[b-man]

I built a number of those Monogram models as a pre-teen mostly.

In the 5th grade I won a spelling bee and I asked my parents to buy me the 1/8 scale Big Red Baron kit, I built the 1/24 scale one as well. Paddy Wagon, Tarantula dragster, Rommel’s Rod, Snake Barracuda funny car, S’cool Bus funny car, Badman ‘55 Chevy gasser, Bad News ‘60 Chevy Panel Delivery and bunch of others. Great fun that taught you how to build things.

I used to build them straight out of the box, later started painting and detailing them.

After that most of them ended up as parts for custom creations. The Revell kits were usually not the custom freaky style like Monogram was putting out.

I used to get inspired by cars I saw in magazines and would try to duplicate the ones that I liked. I would buy a 1/25 scale Revell kit and use the 1/24 scale engines along with wheels and tires on them. Monogram kits had much nicer detailed wheels and tires that Revell kits lacked for the most part, and being a slightly larger scale helped too.

I still have all of the model cars I built 55 years ago.