Airfix Models applied its last decal on Thursday night after 57 years as the purveyor of modelling kits to generations of children and social inadequates.
Airfix models was born in 1949, into a Britain exhausted by the bitter memories of a long and arduous war, memories which it immediately sought to dispel by encouraging thousands of young Britons to recreate the whole thing in model form. With Airfix Models' popularity soaring, the youth of the post-war United Kingdom soon reached a productivity level usually seen only in replica football kit factories or the cleaning of Victorian chimneys. Boys across the land found themselves building thousands of Spitfires, Lancasters and Messerschmitts, although the production of Fokkers was, sadly, directly responsible for the career of Stan Boardman.
As it moved through its teens and into its twenties, Airfix found itself the subject of several takeover bids, but preferred to remain at home with its parents, content to spend its time shut in its room with sticky fingers, obsessing about warfare - an obsession which was eventually to lead to an unsuccessful attempt by UKTV History to appoint Airfix as the new Head of Programming. Having reached this zenith, however, the only direction left for Airfix to travel was downward. Soon, its morbid fear of social interaction led it to refuse to leave its bedroom altogether. It is understood that its ultimate demise came after it became incapable even of feeding itself, having accidentally glued its tongue to a 1/24th scale replica of the Graf Spee.
During the funeral service, Dave Penbury of the Milset Haven model club (meetings Thursday nights and every 2nd Sunday, St Humbrol's Church Hall) read from St Paul's epistle to the Kit Enthusiasts, at which point several members of the congregation were overcome by emotion, and the rest by the fumes from the adhesive. Airfix was buried in a replica Supermarine Spitfire Mk IXc/XVIe; in accordance with the late model company's Last Will and Testament the port wing machine gun mount had been lost, and one piece was left over.
31 August 2006
Airfix Models 1949-2006
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4 Comments:
As a child i loved Airfix, but the writing was on the wall the first time I ever saw a 1/32nd scale Panzer Mrk IV from Tamiya!!
Long live Tamiya!
True, they never made a model of one of those.
Hmm, very amusing, making a great award-winning London company the butt of puerile jokes, and portraying all modellers as socially inadequate young boys.
And by the way, if there had been a 1/24th Scale Graff Spee as you suggest, you wouldn't have been able to get it in your house. This only shows your ignorance, think about scales for a moment would you....
As for Tamiya.... ho-hum, more Jap worshipers (yawn). Tamiya, like ALL Japanese industry, never innovated or invented anything, they only copied something existing and tried to improve it. They let everyone else do all the hard work, then jump in at the end. Airfix were the originators, the innovators, the pioneers. They deserve huge respect. Tamiya are just over-priced copies that fit together a bit tighter so modellers with no skill can build them.
Anyway, you may fin the demise of Airifx (and all the associated British job losses and sadness) all very amusing in your ignorant little world, but they get the last laugh, because they are back, producing new kits of very high standard for them modelling enthusiast, and re-releasing much-loved classics from the past.
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