Hertiage Kits

[F27pax]

I was looking at the page about newly arrived modelling bits and pieces and thinking on how much the industry has changed since I made my first Airfix kit in 1959. This reminded me that I’ve been picking up the odd old kit when I’ve come across it at a swap and sell and putting them in a box called ‘Heritage Kits’. I thought it might be interesting to share some of them with you, especially those who have long modelling memories too.

Perhaps others here have old and treasured kits that they'd like to share too.

Here’s the first kit I ever received, at Christmas in 1959. I was 9 at the time. (I remembered it as 1958 but since Scalemates tells me this kit was released in 1959 my memory - never good at the best of times - must be wrong.) I thought it was amazing! It probably took me half an hour to put together and it was not until a year or two later that I discovered that you could paint them too.





Here are two that I bought in the following couple of years, at 8/- each as I recall. This version of the Beaufighter kit was released in 1958 but I would have bought it a few years later. I can’t find this Messerchmitt Bf110 in Scalemates but I guess it was released around the same time. Neither has any cockpit detail, which is very obvious in the Messerchmitt.









This is the oldest kit that I have, released by Frog in 1955. I probably made this around 1960 and even then I knew that having only a pilot head for the cockpit was old fashioned. It was also a challenged for a 12 year old to paint realistically. There are three things in this kit you don’t see in kits often these days: a little tube of glue, a lead weight for the nose so the kit isn’t a tail sitter and a display stand almost as big as the model.









This kit of the Boeing 727-100 is, I think, unique to Australia and I can’t find it in Scalemates. My memory tells me that it was available from Caltex petrol stations for a couple of shillings but if your father didn’t stop at one or there wasn’t one in your town, you couldn’t get one. I think this is the original Revell Boeing 727-100 kit which was first published in 1964 and that is probably about the time this Australian kit was released because 727s first flew in Australia that year. I wasn’t able to get one of these at that time but picked this one up at a recent swap and sell for only a few dollars.







Like most youngsters, I found other interesting things to do for a few years and then rediscovered modelling. It was the new release Airfix M551 Sheridan tank that sparked my interest but it is this Matchbox Armstrong Whitworth Siskin IIIA that really recaptured my interest. This kit was released in 1974 and I reckon I probably made it that year of in early 1975. The end result was so gorgeous that it tempted me into more of those prewar RAF kits that Matchbox did, the Hawker Fury and Gloster Gladiator I, and it’s been downhill ever since. Mainly through being forgotten and tucked away I still have the model too.







In the early 1960s Airfix introduced it’s ‘Skyking’ series of airliners in the then novel scale of 1/144. As I recall it, the first two in the range were the Comet and the Caravelle. Both lovely little kits. This kit is the only one of this set that I bought new, probably in the late 1970s. The only reason it didn’t get made then was because it would be many years yet before I would be confident enough in my skills with gloss white and metalic paints that I would attempt something like this. By the time I had mastered them, there were more recent releases so I kept this one because it looked so nice in its original little box.





I’ve never made this Marusan Shinden-Kai and was given it only recently. Scalemates dates this as being released in 1961 which sounds about right because it must have been in the early 1960s that the earliest Japanese kits started appearing here, many of them in the odd scale of 1/100, 1/75 and 1/50. Perhaps the Japanese kit makers were trying to tell us something. It is quite a competent little kit for its day, but not something you’d make today.





This new mould Airfix Lightning F.6 is not very heritage but it found its way into my Heritage Box because of what I found inside. I must have bought thousands of kits over the years but this was the first one that I found with this moulding imperfection.





Does anyone else have similar found memories?

[Twokidsnosleep]

This is a good posting as many of us are re-visiting modelling as an adult so have childhood modelling memories

Your kits go back a bit further than mine..child of the seventies in Canada so mostly Revell, AMT Monogram kits. Can you actually have found memories of those crappy things?? Then I wised up and got into Tamiya, especially their F1 cars
I have been re-visiting my childhood by buying that era of F1 kits again
Also have a few of the old 1/32 Revell aircraft series and will edit some pics up for you

[Tomcat64]

Here's one of mine that I remember building when I was about 10 when it first came out in 1975 and I still recall being blown away by the fact that the wings were actually swingable I picked this one up in an outbreak of nostalgia when I came back to the hobby a few years back - will it ever get built - I don't know...


This second one was donated by my younger brother as we both built the Matchbox kits growing up - that being said although it's in a Matchbox box this is actually a 1998 Revell reissue but the moulds are still from the 1976 original. This one is definitely on the to-build list and I just realised it's got a bomb-bay so might have been eligible for a Bomber SiG... oooops!

[barrythornton]

Good stuff. Just about remember that kits were bagged before boxes came out.
Is that a condom of polystyrene cement in that Sea Hawk ? That, I dont remember

[Kevthemodeller]

Here's one of mine that I remember building when I was about 10 when it first came out in 1975 and I still recall being blown away by the fact that the wings were actually swingable I picked this one up in an outbreak of nostalgia when I came back to the hobby a few years back - will it ever get built - I don't know...

You and me both mate I thought this was the best Airfix kit I ever had. Closely followed by the MKVb spitfire, F80 Shooting Star and the Skyrider all where about the same time, these were a real game changer for Airfix at the time so much better then what came before.

[Nev]

God I remember those glue sacs?? Is that what you call them!? You never had enough cement in them to build the kit

[Novasquad23]

This is a rebox of four old Airfix kits. I built the Blenheim and the Hurricane back in the early seventies. Building the Battle for the Bomber SIG has brought back many memories, mostly positive, but the glass was pretty abominable.
.
As far as the glue capsule goes, I recall using them on a couple of Fouga Magister's and a Nord Noratlas and there was more than enough glue for young fingers to spread on the model surfaces.

Whilst nostalgia is fun sometimes, I do wish that manufacturers would give some indication of the date of their tooling. The VC Icon box is a case in point. None of these kits are the recently new tooled versions. The Hampden for example dates from the early sixties and the Blenheim looks just as diabolical to make as it did fortyfive odd years ago.

That said, I've got several old airfix kits in the stash dating from the mid-seventies (Boston, Invader) through to the Heller era (Mosquito, Ka-25, MiL-24). Why? Because I can just build without getting bogged down in complex sub-assemblies. Oh, and yeah, nostalgia.