I was so pleased when I came upon this picture! You see, I actually had this model, way back when Neanderthal Men were but a recent memory. In fact, I had it twice: got it once for Christmas from my folks, and then again for my birthday, from my uncle.
And that was a good thing: although the finished model looks easy enough, I made a real hash of it, the first time. The guy with the club was no problem, but the skeleton gave me fits. Pieces of it just kept falling off. I understand now that my big mistake was attempting to assemble him from the feet up, thus running afoul of gravity. I should have put the skeleton together piece by piece, leaving plenty of time for the glue to dry before going on to the next piece, and keeping the poor guy lying on his back until the job was finished. But that much insight was unavailable to me as a 12-year-old.
Second time out, I speeded up the process instead of slowing down, and in practically no time at all, I had a whole skeleton standing there. Proudly displaying it to Uncle Bernie, I continue to salute him for not guffawing when the skeleton suddenly fell apart. Just like that. Like suddenly the glue just didn’t work. Fanabla.
Well, I sort of gave up after that, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the plastic skull. I used it as a decoration on the floor of my lizard cage, where it remains to this day.
And the moral of the story is… Successful model assembly requires patience. Something not always easy to come by in your early teens.
I think I’ve met both of those guys. 🙂
Better you than me 🙂
When people are acting dumb they get called a Neanderthal. I have a inkling that they were not all that dumb.
For one thing, their brains were larger than ours.
I’ve seen several pieces written lately about Neanderthals where they are portrayed as being intelligent and relatively advanced.