Reading posts about what to do with your cheaper kits reminded me of what we used to do with my models way back in the 70's. I was in high school back then and bought mostly the cheaper brands of tanks, soldiers, etc. Throughout the year they would accumulate and because I was not yet a very good model builder they would just take up space. Come 4th of July my friend and I would take my tanks, trucks, soldiers etc. , a load of fireworks, and divied them into two armies. We even made up wargame rules about how many tanks and soldiers could move at a time and how far. A tank could shoot a bottle rocket at another tank (not very effective against hard plastic at any range). What was more effective was to hide a soldier in the grass with a firecracker. If a tank moved past the soldier undetected, the owner got to place the firecracker in the treads of the tank and light it (BOOM!). Of course, the most effective weapon against infantry was the dreaded FLAMETHROWER. I don't even want to talk about what it did to the soldiers, it was so horrible!

As a kid I once lived in this little town called Foster City btwn San Mateo and the bay. They left a series of canals and lagoons in place for small boat sailing and swimming. We took all my model ships out on the 4th (I was moving toFort Knox in the next week) and with readily purchased Chinese firecrackers, kaboom blew the entire fleet of about a half dozen ships up. It was spectacular