me any indication that she didn't like them or didn't want them in our new home.

 

[Michael Bergeron]

Put me down as having an incredibly supportive wife as well. :thumbsup

Even to the point that when we were dating she built a couple so she could hang out with me while I was doing them.

 

[Martimous]

Michael:
Wow, does she have a free unattached sister?

 

[Michael Bergeron]

Michael:
Wow, does she have a free unattached sister?

Sorry, she does have a sister but she's happily married. :lol

 

[Jaitea]

This all sounds great, my lovely wife mocked my 'playing with toys' hobby, before I met her I made & did a bit of commissioned work, I used to have the spare room to use as a hobby room, but with constant nagging, it tainted my enjoyment of the craft.

Six years ago my hobby completely ended with the birth of our second child, I moved most of my stuff to the shed, in which there is no room to work. The rest was boxed up & put in the attic.

Two years ago my wife & I split, me getting full custody of my 13 year old son & we split the care 50-50 with my daughter....so basically I have 3/4 of the kids.....but I've never been as absorbed in the hobby as I am now.

That cheered you all up, didn't it........


.....I'm going to post some images of my older stuff tonight

John

 

[Zombie_61]

Put me down as having an incredibly supportive wife as well. :thumbsup

Even to the point that when we were dating she built a couple so she could hang out with me while I was doing them.

That reminds me. Several years ago while I was browsing the model selection in one of the not-so-local hobby shops, my wife found the reissued Monogram Roarin' Rail kit (designed by Tom Daniel) on the shelf.

She's always liked dragsters and funny cars, so I was only half surprised when she approached me with the kit in-hand and asked if I thought it would be easy to build, and if I'd show her how. :love It's still sitting in the "waiting to be built" pile, but one of these days...

 

[Wes R]

My dad used to love to build the reissues of the Weird-Ohs model kits from the 60s as he was always a Big Daddy Roth fan. We have a few still and i wish i'd gotten them a few months ago when a new reissue run was done for 7.99 each.