Post by phil82 on Sept 16, 2006 10:41:08 GMT 12
;D As some of the none-too-subtle yoofs on this site are inclined to remind me, I have a longer memory than most! Which is one way of putting it!
I can remember , for example, when I made aircraft models as a kid, they were usually balsa wood covered in paper which actually flew once or twice beore you became over-ambitious and launched them into a wind which spun them around before shattering them on the ground. I once destroyed a balsa and paper Supermarine Attacker by launching it from my upstairs bedroom window with a lit penny banger attached. The resulting explosion was catastrophic, and this was years before laser guided missiles!
I am currently reading the latest Bill Bryson book "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", namely his childhood, and it's hilarious and so very true. He has this to say about some of those awful early plastic kits, like Frog!
" The illustrations on the boxes always portrayed beautifully detailed fighters with red and yellow flame spitting from their wings, and in the background, there was always a Messerscmitt spiralling down with a dismayed looking German in the cockpit.
The kits were somewhat less than the picture on the box, and the contents turned out to be of a unifrom olive green colour consisting of sixty thousand tiny parts all attached to plastic. There was a tube of glue which was huge, and no matter how gently you squeezed it, you got a pint or two of clear glue over your bits when what you wanted was a single drop. This glue stuck to everything except, sometimes, the bits of the model you wanted it to stick to, and you couldn't get it off . The result was that you often ended up with one wing on upside down, and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his head to the cockpit . Happily, by this time you were so high on the glue that that you didn't give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else"
Boy, that is so true!
I can remember , for example, when I made aircraft models as a kid, they were usually balsa wood covered in paper which actually flew once or twice beore you became over-ambitious and launched them into a wind which spun them around before shattering them on the ground. I once destroyed a balsa and paper Supermarine Attacker by launching it from my upstairs bedroom window with a lit penny banger attached. The resulting explosion was catastrophic, and this was years before laser guided missiles!
I am currently reading the latest Bill Bryson book "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", namely his childhood, and it's hilarious and so very true. He has this to say about some of those awful early plastic kits, like Frog!
" The illustrations on the boxes always portrayed beautifully detailed fighters with red and yellow flame spitting from their wings, and in the background, there was always a Messerscmitt spiralling down with a dismayed looking German in the cockpit.
The kits were somewhat less than the picture on the box, and the contents turned out to be of a unifrom olive green colour consisting of sixty thousand tiny parts all attached to plastic. There was a tube of glue which was huge, and no matter how gently you squeezed it, you got a pint or two of clear glue over your bits when what you wanted was a single drop. This glue stuck to everything except, sometimes, the bits of the model you wanted it to stick to, and you couldn't get it off . The result was that you often ended up with one wing on upside down, and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his head to the cockpit . Happily, by this time you were so high on the glue that that you didn't give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else"
Boy, that is so true!
