The Bug-Caddy Conjecture

Bug / Rolls-Royce kit from Revell's 1974-75 catalog

I've been writing about kitbashing a lot recently, and one thing I should have written in this post is that I have this bit set in my head that true kitbashing has a degree of wildness about it. Wildness being, going off the ranch, veering down some side-street, pursuing something in your mind no matter how unconventional. Kitbashing to make buildings bigger, or build replicas of prototypes that aren't commercially available are honourable and useful pursuits, but they seem more instrumental in their goals. They aren't wild. They aren't exploratory. Every time I see a kitbash, the Kim Adams definition of kitbashing sluices through my brain,

All my work is what I would call "kit-bashing." This is a common term in the model industry: you cross breed a Volkswagen with a Cadillac, and you've got a kit bash. 

Crossbreeding a Bug with a Caddy, now that's kitbashing! I think have this biased view because I first learned about kitbashing in the model car magazines of the late '60s and early '70s, which were far from the sedate world of model railroading. Maybe it was just a demographic thing. The model car press was focused on pre-teen boys, whose tastes are notoriously unrefined and which I was at the time, and the model railroad press was more sophisticated and oriented to adults. 

So, casting kitbashing in terms of crossbreeding a Bug and Caddy makes some sense to me. So much so I propose a test, The Bug-Caddy Conjecture, which is this: if in an assemblage, found components are brought together in a new and surprising manner, then kitbashing has occurred. What constitutes new and surprising? Well, it's not an exact test, it's just a conjecture, just something to get the brain cells asking questions.

Maybe surprisingly, I think Art Curren just squeaks a pass in The Bug-Caddy Conjecture. Ok, Mr. Curren's work isn't out on the same limb as Mr. Adams', but they both worked on creating new stuff, not just extensions of existing things. Mr. Curren's work is far mellower, and some did slide out of the outskirts of the Bug-Caddy zone and into conventional, but in general he seemed to have created buildings based on extrapolations of the look-and-feel of a certain era instead of specific prototypes. Ok, I admit the kits he used were modelling those eras, and he lets the era pop out in his creations instead of hiding them.

Look there's this other factor I have to take into account, Mr. Curren published for the mainstream model railroad magazines of his time, so he was possibly limited in what he could write about. The other side of kitbashing for magazines is that it helps push the sales of kits, and promotes vendors and advertisers. The post suggested an alternative question that asked what would Mr. Curren build with the vast numbers of plastic kits available today, but I should have went further and also asked, what would he build if he didn't have to publish an associated how-to article for a mainstream magazine? Or publish anything period. In his own time, did he build anything that he loved, but was unpublishable? E. L. Moore had a number of projects that were deemed unpublishable - which speak to the ongoing development of his interests - so I wouldn't be surprised if Art Curren did too.

And there's this other thing. Mr. Curren preferred to call what he did kitmingling instead of kitbashing. Kitbashing does seem to have this sound about it that it's something that's done with hammers and anvils and forges, where it fact it's something far more cerebral because you have to assimilate a lot of shapes, and figure out how to cut and slice and blend and assemble them to end up with the thing you're looking for. His preferred term, kitmingling, seems better for describing what's going on. When I look at Mr Adam's work, some is clearly kitmingling, and other stuff, like the Bruegel-Bosch-Bus, seems like anvil-pounding kitbashing. Maybe we should be a little more discerning in our use of terms: kitbashing for the wilder stuff, and kitmingling for the more cerebral end. 

The only reason I drone on about definitions, tests, and such is that I think the exploratory aspect of kitbashing-kitmingling sometimes gets glossed over, and maybe we'd see a little more speculative stuff if we took a little deeper look at what can be meant by bashing and mingling. I'm hoping to try a little more out there stuff myself this year - maybe the 350 Boss Birney will finally see the light of day :-) Hopefully a late New Year's resolution has a little more chance of being accomplished :-)