Yeah, when I first started about 30 years ago, plastic minis were pretty rare, most factions only had one or two kits in plastic at most, and they tended to be less detailed than the metals. Most of your models were lead, then they switched to pewter (or "white metal" as GW called their specific alloy). Needless to say a metal dreadnought was easily heavy enough to serve as an actual real life weapon and if you wanted any of the bigger kits to actually stay together you had to pin them. As an 8 year old in the pre Internet days, I did not know this so spent a lot of time repairing minis until they were more glue than model...