Recently in a tongue-in-cheek response to a comment from an old friend who referred to 54's as an "old guy scale", I pointed out not only the advantages of being an old guy (Dave is probably 20 years younger than I am, and I'm heading for the big 70 in a less than acouple of years). Chief among them is to be fully comfortable in your own persona. It's not likely you'll have to impress others, and it's unlikely you would anyway. Better still is that if you are fortunate enough, and many of us are, you can indulge (somewhat anyway) in most of the things you wanted to do as a kid, but couldn't afford or were legally unable.
So, what's this got to do with 54's? How many of us played with plastic army guys in our childhood? I'm not talking about the GI Joe stuff, but rather the bags you could get at most every toy and Woolworth's in America (and even unlikely ones like some general pharmacies, and news agents). They were all pretty much 54's. The cool ones even had detachable equipment. A lot of stuff wasn't "scale" but our imaginations made up for most of that shortcoming.
(Yes, I know all about Britains, but on this side of the pond, they were expensive and found only in upscale toy stores. In the Boston suburb where I grew up, only the F. A. O. Schwartz in Boston and one or two of the major downtown department stores stocked them with regularity. For me, they were a rare Christmas gift.)
Now, they're still made of plastic, but the detail is excellent, and they paint up nicely. For those of us whose arms are no longer long enough to read a printed page in normal type without a pair of glasses, this has been a great development
It's all come full circle: from Airfix and Roco Minitanks, to Scruby's, Minifigs, Hinchcliffe, and a slew of others; from 15's and 20's, 25's and 30's, and now finescale 28's.
So I say, let us rejoice in 54's and may their great deeds on the tabletop long continue.
