I am one of the guys totally puzzled by the "cheap modeling" part of this deal.
Except for catching known items on a sale price now and then,,,,,everything in the hobby has been fairly expensive.
The Humbrol story that makes Anne just cringe, lol, back in 1969 or so, my family moved to Long Beach, Cal. I walked towards the beach and passed about 4 small hobby shops before seeing a fairly large hobby shop. I went inside and saw my first box of Humbrol paints. Yeah, box. They had 6 tins in each box, each with a theme to their color selection (just like LifeColor and Vallejo do today) But, they didn't have any set for what I was building right then,,but some of the colors were in the Ship Colors boxes,,,,,,,,,,so, I bought three boxes to get 2 colors from each that I needed out of them. (that is very expensive modeling)
When I switched to Acrylics three years ago,,,,,,,,I still had two tinlets of that vivid Green from those sets, and 3 bottles of nearly the same Beret Green in the little Testors Squares,,,,,,,,they came in so many sets, and had very little use to an aircraft modeler. But, they did help you know how many paint sets you had bought over the years, lol.
My point is that some in the hobby are looking for the cheapest paint they can get at a department store,,,,,,,,,,to paint a $150 model,,,,,,,,,while others are buying Specific Modeling sets of paint that have unusable colors (wasted) in them to paint a Lindberg P-51B.
Me?,,,,,shhhh, let's not go there,,,,,,,I am buying OOP PollyScale and Aeromaster paints, some of which will paint $50 OOP Wild Weasels, and some of which will paint $2 bargain table Airfix biplanes,,,,,,,,,,all primed with $16 Vallejo primers
haha, this can be one strange hobby, sometimes
Rex