Airfix breakage (1 Viewer)

[Go for Broke]

I was looking at 5-Airfix sets that I bought in the 1990's and found to my dismay that they are falling apart. Hands, stands, weapons, torsos cracking and breaking off. Anybody encounter this? Also I have Airfix from the early 1970's that are in perfect shape.

 

[theBaron]

What sort of sets are they? Are they kit figures, or are they the soft plastic figures, cast in one piece a la the Napoleonics in 1/72 or 1/32 Afrika Korps?

I could see that a styrene figure might be made from a bad batch, or the glue used on a given figure might fail compared to that used on another figure, or some combination of those factors.

Prost!
Brad

 

[Go for Broke]

They're 1/32 soft plastic. 5-different boxes. WWII American, America Paratroopers, Japanese, British Commandos and Modern Germans.

 

[theBaron]

Interesting...I bought my 1/32 sets around 1980, and the small-scale figures in the late 70's, and they held up. I still suspect that the plastic is different, either because there was a deliberate change to the formula, which is making it more susceptible to the damage you're seeing.

If the plastic formula hasn't changed, maybe they've come into contact with something, whether chemical, or environmental, that's attacked the plastic.

Very odd!

Prost!
Brad

 

[Obee]

Yes, I've got the same with some plastics bot Airfix and some A Call To Arms ECW figures.

At first I thought that they had been exposed to the sunlight, because they hadn't been painted, but some other stired together with them were fine. I'd put it down to a bad mixture of plastic. I had been told that they could dry out and go brittle, but I'm no chemist so don't know.

When I paint them I will pin the offending parts and then no one will know.

John

 

[blaster]

Aloha you all dinosaurs..

Yes, I had experienced soft polythene plastic breakages since about 20 years ago. Perhaps it is exacerbated by my local temperature and climate (hot and humid). The plastic tends to discolor a bit, then go brittle. It affected many of my Airfix, Atlantic and practically all Esci sets.

As to glued hard polystyrene kits, those glued with tube glue tends to fall apart as this glue crystallises out. It doesn't happen with liquid cement.

Rgds,
Victor