Built it in period and loved it. I actually dropped the canopy and then stepped on it. Luckilly, Matchbox were able to supply me with a replacement very quickly. They had a very good parts replacement service. I completed the model in the green and orange "trainer" scheme. Lovely little kit. "Matchbox" was a brand owned by Lesney Products. It was quite exciting when their first kits started appearing in 1972/73.
Greetings from Australia! Thanks for another great kit review Peter. The first issue Zero kit is now very rare to find, which is understandable, as they were designed to be built. They occasionally come up for sale on online auction sites, but ones in great condition regularly sell around the AU $65 mark - if you can find one! Matchbox kits were designed with young children in mind, so were very basic, but they met market demand. As an avid Matchbox collector (and occasional builder!) the first issue Zero is one of my true treasures.
A mate had one of these back in the day. I still remember how we‘ve recreated quite noisy dogfights (I had the Buffalo) stomping up and down the staircase of his grandmother’s house until we were told off.
Loving these videos, many thanks Peter! When they were first released the Matchbox artwork on the box sold the kits as they were on the shelf. I could never decide which artwork was the finest, the Zero, the Hurricane, The Boeing P12, the Mustang or the P47 Thunderbolt. Frankly, I still cant...
... when released, the local supermarket had lots of this kit (and the Fw190) for 10p! I bought loads of both! ... I'm now a great fan of the Zero and can say that it is a non-determinant mark, as was often the case with Matchbox kits ie the Fw190.
The only part I don't like about doing any Zero is the masking of the canopy. When I hear Zero, I know the canopy is going to take some time.. But I know that's part of a good build as well.. Nice find!
I have this in my stash and instinctively put it away as a collector’s piece. It would be a good build, but Academy and Airfix, more recently, have produced good kits. This one is a great study and manufacturers should take note.
Nice find Peter. I can`t seem to find many of these in the 2nd and 3rd wave for some reason. Even the later releases when they changed the packaging are not that common. Another great kit.
The orange plastic was used to help build the flight school oppereation trainber, this was the version I chose to make when i found the kit in my stasn about 5 or six years ago and a very nice model it turned out to be that I've still got it amongst my other WW2 fighters. I also found in my stash some ancient Tamiya 1\72 kits from the mid to late 70's, and decided to build as I seemed to be going through a Japanese phase at the time. And to be honest the Matchbox model was superior. One question have you noticed that all Japanese aircraft of this era, all have very small tail wheels including the KL 84 from much later in the war, It seems to be a Japanese thing.
I never built this as a kid and its a bit of a mystery I didn't. I'm positive that artwork would have drawn me in, so I can only guess that in Tassie in the mid seventies it wasn't a common kit in the stores here.
I had a few of these. Our local Tesco used to only have matchbox and it didn’t have all the range but it always had a zero on the shelf. The Tesco in Hadleigh Suffolk in the 1970s was like a QD or B&M it didn’t stock food just everything else. So I am guessing it would be a random selection of kits mainly purple and orange range.
Yep, you can guess, I also built this kit back in the seventies! It was a lovely model to build as I built very few Japanese aircraft. As I remember, it was mostly moulded in white?
Built that in 1974, used good old Humbrol paints on it. I think the instructions called for silver paint, so airbrushing with Airframe Silver was done. At the time Humbrol had the only silver that actually dried and looked good..
