I've got the very old 1/72 scale Matchbox A-10 Thunderbolt II kit. It's one of those typical Matchbox kits molded in two colors (dark and light gray). As I understand it, it represents an early prototype with a different cannon. Is there any point in "saving" this old kit or should I just eBay it and buy a newer A-10 model?

Hi Robin

What's the release date on the box? I can check back through my old issues of Scale Models to see if the Matchbox kit got a write-up at the time (but it might have to wait a couple of weeks, because I don't have all the copies in London).

All the best

Rowan

It is dated 1983 and says made in England. The kit number is PK-121.

Hello Mate,
Remember having one of these as a kid !,it builds up to a nice simple prototype version of the Thunderbolt.It`s only failing was that like most of the aircraft in this range they were mainly aimed at the "toy" end of the market so were very simple so that the price could be kept to a minimum.If i had one now i would either keep it in its box for novelty value or if the urge took me,i would hunt high and low to find any aftermarket stuff i could modify or scratchbuild to produce a really unique model of this aircraft.

The Matchbox kit builds up into an aircraft much, much closer to the YA-10A, the prototype that competed in the fly-off against the YA-9, than any production aircraft. As such, it might be a fun build to flesh out a collection of A-10s. As a couple of examples, the wings are not faired into the fuselage at the wing root (the prototype didn't have those fairings), the gun was a 20mm (the 30mm wasn't ready in time for the fly-off), the shape of the vertical stablizers were different from production).