Actually, I still have my first ever model. It's a 1/144 MiG-21. I can't recall the manufacturer nor the exact year when it was bought. I know I was somewhere around 10 year old, so it had to be sometime in the late eighties. Like many of you said, in our country too kits could be bought almost everywhere back then; newspaper booths, book shops, toy departments at grocery stores, etc.
I have built it together with my dad. We put too much glue, clear parts fogged up, no colors or varnish, just decals on bare plastic and we had tons of fun doing it together...