Box Art

[Vinnie]

I really couldn't decide where to post this question, so as a WW11 aircraft modeller (junior, still learning) I settled here.

As a newbie, I wondered what chaps did with their old boxes. Some of the box art is really eye catching. Do you bin them?

 

[allyby]

I'm afraid I'm guilty of binning.

[Jure Miljevic]

Vinnie, model building is a permanent learning curve, at least for me. I usually keep a box top and only bin second (third, fourth, ..., n-th) box of the same kit. I sometimes keep the whole box that I like and use it to store spare kit parts. For example, I keep 1/72 scale non-aviation related figures in 1/72 Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat box from Revell, the one coded H-639. Cheers

Jure

[glatisant]

Storage of spare parts,decals,sub-assemblies,tools,various bits and pieces,all sorts of things.Hate throwing out a box.I have boxes of them!!

[JackG]

I did save them at first, but after 400 boxes was time to bin most of them.

 

regards,

Jack

[RJP]

I generally save the instructions and perhaps the box art (but only if I think it will be useful in future.

 

The bigger question might be how to organize things especially as the collection builds up.

 

I invested in file folders, one per subject. Some of mine are over fifty years old.  Anything useful can be added over time, funny how much builds up. The next question is how to organize them!

 

Don't be afraid to perform the occasional cull, be rigorous, even ruthless.  Save what is actually useful and be heartless about the rest.

 

Remember, it really is only a hobby😋

Edited March 5, 2017 by RJP

[Aeronut]

As a youngster I pinned mine to the wall as art, these days I have the disposable income that allows me to purchase original aviation artworks with the desire to one day buy an original Huxley or Cross box top study.

[Work In Progress]

Depends if it's any good! I can't keep all the boxes but I have quite a few Shigeo Koike Hasegawa box tops cut out and mounted to the shelf behind the model  built out of the kit.

[Vinnie]

3 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

Depends if it's any good! I can't keep all the boxes but I have quite a few Shigeo Koike Hasegawa box tops cut out and mounted to the shelf behind the model  built out of the kit.

 

 

 

 

I'd never heard of Shigeo Koike before your post. Having now googled the name I can understand why you keep the box lids. There are some beautiful works of art there. I think that settles it, apart from a spares box, my Airfix and Revell packs are going in the bin.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Vinnie

[DenPhill]

I use to keep some of the painted artwork mainly Shigeo Koile and showing my age here the great Roy Cross. But when the books of these great illustrators came out decided to binned all of them. The digital artwork today is very good but lacks that X factor that these hand painted illustrations bring.

Greg

[LotusArenco]

Chuck ‘em. (Well… recycle them.)

 I’ve got enough detritus clogging up my little ‘Empire of Dirt’ that passes for my workshop.

The stout ones may get a reprieve by being reused as storage, but cheap plastic A4 boxes from Hobbycraft are slowly replacing even those.

 

Mart

Edited March 5, 2017 by LotusArenco

[Brad]

Sometimes if I like the box art I'll take a scan of it, but most of the time it's straight to the recycling.

[Vinnie]

2 hours ago, DenPhill said:

I use to keep some of the painted artwork mainly Shigeo Koile and showing my age here the great Roy Cross. But when the books of these great illustrators came out decided to binned all of them. The digital artwork today is very good but lacks that X factor that these hand painted illustrations bring.

Greg

 

I'd never heard of Roy Cross either, but now I've seen what a marvellous artist he was.

 

[LotusArenco]

29 minutes ago, Vinnie said:

I'd never heard of Roy Cross either

 

Mart

[Potato Pete]

I hang on to the old Airfix Roy Cross artwork, partly out of nostalgia, but that's it

 

Pete

[Vinnie]

1 hour ago, LotusArenco said:

 

Mart

 

  

[Phil32]

If its particularly good I take a photo, and then ditch the box. Apart from the odd good sturdy one which is kept for spares.

[Giorgio N]

As others here, when I started modelling I used to keep at least the top with the art. When a kit had the colour schemes on the box (like Matchbox), I used to keep these too.

Then I realised that all those nice box arts ended up related in a drawer from there they never see the light again. At that point I started binning all boxes, apart from the colour instructions if these are printed on the box. And I keep some boxes to store stuff inside, particularly the larger and sturdier

[Vinnie]

1 hour ago, Giorgio N said:

As others here, when I started modelling I used to keep at least the top with the art. When a kit had the colour schemes on the box (like Matchbox), I used to keep these too.

Then I realised that all those nice box arts ended up related in a drawer from there they never see the light again. At that point I started binning all boxes, apart from the colour instructions if these are printed on the box. And I keep some boxes to store stuff inside, particularly the larger and sturdier

 

Yes, this is the conclusion I have come to.

[Vinnie]

2 hours ago, Phil32 said:

If its particularly good I take a photo, and then ditch the box. Apart from the odd good sturdy one which is kept for spares.

