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Vinnie

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There´ll never be boxart good enough to justify saving even a portion of those dreadful flimsy end- opening blue boxes by Revell. I hate them. I hate them. Just my :2c: and thanks for giving me another opportunity to express my feelings about them :innocent:. Best regards, V-P

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One of our club members collects the boxes. Every time someone finishes a model he has the box off them. He rented a garage to keep them all in.

 

rio

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12 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

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

 

Y'know I've been astounded by the extent of your condescension and presumptive arrogance on a previous occasion when I've just permitted the snide insinuation and self righteous nonsense to slide by without responding, but not this one. 

 

When ...did truth become so 'inconvenient'?

 

You have no idea what my ancestral origins are or familial experiences were, where my parents, maternal and paternal grandparents, uncles and aunts (deceased now, but alive when I was a child and young man), cousins, their children and grandchildren live today. THAT is offensive. In doing so, you betray the emotionally drawn false flag of sensitivity you fly under which you proclaim your verbal casus belli.

 

Similarly, I don't recall making you privy to where I've travelled, or how, in which countries I've lived or what I've seen, heard from my family, or others, or read over a lifetime in the service of my country and many faces of aviation all over the world at the pointy end. Your arrogance, or ignorance? - is astounding. This being the internet, and me having been around it before the GUI made it accessible to the public back in first decade of the 90's, I won't be posting any of that minutiae detailed for public consumption like an ink scarred self absorbed social media Millennial cached forever here.

 

I made an accurate comment. An observation of truth. Where's the problem with "truth", and when did it begin to be sanitised as it is in this epoch unlike it ever has been before?

 

Like it or not, das Hakenkreuz was the national insignia of Germany from 1933 until 1945. That's simply an irrefutable irreversible truthful fact. Apparently it didn't affect the sensitivities of those who fought that war, of whom I knew many personally, nor turn us children growing up in the 40's, 50's, or 60's into somnambulant bestial nazi zombies! As a young man for instance, prior to pursuing other career avenues, I trained as and was for a brief period an infantry Platoon Commander, 2nd Lt. holding the Queen's Commission - in awe of one of my elder brothers who became a soldier at 17, by age 26 ex-Para Regiment and an S.A.S. Regiment WO2. Although appreciably more graphic in the fuller history, suffice to say that both of us know what a battlefield, the bombed to bits, Claymored, grenaded, bullet mutilated and and napalmed look like seen and photographed first hand. Perhaps that AK-47 round in my brother's shattered shoulder extracted after CASEVAC to Hong Kong having been AIRCAV deployed with U.S. Special Forces and Marines into a well concealed well planned and deployed NVA ambush was merely imagined? Hardly 'somnambulant bestial nazi zombie stuff', as apparently exposure to das Hakenkreuz in literature - much of which including Jane's Illustrateds awash with Hakenkreuz from the 30's and '40's copies of The Aeroplane aircraft recognition book inherited as hand me downs from my older brothers should have effected? Even das Hakenkreuz decals on the tails of every German second world war model aircraft of the day hadn't eaten our brains. It was then, as it should be now, just a matter of fact. Highlighted excess and out of context attention has been drawn to it only since, and if one examines why, cui bono, it's the same old same old agenda being served, which has nothing whatsoever to do with history, but selling another much more offensive dangerous to freedom and free speech "H" word.

 

Today, indoctrinated insouciants like yourself reciting their virtue signalling narrative sanctioned script apparently either can't discern the difference to serve that agenda - unwittingly or deliberately?

 

Truth doesn't require provision of tyrannical statute to protect it. Lies and agendas do. Truth stands on its own veracity ably assisted by reason.


Suffice to say, my family, living and dead, has paid the devastating admission price of oppression in Europe and the UK, so don't you say to me that I don't and can't understand, paraphrased, 'the symbolism to Europeans because I live in Australia'. I understand the current climate of political correctness and truly tyrannical regimes only too well. Vae victus. Perhaps that is your problem? Which raises the question of your agenda? My family and their native homelands have been starved, invaded, seen their homes, towns and villages rendered rubble and made battlegrounds, been blasted, burnt, terrorised, imprisoned without trial, subjugated by ruthless military and political special police force, seen their homes set ablaze, wives arrested and children removed, blasted to bits alongside that of their neighbours and had to flee to neighbouring countries leaving their children behind. None of this by wearers or bearers of das Hakenkreuz I might add, under which many of them lived those years which if one was to render faith in the MSM promoted new religion, according to mythology, they shouldn't have survived. I heard the living truth from their lips, have borne witness to the documentation, seen and investigated the reality for myself.

