I was going to post this in the November snap-together challenge thread but it doesn't really belong there since none of these are new. But snap kits in general, and the '79ish Mustang that someone came up with, brought me back to misspent youth.
This is maybe 1986 or 1987. Out of high school, working part-time and going to community college, still lots of time on our hands. Me and a friend were in a toy store and found a stash of 1/32 '67 Camaro kits marked down to a buck or two each. We probably bought six of them that one time, and in my basement we threw them together. What do a couple young dudes do with cheap toys? Destroy them. We'd sit at one end of the playroom in the basement and, one at a time, roll a Camaro down towards the other end. They'd wind up bouncing off each other and wind up in a pile, and wheels would break off and bodies would split. Ha ha! What fun!
It turned into competition. As they'd break, we'd fix them and reinforce them and run them all over again. I kept track of results and a season championship. When they got past the point of being fixable, we'd go back to the store. When the store ran out of discounted Camaros, we'd get whatever 1/32 snap kit they had. When I went out of town I'd swing by hobby stores to see if they had anything better. At our high-water mark we probably had fifteen cars each and we'd spend more time building and repairing them than actually demo-ing them. Eventually we decided this was a pathetically stupid hobby and moved on to real cars and girls and other pointless endeavors.
I have some of these cars here, and dug them out for some pictures.
This is a pretty good example of the Camaro kit that started it all, and I'm pretty sure this is one of the last ones built and used in competition. It wasn't used long since it still has windows and most of the windshield frame: those tended to be the first things to break off completely. At the time we also spent a lot of Saturday nights at the quarter-mile roundy-round track and I was heavily influenced by the lumpy awesomeness that were street stocks.
This Malibu sedan was another one of mine, and it's a bit of a mongrel. #30 was originally a 2nd generation Trans Am, but the plastic used in that kit was different than most and the body didn't hold up to the punishment. By contrast, the chassis under these Malibu kits weren't holding up well, so this is a Maliby body on the Trans Am interior and chassis. As you can see with the gap between the left front wheel and my stovetop, we weren't too concerned with how well the cars went back together after getting eliminated.
These were two of my friend's cars, both being that same Mustang kit that just made an appearance in the November challenge thread. The #33 (inspired by Larry Bird) was one of the first non-Camaro cars entered, and it was pretty tough so it took a LOT of hits. My friend was also less strategic about aiming his cars at the pile. While I tried to pick on particular cars that seemed especially vulnerable by where they rested relative to the pile, Jim just hurled his cars with great speed and very little aim. The #31 was newer but still far from pristine. Most of our cars looked like the 31 - no windshield or windshield posts. I'm not sure how the 33 managed to avoid losing those parts.
This is the underside of the #33 body. At some point it became more glue than plastic. We went through a LOT of glue.
I bet there are a lot more of these cars still in mom & dad's basement. I'll have to grab them if they survived this past summer's purge.