Now that I've seen the box art by Roy Cross and Shigeo Koile, I don't think my Airfix and Revell boxes are worth keeping.

[Bigglesof266]

12 hours ago, Vinnie said:

I'd never heard of Shigeo Koike ....

 

The name Shigeo Koike is today very well known known due to his boxtop illustrations for Hasegawa from the late 1970s, and more recent activity for Eduard. Undoubtedly a talent, Koike-san is the current doyen darling of contemporary clique. Personally, I find his boxart appeal varies, and all of it is sterile in keeping with the current nanny State more of no depiction of violence. Definitely no apparently mind modifying Hakenkreuze in obsequious homage of NWO political correctness abetted by tyrannical laws apparently necessary to keep this generation safe on their playdates with plastic. However, I recoil from unduly unfair criticism of Koike-san in the later, as that prohibition is across the board with all manufacturers now such is the power of they who must be obeyed.

 

Roy Cross is still known amongst modellers of a certain vintage here. IMO, his aircraft artwork for Airfix headers and boxtops in the 1960s has yet to be bettered for purpose. His B-17G box top illustration for Airfix is the image by which all are still compared and judged. But all that so PC incorrect "violence"!  Apparently it's OK to murder civilians IRL willy-nilly with airstrikes in Mosul yesterday, and sell BL755 to the Saudis to bomb Yemeni civilians, but Roy's illustrations of falling bombs, detonation splashes surrounding a destroyer under attack, or an aircraft set afire won't do without airbrushing out all the action in 2017. Hmmm.

 

Another aviation art illustrator you might want to look at the equal of or arguably better than Shigeo Koike was Rikyu Watanabe who illustrated the original oTAKI boxes, now rebranded Arii by Microace. His Bf 109G-6, Oscar, Frank and George adorning the 1/48 boxes particularly notable "Buy me now!" signallers.

 

I don't know who painted Tamiya's 1970s box top aviation artwork (Yoshiyuki Takani?), but imagination capturing images such as their 1/48 A6M3 Type 32 climbing out of Rabaul with Tarvurvur in the background, the equally stunning illustration of Sakai-san's A6M2 Type 21 in front of a sun backlit towering Cu en-route out of Denpassar, and the J2M3 Raiden climbing with such lifelike depiction of a developed tropical towering Cu in the background I prefer to much of Koike-san's artwork. 

[Vinnie]

Thanks Biggles.

[Hepster]

As I acquire guite a few bagged kits at shows etc, the tougher boxes sometimes get reused for them. 

 

Some of my boxtops have been used to decorate the storage boxes that I transport models to shows in, it gives that personal touch.

 

[Giorgio N]

On 6/3/2017 at 0:49 AM, Bigglesof266 said:

 

The name Shigeo Koike is today very well known known due to his boxtop illustrations for Hasegawa from the late 1970s, and more recent activity for Eduard. Undoubtedly a talent, Koike-san is the current doyen darling of contemporary clique. Personally, I find his boxart appeal varies, and all of it is sterile in keeping with the current nanny State more of no depiction of violence. Definitely no apparently mind modifying Hakenkreuze in obsequious homage of NWO political correctness abetted by tyrannical laws apparently necessary to keep this generation safe on their playdates with plastic. However, I recoil from unduly unfair criticism of Koike-san in the later, as that prohibition is across the board with all manufacturers now such is the power of they who must be obeyed.

 

 

 

You have the luck of living in a country that has not had the honour of being invaded by a foreign army and has not seen people in town and villages shot on the spot or set ablaze or other similar niceties. None of the people born in Australia has ever seen their neighbour carried away by other neighbours in a uniform to have his bones broken just because he did not conform to the regime. For this reason, people in Australia, Britain or the US have likely very little idea of the significance of certain symbols in some European countries. Even wearing certain clothing can be enough to make a statement, a statement that can bring shivers down the spine of people who saw those things happen with their eyes.

The various laws against Nazi symbols may seem hard to underdstand today, personally I dont' consider them particularly useful, however I can understand how my neighbour may object to seeing what for him is a toy wearing a swastika, particularly when he still carries tattoed on his forearm the number he was given in a concentration camp...

Maybe when all the witnesses of those years will be dead we'll all be able to get over what happened and the symbols will be relagated to History. At the moment this has yet to happen

Edited March 7, 2017 by Giorgio N

[old thumper]

Following on from Giorgio N's comments, but not a contradiction of them.

Just an observation. Very oddly we saw swastikas regularly included in kits until I think the eighties, although I gather kits of German subjects were not allowed in the USSR, which is why Novo declined the Frog moulds of German aircraft . Also back then the Hitler figure was used to mock the nazis, for example Freddie Star and Basil Fawlty, this type of mockery was very common in British and I think American comedy during the war and in the first 40 or 50 years after the war. It seems to cause offence now though, as Prince Henry discovered to his cost.