Matchbox and SM Shoemart

This is my Matchbox 1/72 Me 109E. As of last count, this is my third one of the same kit. But this I built in 2002, shortly before my wife and I bought the house we now live in.

The first Matchbox Me109 I bought was from SM Shoemart Cubao in 1984. It cost all of P19.95 (50 Aussie cents), and it was built in less than 24 hours that weekend in time for me to bring it to school to show off to my friends. It was my pride and joy then, as I managed to get it all nice and neat and brag to Glenn Imbang, another keen modeller friend from school, how I managed to hand paint the canopy frame without getting spills on the windows.

It didn't last long in that state though. Being the eldest of six brothers means that you have to look out for stray hands looking for a dogfight with either a Matchbox Brewster Buffallo or a Matchbox Focke Wulf 190. But my 109, which was done in desert colours of JG27, took the prize everytime I looked at it, and it was a damn good looking plane.

The second one was bought in 1989, when I was in college. I just wanted to recreate that beautiful 109 I remembered, and though Matchbox kits were getting rarer and the kit boxes all of the sudden were ugly black things, I still managed a decent copy of the first one.

In 2001 I discovered Swap n sells here in Oz. Now all the old kits are there to find, if you look hard enough. And slowly but surely, the old Matchbox kits of my youth will come back one by one. I did this 109E in the alternate paint scheme offered by Matchbox, which was Rumanian air force. That's a strand of my wife's hair for the antenna. And that's a handpainted canopy frame, just like the one I did in 1988.

Waltzin Matilda

To start things off, I'd like to share this photo of my 1/35 Tamiya Matilda.

I finished construction of this around July 2005. I remember first seeing this kit way, way back when I just finished 6th grade. It was around 1980. I was in an old mall in Makati called Goldcrest, right next to Bricktown I think, near Quad. (It was still Quad then, as Quad II was just a concept). Anyways, I was with my mom then in one of her trips to the business center, and I usually ask to wander about the mall and visit my favorite places, even then.

I went into Lil's Futaba of course, which had just about the only hobby shops in town then. And lo and behold, I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of kits.

Under all those kits on the center shelves was a pile of... discards. It was a bunch of kits that didn't have any boxes, and being sold for a lesser price. Not that I could afford any of it. But for what seemed like an eternity, my eyes caught a plastic bag with the complete kit of a Tamiya Matilda. I held it for the longest time, hoping my mom's hand would come tap me on the shoulder and rescue me from calculating how much lunch money I need to save to get the unreachable price of P35.

I left it there of course. And that was the last I saw of the Tamiya Matildas.

Until 1999. I migrated to Melbourne, and the very first place I go into on Swanston Street is the Victorian Hobby Centre. I made new friends with the staff, and lo and behold, as how it was nearly 20 years ago, there was a fully boxed Tamiya Matilda. Of course, I bought it. And now you see it built.

And as I read the box side, it actually says, Made in the Philippines.