SPA Modeler

I thought I'd share some of my kits dating back to the 80s I managed to save. A majority of the kits I actually had built out of at least 100 kits were tossed because they were beyond repairability. A majority of those kits were hot rods / muscle cars, naval ships (at least 3 on top of my head). sci-fi kits (Buck Rogers ship, vintage 70s StarTrek's USS Enterprise, Battlestar Gallactica ship and the original Star Wars Millenium Falcon.

Out of all 100 kits I've built during the 80s, only 13 were saved.

All are Hasegawa 1/72 scale:

F-14 Tomcat (wheels up)





F-16 Fighting Falcon





F-5 Tigershark





Panavia Tornado:





F-15E Eagle (right tail wing and bomb rack is missing somewhere in the blackhole box filled with packing peanuts. LOL!)



A-6 Intruder (missing nose gear strut also missing somewhere in the blackhole box filled with packing peanuts.)



EA-6 Prowler



S-3 Viking (this one is a hot mess - missing left landing strut and gear door, tank, canopy no longer glued on, etc...) Yeah, all lost on the packing peanut blackhole LOL!



A-4 Skyhawk 2-seater: Not sure if it's a Hasegawa kit or not



OV-1 Mohawk - this one is a tail sitter. A fun kit to build and I've been wanting to do another one.



Cayuse Helicopter - missing right landing skid.



F-4 Phantom with USS Coral Sea markings (Sundowners?): Fujimi kit 1/72 scale



And finally the classic Revell kit 1/72 scale F11C-2 Goshawk:

That’s cool... All of my aircraft builds of that age or older went to my kids for playtime... I was only able to salvage a few 1/32 & 1/35 armor pre adult builds.

That is fun to see! I have a few of the models I have build with my late grandfather when I was about 5 or 6 years old. They have a special place in my display cbinet. But all the kits I have build as a kid where glue bombs and slammers. I do have a lot of them, they are all unpainted and I use them as material for building whiff's.

A pity the decals have yellowed so much on your models. I wonder if there is any way to restore them.

Cool history. The A-4 is probably a Fujimi.

Those look still pretty crispy and good! As a matter of fact, very good!
I have perhaps of my ”100” old kuts, 5-7 left at my parents place. Every other one I had to get rid off, was painful, but had to be done..

- Kari

BorgR3mc0 wrote:That is fun to see! I have a few of the models I have build with my late grandfather when I was about 5 or 6 years old. They have a special place in my display cbinet. But all the kits I have build as a kid where glue bombs and slammers. I do have a lot of them, they are all unpainted and I use them as material for building whiff's.

A pity the decals have yellowed so much on your models. I wonder if there is any way to restore them.

Yeah those decals are yellowed after so many years in storage. Back then, I applied decals on flat coat, not gloss.

Thanks for the kind responses. How I wished I had taken better care of the others I had to toss.

Blacksheep, you could probably restore the decals by placing the models in the sun so that it bleaches them back out again. All of those do look great. Congrats on saving them.

I do still have almost all my childhood models. Maybe 14-15 got smashed beyond repair during moves, but I was able to replace about 11 of them.

Thanks for posting these.

Last night I was busy in the cellar and found I another chest where my modeling tool box was sitting on top of. I got curious and just as I suspected - I had more model kits from my past stored in there' LOL!

Monogram kits:

1957 Chevy Nomad and 1956 Chevy Bel Air - the Bel Air I converted into a 4WD version. LOL!!







I used to kit bash my own engines. This is one of them.







An old classic from Monogram - S'cool Bus dragster



Here's something you don't see everyday - I believe it's made by Revell. Sort of one of those early egg car kits. It even included a driver! LOL!

'70 Trans Am Firebird "Funbird"







SH-60 Seahawk - Hasegawa 1/72 scale





AH-64 Apache - Hasegawa 1/72 scale



OV-10 Bronco - Hasegawa(?) 1/72 scale missing tire. This one is a notorious tail sitter. I had weights in the nose but not enough to stop it from being a tail sitter.



E-2 Hawkeye - Hasegawa 1/72 scale - Another tail sitter but I love this kit.



And finally.... remember this one?



This is a really old kit from the mid 70s - "Rendezvous in Space (Apollo/Soyuz)" 1/160 scale. I'd love to find another one like this. No doubt it'll be hard to find nowadays.



I forgot to take a photo of another kit I had saved - A-6 Intruder in 1/48 scale (Hasegawa?) with USS Constellation markings. I had already packed it away before I realized I'd forgotten to take a pic of it.

So my final tally of kits saved is actually 23 kits out of the 100 or so kits I've built in my youth to early 20s years.

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Now those are awesome finds! For a 1/48 Intruder, until recently, there have only been two kits, the oldest from at least 40+ years ago by Fujimi and also reboxed by Testors, and the late 80’s vintage Revell kit.