PARIS (AP) – He bends down at the dining room table and places the final finishing touches on his World War II miniature tank. Deep in concentration, he keeps his hand steady as he works to make the scaled-down plastic model look as realistic as possible.
And as he does so, Maxime Fannoy – a close-knit husband and father who, with his family in Belgium, removes the coronavirus – feels the eternal pandemic nightmare from outside the world happily slipping out of focus.
“It’s an escape. When you build a kit or a scene, you really immerse yourself in it, ‘says Fannoy. “Everything else is losing its importance, and that’s a real help in the current context.”
The old school’s pastime of creating miniature worlds by assembling and decorating scaled-down models or running mini-trains on mini-tracks is enjoying a revival – plastic therapy against the pandemic blues.
Sales thrive as families of their social lives keep idle hands and minds busy by making models and dusting train sets. The British brand Airfix has seen an attack on plastic sets for Spitfires, the iconic World War II fighter jet. Hornby, which owns Airfix and also manufactures a range of model trains and cars under other brands, has again become profitable with the rising sales.
The analogous pleasure of pasting and painting, fixing and fiddling also peels some members of the digital generation off their screens. Teenagers catch the model bug of parents and grandparents who suddenly find time to indulge in hobbies again, many of which have been too busy to do since childhood.
In France, 70-year-old retired Guy Warein says his renovation on a model train set that collected dust in his attic helped him connect with his grandchildren on video games and pull them “out of the virtual world into reality.” . ”
The eldest, 16 years old, said during a visit to the school: ” Come on Grandpa, let’s go look at the trains and let them work. “So we put it together and did things together,” Warein says. “It’s a gathering of generations, and it can only be beneficial.”
Therefore, he repaired the HO-scale locomotives and the rolling stock inherited from his father-in-law and repaired the room where he intends to drive it on a U-shaped track layout he designs. The activity helped Warein, a former educator and municipal councilor, improve the pandemic and its concerns.
“You fill your time and forget what’s going on around you,” he says. Turning on the radio or television is like hitting a button because they are systematically talking about the virus and the accidents it caused. … If I’m having a hobby, I can think of other things. ‘
Manufacturers are struggling to meet the global increase in interest. Hornby CEO Lyndon Davies says he had to carry 10,000 Spitfire kits from a factory in India when the Airfix’s stock ran out for the first time in the company’s 71-year history.
‘What you do not want from your children, your grandchildren, is for them to sit at the TV or stare at telephones all the time. This pandemic brought families together at home, ”he says. “They used the kinds of products we make to try to forget what’s going on in the outside world.”
Another UK manufacturer, Peco, has hired extra staff to satisfy rising orders – in some markets 50% higher – for its miniature trains, tracks and modeling accessories.
“It’s happening everywhere: our markets in the UK, in Europe, in Australia, North America, in China,” says Steve Haynes, Sales Manager. “People use their free time, their free time and their forced time at home to tackle boredom, tackle isolation and do something creative.”
In Belgium, Fannoy calls himself a ‘model maker made of’ lockdown ‘. He bought plastic sets for a long time because it reminded him of childhood, but never had time to build it. Instead, he stored them in a closet.
When the pandemic ended his busy life and forced him to quit his job as a business developer from home, he jumped to work and built up the issues and paint in the last days before closing.
He first completed a series of 1 / 24th scale rally cars. A World War II tiger tank, painted to look weathered and mounted in a winter scene with troops and a jeep, followed in late 2020. He posted photos of the diorama., the fruit of 50 hours of handiwork, on Facebook.
“I usually start at 8pm and stop at 11pm until midnight,” Fannoy says. “I can no longer do the things I would normally do. So, what do I do? I open a kit and work on it. In fact, it is my wife who comes to fetch me from this mini-world in which I live. ”
‘The hours fly by. It is a form of meditation, ”he says. “It’s helped me a lot over the last year.”
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