I was birthday present shopping for my nephew this afternoon…he’s always been obsessed with transport and he’s now of an age where he likes to make and collect models…so I visited #Norwich’s oldest toy/model shop in the Royal Arcade, Langleys.
I know that much of model making scene seems to revolve around the concept of war…but I was still stunned and saddened to see this…
Alt Text: An Airfix model of an ‘Afghan single story dwelling’ with the front wall demolished .
It was a really odd realisation of what I was suddenly seeing on display at kid’s eye level…it felt so distasteful, that I walked out without buying any model kits. Nephew is getting a table tennis set instead…will this go down better with SiL? Not sure!
I think there is something very triggering about the recent and perhaps current proximity of what it depicts. This is not some imaginary or historic war fought in our grandparent’s generation or beyond. It happened in our adult lifetime. We watched in horror at what was done to Afghan people in essentially the name of ‘regime change’ much as in Iraq…and then we just overnight abandoned these people. And now our governments try to deny them refugee status. It’s sick.
I think many kids somehow disassociate the war planes Airfix have made for decades with actual war…they focus perhaps on the engineering (I say this because I had a grandad who ended up as an aircraft designer through his love of model planes).
But this model of an Afghan dwelling (I prefer the term ‘home’) reduced to rubble is just a graphic depiction of the impact of war.
Is it a glorification or warning? There is no written context with models/toys.
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