"Messerchmitts are Purple"
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I seem to have hit a nerve at the NorthWest Scale Modelers display.
Every February, we set up our models in the Museum of Flight’s Main
Gallery, with the sinister SR-71 hovering overhead. This year, with a
theme of “Model Citizens”, and an invitation to arrange our
creations however it pleased our quirky individual personalities, I decided
to put out my ‘faux’ Aurora Famous WWII Fighters.
My career in plastic airplane modeling spans two definite epochs: teens,
and …ah, um… ‘maturity’. In between: the Dark
Ages (phrase stolen from our Lego-building friends-and-relations). That’s
when you finish school and pack up your toys…leaving them for Mother
to throw out or give to the Salvation Army…and venture off to independence,
college, career, marriage, mortgage… You know: Pillar of the Community-type
solid citizenship, with no time for childhood frivolities.
But some of us come to our senses at last, and return to our first love
of plastic modeling. In the two clubs I belong to, the NWSMs and the Seattle
Chapter of IPMS, few members claim to have modeled continuously since
childhood. Most admit to coming back after long absences.
My own early efforts included Aurora WW2 “Famous Fighters”,
gifts from Christmas or my birthday: a Focke-Wulf 190, a “Japanese
Zero”, a “British Spitfire”. My Aurora catalog showed
the Messerschmitt 109, too, next on my gift wish list, when my modeling
career took a turn into the “Airfix/72” Series.
But even in ‘modern’ times (I emerged from the Dark Ages
in ’97), the Aurora kit influence persists. While working on a Turkish
190, a little voice in my head cried “Focke-Wulfs are black!”
An attempt to build the Hasegawa A6M2 had me hearing “Zeros are
yellow!” It didn’t matter how many well-researched, clearly
printed, full-color books and magazines were laid out on the work table
before me…the voice could not be suppressed: “Spitfires are
metallic silver-blue!” “Messershmitts are purple!”
See how psychological damage can persist for nearly fifty years? Finally
I realized that if I were ever going to be free to concentrate on accurate
modeling, I’d have to exorcise this demon. So I devised my own psychotherapeutic
course of treatment: build four kits, painted the way I remembered the
old Aurora series.
Not that I went out to find and buy actual “Famous Fighter”
kits. Can you believe what they go for on eBay these days?!
No: it was much more economical to gather four equivalent Monogram kits.
Funny: they’re not that much more recent, dating from the early
60s instead of the 50s. Yet they’re light-years ahead of the Auroras
in faithfulness to scale and quality of detail. (Yes, I know: the canopies
are too thick, the rivets too prominent, and worst of all, they’ve
got raised panel lines!) But although they’re so much better, they
go for only a few dollars apiece at model swap meets and contests.
Did I just say “only a few dollars apiece”?! Way back when,
the whole reason I settled for Aurora kits was that they were only seventy-nine
cents, whereas the new Monogram series were a dollar!
Oh, well. I spent the “few dollars apiece”, assembled the
parts, then fired up my airbrush…
Was that really me again? Airbrush? Paint the whole model? “Focke-Wulfs
are black”, etc., because those are the colors the kits were molded
in. Who painted whole models?!
Apparently, no one who can remember back that far. Hundreds of visitors
wandered through the Museum of Flight display, many just idle observers,
but mixed in among them, many former modelers. These would look up from
the masterful work of my colleagues, catch a glimpse of my display’s
signage, and wander over to examine it with a nod and a slightly strained
smile. Watching them, it was clear that it isn’t just me who remembers
what modeling was like way back then. Perhaps my self-imposed therapy
will serve an additional purpose: bringing a few more modelers back into
our ranks again from their own Dark Ages!
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