 

Perhaps in this you might realise the greater danger to ALL mankind lies in curtailing freedom of thought or expression behind the tyranny of thinly veiled jingoistic masks like "hate speech" driven by whip like pejorative labeling dare one think to not all bleat in perfect Orwellian ascribed synchronicity the hegemonic hymn of the moment. If you really supported what you feign to represent, you couldn't not overwhelmingly endorse that one should be free to make up one's own mind independent from virtue signalling hackneyed chastisement from a sanitised sanctioned script parrot.

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14 hours ago, old thumper said:

Just an observation. Very oddly we saw swastikas regularly included in kits until I think the eighties

 

Exactly, except there was nothing odd about it then, nor should it be now. The oddity is the absurdity that exists today surrounding the all too apparent zealous reinvigoration demonising its symbolism. This nonsense started in the 1970s, along with branding, proprietisation and endless promotion of another 'product'.

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14 hours ago, vppelt68 said:

There´ll never be boxart good enough to justify saving even a portion of those dreadful flimsy end- opening blue boxes by Revell. I hate them. I hate them. Just my :2c: and thanks for giving me another opportunity to express my feelings about them :innocent:. Best regards, V-P

 

I strongly agree with you about my dislike too of flimsy end opening Revell boxing. Cheaper to produce and store I suppose, but definitely not the ideal for e-shopping and shipping, nor under the weight of stash storage. A shame, because some of their art is inarguably attractive. I certainly won't be throwing away the lids of my 1/48 GR.4  Tornado or WWII subjects like their Ju 88A-4 and C-6. At the moment, albeit a sleeved outer, I like the recent direction Zvezda have taken. The internal top opening tough protective corrugated cardboard box inside a decorative end opening outer sleeve. The glossy production quality of the new outers and its recently adoption of characteristic brand recognisable yellow embellishment serves the attention and McExcitement purpose factor and looks good too. The inner protects. Internal separation of sprues would be ideal, but as is is pretty much the norm in alignment with their price point competitors rather than the exception.

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2 minutes ago, Bigglesof266 said:

 

Exactly, except there was nothing odd about it then, nor should it be now. The oddity is the absurdity that exists today surrounding the all too apparent zealous reinvigoration demonising its symbolism. This nonsense started in the 1970s, along with branding, proprietisation and endless promotion of another 'product'.

 

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make was that it took forty or so years before anyone objected. My point being why leave it so long to complain, I would have thought that the closer to the end of the war the stronger the feeling would have been. 

Back in the 70's and 80's I remember a lot of the older folk not wanting to talk, hear or be reminded of the war in any way shape or form, and I also remember a lot of them listening to Max Bygraves and talking about the wartime spirit and how great it was. Whether they wanted reminders of the war or not nobody tried to airbrush over the symbols of the war or wanted to forget what happened, this is why we have remembrance ceremonies.

For me it is very important that we know who did what, and the hiding of symbols such the swastika is probably something I would more expect from holocaust deniers as they try to remove their fingerprints from the crime scene than from their victims.  

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20 minutes ago, old thumper said:

 

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make was that it took forty or so years before anyone objected. My point being why leave it so long to complain, I would have thought that the closer to the end of the war the stronger the feeling would have been. 

 

Today it's become a manipulative tool reinforcing an agenda in the same way anyone who isn't pro globalisation, and thus a nationalist wanting to retain or regain national sovereignty of their own country is tarred by the presstitute mainstream media assigning them the label "facist" . 

