Recreate Close Encounters of the Third Kind’s opening scene in a sandbox. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

Laughlin: What the hell is happening here?

Project Leader: It’s that training mission from the Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale.

Laughlin: Who flies crates like these anymore?

Project Leader: No one. These planes were reported missing in 1945.

Laughlin: But it looks brand new. Where’s the pilot? I don’t understand. Where’s the crew? Hey! How the hell did it get here?

Doesn’t the whole “no glue, no paint, all you have to do is snap them together” thing take away some of the essential ethos of model building? You know, the glorious tedium? The painstaking painting? The agony and the ecstasy? Why not just buy a complete plane, one ready for action, if you’re just going to half-ass it?

I ask these questions as the grown up version of the kid who’d make a complete hash of a model and then violently chuck the glue-riddled Frankencar against a wall.

Then again, if you have to forge your own Close Encounters playset in a hurry, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.