By the early spring of 1964 I had a morning Monday to Saturday paper route delivering the London Free Press from which I earned the princely sum of $2.76 per week. This left me sufficiently well off financially to actually buy some of the model kits that looked particularly tempting. The Aurora German "Wolfpack" U-Boat featuring Jo Kotula's box art which I'd been admiring at Tuckey Hardware a couple of blocks away from my house became the first of about a dozen military model kits. Here's a photo of the one from my present day collection:
Though I wasn't bold enough to try painting it at the time, I was very pleased with the way it turned out and thus encouraged to build more. I don't clearly remember but I may have built either a Graf Spee or Bismarck as well:
I'd been for some time admiring the warplane model kits above the pop cooler at Les' Variety a block down the street so I ended up buying and building them one at a time. From among the WWI planes, I'm pretty sure I built a Fokker Triplane plus a Tiger Moth or Sopwith Camel. Here's a photo of some of the ones I have in my collection today:
The WWII warplanes I bought included a Messerschmitt ME-109, Focke-Wulf 190, Hawker Hurricane plus two or three from among the following - Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, P-40 Warhawk and P-47 Thunderbolt. Here are a few pictures of the ones I have today:
The jets I built included an F-94 Starfire, F-104 Starfighter and perhaps an F-9F Panther or F-86 Sabre among others:
The artist responsible for the box art on most of the above plane model kits was Jo Kotula.
I bought most of the warplane kits at Les' Variety although I may also have bought a couple at Ken's Variety four blocks in the other direction on Wharncliffe Road. Ken's had even more model kits than did Les' but many of the ones at Ken's were AMT car model kits in which I had less interest at the time. Overall though compared to other variety stores Ken's was even more of a treasure trove of kids' stuff including Pez dispensers, bobble-head dolls of CFL players, Krun-Chee Potato Chips which was a less common brand in London, Black Cat Bubble Gum, a neat plastic Bozo gumball machine and a tempting Silverwood's Ice Cream sign outside:
Most of the warplanes I built were by Aurora although a very few of them may have been by Hawk because the old hawk's head logo seems very familiar. Another possible reason for my clear remembrance of the hawk's head logo may be because a Hawk WWI plane was for a long time on display in the window of Steve's Variety & Gift Shop a half block up from Les'. It may have been a Nieuport or this Spad XIII but I never found it tempting enough to buy:
These days though I collect Hawk warplane kits with the hawk's head logo simply because of the strong memory the logo evokes.
Anyway I was keeping all these military kits I'd built on a little end table in my bedroom. But one day in late 1964 my older sister took it upon herself to vacuum them all which resulted in some of the tiny parts being sucked into the machine. This broke my heart and put an end to my building of warplane and ship models.
Not that I was short of other interests at the time. My buddy Tony L. and I were engaged in collecting all bubble gum cards, e.g. baseball, hockey, football, non-sports, etc, my subscriptions to Aquaman and Fox and the Crow comics had not ended, my interest in Mad magazine was burgeoning and was quickly followed by my discovery of Drag Cartoons and Big Daddy Roth magazines, and I'd been knocked out by Creepy 1 which had hit newsstands in early December. So much cool stuff all of which I still hold dear of course!
Anthro together with his hot honey Embra: The two eventually marry in Anthro 6: Poor, poor Anthro!
