and what its deeper meaning tells us about the hobby today
There are many model manufacturers in the world now — Takom, Tamiya, Border, MiniArt, Zvezda, ICM, Academy, Das Werk, Fine Molds, and a dozen more besides — but in Britain, one name still sits in the cultural landscape like an old friend: Airfix.
You can mention “Airfix” to someone who has never built a kit in their life and they’ll still know what you mean. It’s become shorthand for the entire hobby. A young woman once visited my home to advise me on reducing heating costs. Later, when I mentioned my modelling room, she smiled and said, “Ah, your Airfix,” as if that were the only brand in existence. I could have reeled off the full list of modern manufacturers, but politeness prevailed. And in a way, she wasn’t wrong. Airfix is the name people remember.
There is something unmistakable about opening an Airfix box. A certain feel. A faint echo of childhood. A sense of continuity. No other manufacturer quite replicates that emotional temperature. Tamiya gives you precision. MiniArt gives you a challenge. Takom gives you clever engineering. But Airfix gives you home.
And that is why Airfix still matters.
The challenge of nostalgia
But nostalgia alone won’t sustain a company in a hobby that has changed beyond recognition. The modern modeller is no longer just the middle‑aged man with disposable income. The hobby now includes:
- younger builders
- Gundam fans
- diorama specialists
- returning modellers
- detail‑hunters
- casual weekend builders
- YouTube‑influenced impulse buyers
It’s a broad church. And many of these modellers expect a level of detail and completeness that simply didn’t exist in the 1970s.
This is where Airfix sometimes stumbles.
Their “Vintage Classics” line is a good example. Kits like the recently re‑released HMS Suffolk are lovely subjects, but the tooling is so soft and sparse that only nostalgia or box art can justify the purchase. In truth, Airfix would be better served retiring some of these moulds and investing in modern re‑tools. The hobby has moved on, and Airfix needs to move with it.
When Airfix gets it right
And yet — when Airfix commits to a modern tool, they can be superb.
My own recent builds tell the story:
- 1/48 Gannet — ambitious, detailed, demanding
- 1/48 Lysander — full of character, but not for the faint‑hearted
- 1/72 Wessex — tiny scale, huge workload, delicate parts everywhere
All three were challenging, sometimes unexpectedly so. But they showed what Airfix can achieve when they push themselves.
And then there was the 1/24 Bf 109 — the most enjoyable and satisfying build of the lot. It struck the perfect balance between complexity and pleasure. It felt complete straight from the box. I genuinely don’t think they could have done it better. Even the moulded‑in seatbelts looked the part. I bought the canopy mask set separately, and it was worth every penny.
That kit proves Airfix can compete with anyone when they choose to.
A question of strategy
A reviewer recently made an interesting point: Airfix often seems determined to hit a particular price point, even if that means moulded‑in details where other manufacturers would include photo‑etch, resin, or masks. He ran a small survey, and the results were telling:
- 14% said cost was their main factor
- 12% said subject mattered more than price
- 74% said they wanted value within a budget
In other words, most modellers are willing to pay a bit more if the kit feels complete and thoughtfully detailed.
Airfix is starting to catch up — canopy masks, better tooling, more ambitious subjects — but they still sometimes hold themselves back with cost‑driven decisions. The market has moved toward value, not just price.
Why Airfix still matters
Airfix matters because it carries a national memory.
It matters because it introduced generations to the hobby.
It matters because it still has the ability to produce world‑class kits when it chooses to.
And it matters because, for many of us, building an Airfix kit feels like coming home.
My hope is simple: that Airfix continues to honour its heritage, but doesn’t become trapped by it. That it keeps pace with a hobby that has grown more diverse, more sophisticated, and more willing to pay for quality. And that it continues to produce kits that feel as good to build as that 1/24 Bf 109 — kits that remind us why we fell in love with modelling in the first place.
Airfix deserves its place in the despatches.
It just needs to keep marching forward.
A small Spitfire, and the beginning of everything
My connection to Airfix goes back to a single moment in childhood. I must have been five or six, coming home from my local primary school, when I found Tommy in our garden. Tommy was a young Irishman lodging with us — one of many who came to Exeter in those years to help rebuild the city. Even in the 1960s, the scars of the war were still visible, and men like Tommy were the ones repairing the roads, the buildings, the fabric of the place.
He told me he had something for me, and from behind his back he produced an Airfix 1/72 Spitfire. Not in a box — already built. It gleamed in that silver plastic Airfix used back then. I remember being astonished by how neat it was. No glue blobs, no fingerprints, no smears. Just a perfectly assembled little aircraft, made with nothing more than a sharp knife, a tube of cement, and Tommy’s care.
To an adult, it was a small gesture. To a child, it was a miracle. I couldn’t have built anything like it at that age, and yet here it was — a tiny, perfect Spitfire placed in my hands. I’ve never forgotten Tommy, or that model. Looking back, I suspect that was the moment the hobby took root in me. A simple gift that opened a whole world of possibilities.
Returning to modelling later in life, I realise that the feeling hasn’t changed. Airfix still has the power to do that — to open a door, to spark imagination, to connect past and present in a way no other brand quite manages. And perhaps that is why Airfix still matters most of all.
And perhaps that is why that little silver Spitfire has stayed with me all my life. It was made by a young man far from home, given to a child whose own parents were far from theirs, and in that small act of kindness something took root — a sense of care, craft, and belonging that Airfix still carries for me even now.