Thursday Toy Flashback # 3: Model Kits!

As a child of the 1970s, I grew up with model kits. It was a natural thing because my father was (and remains) a model builder of uncommon skill. His favorite "school" of models was from the military, mainly the vehicles from World War II, and in the years between 1970 and 1980, he constructed, detailed and painted a veritable Army, Navy and Air Force worth of models. I inherited his love of model kits, but my specialty was - big surprise here - science fiction TV and film.

AMT (and later AMT/Ertl) held the license to Star Trek from 1966 till the advent of Voyager in the 1990s, and produced some amazing kits, including my all-time favorite, the Star Trek Exploration Set (which is pictured to the right, and as you can see, featured a phaser, a tricorder and a communicator). In particular, I remember being perhaps five or so years old (in 1976) and staying up late as my father applied the finishing touches on this model. After I went to bed, he would lay the models out on the staircase next to my room for the next morning - inevitably a Saturday. I would wake up, see the completed model, and begin my adventure as Captain of the Enterprise, all tricked up with the right gear.

AMT produced some fantastic Star Trek kits, including - of course - the U.S.S. Enterprise. I remember my Dad building that one for me as late as 1980, during the Lake Placid Olympics, when I was home with the flu. I also recall playing with an odd alien ship, the "Interplanetary UFO," sending my starship Enterprise to a model of K-7 (the space station featured in "The Trouble with Tribbles,") and so on. Over the years, I built every version of the Enterprise from the TV show to the motion picture to the Final Frontier (which came with its own shuttlecraft!) to Picard's Enterprise D.

And Star Trek was not the only model kit game in town, by any means. MPC produced models from Space:1999 including the utilitarian Eagle (a remarkable kit!) the warship called a "Hawk," and even a highly-detailed diorama of Alpha Moonbase, which included a "blow-up" size version of Main Mission Control, down to accurate figures of Commander Koenig, Helena Russell, and the desk in Koenig's office.

As the seventies went on, I continued to collect and built an armada of outer space model kits, including those from Revell/Monogram, which held the license to Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I remember building Colonial Vipers, Cylon Raiders, Cylon Basestars, Draconian Marauders, Directorate Starfighters and the like. Why, I even built the robots (V.I.N.CENT and Maximillian) from The Black Hole -- kits from MPC. I never did build the Cygnus though. I'm still on the look-out for it...

There are great companies today - like Polar Lights - producing Star Trek, Lost in Space and Land of the Giants kits. But is the thrill gone for the generation growing up right now? I mean, in the 1990s and 2000s, we've seen companies like Playmates, Konami, and Art Asylum manufacture replicas of instruments and spaceships with such unbelievable accuracy and detail. My gosh, as a kid, I couldn't have even imagined toys so authentic and faithful to the series' designs! Yet...something is missing. There was some kind of happy thrill about building models with your dad, or on your own, back in the 1970s. There was the expectation, the anticipation, and then the resulting final kits - decaled up to be just perfect. With models, every time you finished one and waited patiently for the glue to dry, it was like Christmas morning, the opening of your gifts just moments away.

There are all generations of model kits (from AMT Trek to Airfix Space:1999, etc.) available for purchase on E-Bay today so you can still relive the thrill of building your own kits, but sometimes I just think American culture has passed models by. Hobby shops are fewer and further between than in my youth. And today - with a Playstation 2, X-Box or GameCube - you can insert yourself into all kinds of space adventures, so "making up" your own adventure with the Star Trek Exploration Kit probably seems antiquated.

But I'll never forget the first morning I saw my personal exploration kit complete. I'll never forget slinging that Tricorder over my shoulder, gripping that phaser, flipping open that communicator, and "beaming down" with neighborhood friends to the alien territory beyond (the wooded-trails just half-a-block from my house....) That morning, I was a member of Starfleet, ready to face all the challenges of the universe.

And I've still got the box...