 

It was harder to BS that generation, because they'd been through it. They had personally experienced and seen the reality, and although subjected to wartime propaganda, were not indoctrinated with a caricatural sanitised simplistic Disney version or endless baloney propaganda to which generations far removed are now exposed. As such IMEO they could empathise and identify more readily with suffering of both sides generally as human being captives of circumstance who had been through a similar experience as themselves. Only the few, and I knew a lot, harboured absolute visceral irrational hatred. And where this was so, there was a direct cause of the hatred such as experience being a captive of the Japanese set to work on the Burma railway construction or other circumstantial misfortune.

 

For instance a woman as English as 'a pot of tea, jam and freshly baked scones' who was the mother of one of my closest childhood friends had been 16 and lived in London during "the Blitz". Later later during the V1 and V2 offensives, she was quite severely lacerated by flying High Street glass from the blast of one or the other - I forget which now, landing a street away. She hated WAR, not the German people. She despised the bombing of civilians of either side by either side especially. She only passed away recently. Ahead of her time, a creative, intelligent woman. 

 

And so it was with many I knew. Bankers and ideological zealots manipulating politicians all with their own power agendas sell dogma promoting war and demonising the boogeyman - got to have a boogeyman, suiting their agenda objectives, not the common man. Not everyone awakens in their lifetime. Reciting the spin is easy and lazy. If feelgood because one receives the craved after tick of approval parroting the approved of narrative, it is nevertheless a disserving deception.

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9 hours ago, Bigglesof266 said:

 

Y'know I've been astounded by the extent of your condescension and presumptive arrogance on a previous occasion when I've just permitted the snide insinuation and self righteous nonsense to slide by without responding, but not this one. 

 

When ...did truth become so 'inconvenient'?

 

You have no idea what my ancestral origins are or familial experiences were, where my parents, maternal and paternal grandparents, uncles and aunts (deceased now, but alive when I was a child and young man), cousins, their children and grandchildren live today. THAT is offensive. In doing so, you betray the emotionally drawn false flag of sensitivity you fly under which you proclaim your verbal casus belli.

 

Similarly, I don't recall making you privy to where I've travelled, or how, in which countries I've lived or what I've seen, heard from my family, or others, or read over a lifetime in the service of my country and many faces of aviation all over the world at the pointy end. Your arrogance, or ignorance? - is astounding. This being the internet, and me having been around it before the GUI made it accessible to the public back in first decade of the 90's, I won't be posting any of that minutiae detailed for public consumption like an ink scarred self absorbed social media Millennial cached forever here.

 

 

 

Biggles, I just quote a part to keep the post more readeable but will reply to everything...

No, I don't know your background but neither you know mine, don't know your family but you don't know mine. Now I know your service history but you don't know mine (and yes, I wore a uniform too and know what a bullet shot at me sounds like). I don't know where you lived but maybe you know where I lived,... and Australia is included in my list.

In  any case, if your family has witnessed first hand the killing and the deportations experienced by continental Europe WW2 then we have a common background. The difference seems to be that personally, while I don't agree with the various anti-nazi symbols laws exisiting in various European countries, I can understand them because I have empathy for those who still feel the oppression of those symbols and will never forget them. I don't know if you feel the same empathy but what I see from your words that you seem more concerned in making a political point rather than considering feelings.

I remember a few years ago a man in his '70s at a local event freezing when he saw a bunch of lads wearing Dirlewanger Brigade uniforms having a laugh with some kids. This small thing made me think. If your family witnessed the same things this man did, I'm sure they would have felt the same and I would have felt sorry for them.

I stand by the fact that many people however have never had such connessions and as such have no idea of the impact that certain symbols can have on those who witnessed the oppression and the savagery first hand. It's not a matter of "protecting" kids, it's a matter of feelings that are still strong in countries where the population is sometime still divided. It's sometime a matter of trying to close a certain past against urges to glorify this past from some quarters. And yes, it's sometimes a matter of trying to hide a certain past to try and forget it. There's a reason why this kind of laws only exist in countries that have a past of fascist/nazi regimes and not elsewhere. There's no such law in the UK or the US, there would be no reason.

 

Regarding the political part of your post, I couldn't care less about your political views, your business not mine. As this forum is not for the discussion of politics I'm not bothered in the least to answer. You made your point, the forum now know your ideas, some will like them, some will not, I don't care.

