I have a handful of collecting books I bought in the 90's/ early 00's that I have never stopped reading really.
One of them is Classic Plastic by Rick Polizzi, who is more well known perhaps as a board games guru and author of Spin Again.
Classic Plastic is a glossy colour softback stuffed with hundreds of pictures of every American model kit from the beginning of kits to modern stuff. Aurora, Monogram, Lindberg, the lot.
I was flicking its sumptuous leaves the other day and read again the chapter about scientific model kits: the human skin, the human eye, the skeleton and the heart to name a few.
And then there's also the Visible Man, which I always found a neat twist on the more familiar Invisible Man.
The Visible Man is what it says, a kit of a man with all his guts visible. Its an impressive thing in the book, alongside his see-through stablemates the Visible Horse and the Visible Pigeon! It was kit masters Renwal who brought their entrails to the masses.
Well, as is only possible in real life, I accidentally came face to face with the Visible Man just this week!
Having stared at him for 18 years in Rick's book I recognised his innards straight away! He was in a science lab display cupboard and I must say he cut a fine figure of a man behind the glass. He's tall too, at least 18 inches if I remember rightly.
I only ever had the Airfix skeleton kit as a kid, which I adored, but the Visible Man would have made a gutsy addition to my monster model shelf!
Have you any scientific model kits readers?
Renwal also did a Visible Woman kit. When little, I had a book, part of the How and Why paperback series, on The Human Body, with illustrations of our interiors, organs, veins, nerves, etc. Honestly, yuk, I always felt rather queasy after looking at the illustrations. Thank goodness we are covered in skin, and all this disgusting stuff is hidden away. I do not think I ever saw the Airfix skeleton, except in their catalogue, although there was an assembled skeleton available in the 1970s, probably about 12 inches high. A few years ago there was a partwork series that enabled you to build a large visible man type model. I think it was around three or four feet tall. Sorry, can not remember what it was called, but I will have a look and see if I can find any issues.
ReplyDeleteHow and Why books were simply the best thing Paul for sure. Our generation's Google! I miss having encyclopedias around and may get some old ones from a sale when the world gets back to normal. I'll have to look up the Visible Woman kit. Take care.
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