According to the BBC, Airfix, manufacturer of model airplane kits is back in business.
BBC News => Airfix – Britain’s next top model?
Airfix has been bought by model train giant Hornby, which plans to rebuild the brand.
But will today’s Playstation generation even notice?
Generations of school children grew up in the 50s and 60s gluing and painting Airfix model planes, from the iconic Spitfire and Lancaster to the Messerschmitt and Fokker – then hanging them from their bedroom ceilings to re-create the Battle of Britain.
Looks like one of their first kits will be a TARDIS. <SARCASM>That sounds like a challenging kit.</SARCASM>
I, for one, spent many an enjoyable hour (in the 70’s) building model kits, and am generally appalled by the current selections. But I wonder if one of the premises of this article is true. Was it really computer games that wiped out the model building market? I’m sure that’s part of it, but, surely the distance in time from the days of the “glories of war†has something to do with it also.
My knowledge of WWII planes was firmly imparted to me by my father, who was 10 when WWII started. He and his friends used to play trading card games with fighter plane stats on them. I have no illusions that people of my generation had the same background. My father was considerably older than the average when I was born. Many of the children in my grade had parents who were bead-wearing, anti-war protesting hippies.
By the 80’s, the generation of kids who would find WWII fighting machines meaningful had to be significantly diminished.
Still, half the time, I pretended my Spitfires, P-48s and Corsairs had been retrofitted for spaceflight and had been pressed into service on Moonbase Alpha.
On second thought, maybe computer games did turn kids into imaginationless drones.
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