Regading the couple of personal insults you threw against me, my answer is just a shrug of my shoulders, I am mature enough not to bother.

Nothing personal of course, I consider all members here as fellow modellers regardless of the differences in opinions...

 

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The generally accepted explanation as to why we no longer see swastikas on box art or decals is that legislation in Germany and other countries forbid it. Manufacturers won't issue different packaging and decals sheets for different markets, so we get a one fits all product.

From what I can gather various governments were at one point prepared to draw a line between people flying nazi flags and companies displaying swastikas on packaging of historical subjects such as model kits. As interesting as it is I suppose the rights and wrongs of this policy are beyond the remit of Britmodeller members to debate. 

I myself have witnessed people bearing nazi symbols etc, doing this in the UK is very rare and will result in the wearer when lucky being laughed at or when unlucky having their head kicked in. I have also witnessed far right groups in Europe and have always been confused as to what appeal they would have there of all places as a most of the people involved in them would have been the first to get the chop under nazi rule. Maybe they just enjoy the idea of being a sadistic bully and killing people, maybe it is self loathing or maybe it is denial of guilt, or possibly a combination or even all three, I don't know which.   

 

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Bloody nazi memorabilia. Losers. 

 

Yeah Vinnie, I keep my box art, instructions and any of those badges or glue capsules. Not all but if it's striking or artistic it has a chance. One drawer of a four drawer filing cabinet. 😄

Grant

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3 hours ago, old thumper said:

The generally accepted explanation as to why we no longer see swastikas on box art or decals is that legislation in Germany and other countries forbid it. 

I've studied German over the years, and this subject often comes up.

All the teachers (all German nationals, though one Austrian) all give the same answer.  It's OK in the correct historical context ie period photographs, models etc.  OK in 'The Sound of Music' as it's an essential part of the story.  What's not allowed are biscuits, chocolate bars, wallpaper etc with the Swastika motif.

Though allowed, it would in my opinion, be very poor commercial practice to include them with models.  Safer to leave them off, as they can be readily sourced,  and seemingly without offence, if you know where to look.

Though I sympathise with those who, directly or indirectly may have suffered under the Wehrmacht or SS, over history few countries come out 'clean' be it Slavery, Ethnic Cleansing or other 'Crimes against Humanity' from the Romans and Vikings to the 21st century ISIS.  Should we perhaps leave off Japanese 'Meatballs', Soviet stars and almost every other insignia too?

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1 hour ago, Denford said:

I've studied German over the years, and this subject often comes up.

All the teachers (all German nationals, though one Austrian) all give the same answer.  It's OK in the correct historical context ie period photographs, models etc.  OK in 'The Sound of Music' as it's an essential part of the story.  What's not allowed are biscuits, chocolate bars, wallpaper etc with the Swastika motif.

Though allowed, it would in my opinion, be very poor commercial practice to include them with models.  Safer to leave them off, as they can be readily sourced,  and seemingly without offence, if you know where to look.

Though I sympathise with those who, directly or indirectly may have suffered under the Wehrmacht or SS, over history few countries come out 'clean' be it Slavery, Ethnic Cleansing or other 'Crimes against Humanity' from the Romans and Vikings to the 21st century ISIS.  Should we perhaps leave off Japanese 'Meatballs', Soviet stars and almost every other insignia too?

 

Good point. And to cut a long story short, although my family were bombed with one being killed (a child) there is a much stronger attitude against the Japanese (two of my uncles had face to face dealings with them in Burma and Malaya). The opinion I have had passed down to me is that the bombing was just part of war, while what the Japanese did was something much more personal and done out of free will. The Greeks having been occupied often see the Germans in the same way as my family view the Japanese.   

I'm not much more of a fan of Stalin than I am of Hitler, they were both dreadful men in my book.

Personally I have models of all of the above's aircraft but don't get the same good feeling from them as I do when I look at the RAF stuff.

I would still rather have the swastikas than not on my models though, otherwise the context and reality feels missing.

I have no animosity towards the Germany or Japan of today, and wouldn't want to reignite the conflict.

 

However that is just my own feelings on it.

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