Hi everyone - I am getting ready to move house at the moment, and I am going through all of my kits and packing them away into boxes (or, in many cases, pulling them out of half empty boxes and re-packing them).
Though I have quite a significant 'stash' of kits for building (something like 150 or so... yikes!), I also have been slowly picking up some of the kits I remember building as a child / teenager in the late 1980s and 1990s.
I grew up in a small country town in Victoria here in Australia, which had one toy shop that sold model kits (this shop shut down around 15 years or so). For a small town, they had quite a reasonable selection of Airfix, Revell, Matchbox, Academy, Idea, and Hasegawa. I would frequent the store quite often in my teen years, saving up my pocket money and spending on what took my interest; WW2 fighters, jets, bombers... anything with wings really, and in any scale. We would occasionally go on holiday and I would be bedazzled by 'new' hobby shops, where I could pick up other brands that I had never seen before, including Esci, Arii, Dragon, and others.
Back in those days, you could have a kit bought and built within a couple of days, so I was quite prolific in terms of quantity (not so much quality back then...!). These days I struggle to get through two or three builds a year by comparison!
I haven't had much of a plan with picking up some of these, other than having moments of "oh I remember building that as a kid, I might grab it"... well this little 'side' collection of mine is now quite substantial, as I have rediscovered...!
Here are some pictures of the 'nostalgia stash', right before I packed them back into some packing boxes -
These kits are all kits that I built as a kid (Ignore the Revell kits in the old 1960s boxes, and the older 1970s matchbox boxings - these are well before my time, but I have picked these all up along the way). There's also a couple in there that I remember fondling but not buying in the aforementioned toy store; tough decisions had to be made with the meagre pocket money of the time! These are but a small portion of the kits that I remember building, even though there's clearly alot of them...!
To most of you, this will look like a random assortment of model kits from the 80s and 90s. To my wife, these look like a bunch of old kits that are simply taking up space (and she can't understand why I have so mnay kits that I have no intent on actually building). For me, many of these bring back very specific and fond memories.
For example, I remember my Dad setting up his little yellow vinyl covered trestle table in the lounge room to paint the 1/32 Hasegawa FW190 for me one evening, after my endless pestering for him to do so. I remember the 1/72 Matchbox Fw190 in the black, yellow and red box was the first kit I ever painted without my dad's help (I was about 9 years old at the time... I used it to 'bounce' the 1/48 Revell B-17F that dad had recently helped me paint as I had just seen the movie "Memphis Belle". Scale and historical accuracy wasn't so important back then!). I remember building the ARII Spitfire and Idea Stuka with my childhood best friend, and then dogfighting each other with them. I remember first discovering etch with the Dragon Fokker Dr1 and wondering why model glue didn't hold it down (and royally mucking the kit up in the process!). I remember being chuffed with painting the Airfix 1/48 Hurricane in their classic Humbrol 29 and 30 colours, marvelling at how my artistry looked so much like the aircraft I had just seen when I had watched "The Battle of Britain" on VHS for the first time. I remember painting blotches on the 1/72 Revell Fokker D.VII to try and replicate the lozenge finish I had just seen in "The Blue Max"... there are many more personal stories here that I won't bore you with!
All of these builds are sadly long gone, but there are so many memories here, all very personal to me. Now in my 40s, and as I think many of us do when we hit a certain age, I reflect upon these old bits of plastic and cardboard and think back to simpler times.
I reflect upon the child-like joy that I still get when I cut the protective plastic off and open a new kit box for the very first time, and see all of the plastic, decals, and instructions, and of what future model might come from this collection of bits.
I reflect on how modelling fuelled my interest in military aviation and engineering (which led to a military aviation engineering career that I have enjoyed immensely for the past 25 years).
I reflect upon the joy I had in buying the newest edition of Fine Scale Modeller at my local newsagent, and being inspired by the unachievable work therein to buy more kits and improve my skills (this also has led me to collect the full suite of these 1990s FSM magazines - see here
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=11373.0 
)
I reflect upon leaving the hobby for a while as a young man, and coming back to it in my late 20s, as a result of finding other likeminded folks who reignited my excitement for modelling.
I reflect on how far the hobby has come, how far my skills have come since my teenage years, how far my skills have to go, and how I plan to continue to enjoy this wonderful hobby of ours for as long as I can.
These inanimate things, and the smell of Revell contacta glue and Humbrol enamels, will always be part of my personal story.
If you've hung in there with me for this long, then I suspect that there are several amongst us here that have built up similar stashes and also find joy in reflecting upon your personal stories. Who else here also has a similar stash or stories to share?
Cheers
Brad C (43 years young and counting).
