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.