Some years ago I picked up one of the Art Asylum TOS E's and displayed it on my dresser. This was before PL released their nice little 1/1000 scale TOS E and long before Round2's 1/350 scale TOS E. It was one tough ship. The stand wasn't the best of designs and over the years the ship took a header off the stand, hitting the edge of the dresser and then straight to the floor. And yet in all that pounding it never broke one little thing. A shame I couldn't say that about a number of AMT TOS E's over the years that would break if you sneezed in their direction. But all things end and late last week I heard a thunk and found the AA ship on the floor again. This time, though she didn't escape unscathed. It fell on its topside and jammed the bridge disguised switch down into the saucer and in the on position. I wasn't getting any sounds, but the lights wouldn't stop flashing and I can't dislodge the switch. Additionally the lower sensor dome had come loose and fallen up (or down) into the saucer. This thing is done without taking it apart which this replica wasn't built to do. While she lasted several years I couldn't help but think of the model kits I've had and lost due to "accidents." One memorable loss wasn't mine, but my brother-in-law's when we were kids. He was running around his yard with an AMT E held aloft in one hand and ran it smack into an apple hanging from one of their apple trees. It ripped loose one of the nacelles to leave it dangling by the light wires. He had such a stunned look on his face. All I could say was, "That's done it. She's finished." Anyone else with tales of "lost" ships?
Not a Trek model story, but one that stands out most in my mind. In my teens, one of my favorite model kits were old sailing ships. I would spend hours rigging the ships with sewing thread. Almost immediately after finishing one model, one of my sisters walked past the ship I placed on a bookshelf and knocked it straight to the floor snapping all the masts off. I swore up and down she did that deliberately, until my parents took up for her by saying I shouldn't have placed it in such a bad location.
Let me start by saying that, now that I'm an adult, me and my mom have a very healthy relationship, but when I was a teenager, we were at each other's throats. One time during a verbal dust-up, she grabbed an 18" AMT E I had built when I was 8 (second kit I ever assembled) and smashed it. Defiantly, I told her I could just fix it, so she picked up the port nacelle and twisted it around til it broke the two halves... done. Not long after that, she went into therapy and started getting better. I took the remainder of the kit and converted it into a FJ-type Scout/Destroyer. --Alex
Ah, allow me to clarify... the model was built when I was eight, but this episode occurred when I was a teenager... fifteen give or take? But the model was a big deal for me, given that it was my first Trek kit. And, to be fair to my mom, she did apologize later... don't let me paint her like a monster! --Alex
I remember when I was a kid and tried to put together the refit model and screwed it up pretty bad making my Dad plenty mad. Fast forward a decade and a half, I buy the model, put it together, painted it and the works. Three days later, my wife walks by and knocked it off the dresser. I was devastated.
This isn't a Trek story, either, though I had plenty of Enterprise kits that met with their demise in many different ways. I had made a Jupiter II out of a couple of plates, some papier mache and half an oxygen tank from a Gemini model kit. I also made a "crashed" planet scene using a box, rocks, trees branches and kitty litter. Yes, we had a cat, and you can imagine what happened after that.
I built a few that took some Black Cat photon torpedo hits back in the day. Not really accidental though. They had been damaged before but the fire crackers finished them off. I also had one that fell from the ceiling. That was a mess.
Mine's not a Trek story either, but years ago a friend of mine was building a model of the Titanic in his parents' basement. It was one of those big models with about a billion little pieces. Anyhow, prior to completing it, the basement had flooded during a storm, and his Titanic ended up getting submerged in water!
Oh, it was a friend of yours - I didn't notice that. I have a tendency to skip over words when I read.
That's okay, Green Shirt. I wish I had been. The story was funny, and we both had a big laugh when he told it to me!
I've bought four kits. In the first one I had in the 70s the plastic dissolved. I assume I was using the wrong glue at the time. The second one my husband and sister-in-law sold in a garage sale without my permission. The 3rd one is half assembled. The 4th one I thought my sonI and I could do together but he wasn't interested. Last year I also bought this meccano like EntD from the Op Shop. I haven't even started it.
For me, half the fun of building model kits was destroying them afterwards. Of the dozens of cars, planes, boats and spacecraft that I had built, only two survived my childhood, a pair of WW2 bomber aircraft.
None of my models survived the years. They met a variety of fates, some given away, some deliberately destroyed in the name of fun, others just thrown away to make room for more. But more than one Enterprise met its demise in the swimming pool (like the 3 foot studio miniature).