I don't suggest that the current lack of interest in modeling on the part of the younger generation has any one, simple explanation. Competition from video games, computers, etc. undoubtedly is a major factor. Another is the decline in young people's interest in reading. (When I was a kid, the purchas of a model invariably sent me to the library, to find a book on airplanes or ships or tanks that would tell me about it. The average kid nowadays rarely, if ever, sets foot in a library.) Yet another is the pricing structure of the merchandise.
When I was getting into the hobby, in the 1950s, the plastic model kit business operated in a pretty precisely-defined price range. The cheapest little airplane kits cost 29 cents. Then there was a huge range of airplanes at 50 cents. A fairly sophisticated airplane cost a dollar; as did the knights in armor from Aurora. The latest, high-quality aircraft creation from Monogram or Revell, or the newest car from AMT, cost $1.49. For $1.69 to $2.00 you could take your pick from among all the warship kits in the hobby shop - except the aircraft carriers, which ranged from $2.49 to $3.00. The "ordinary" Revell sailing ships were $3.00 each. And the most expensive kit on the market in the U.S. was the Revell 1/96 Cutty Sark, which cost $10.00. (That was the sort of thing you could dream of getting for Christmas.)
Granted, there's been lots of inflation since then. But the prices of plastic kits have risen far faster than the prices of most other commodities. When I was in elementary school I could buy an Airfix or Revell 1/72 fighter with - literally - pocket money. Nowadays it's getting tough to find a 1/72 fighter for less than $20.00 - and even today's generation of spoiled brats isn't likely to think of that as a pocket money purchase. On the other end of the scale, the review section of FSM every month covers several models that cost over $100 each. I can't blame parents for balking at the thought of buying such things in quantity for their kids - even if the kids want them and are up to the task of building them. The model can only be built once. The electronic game will get played till the kid gets tired of it. (That, I suspect, won't take as long as Mom and Dad would like, but it probably will hold the kid's spare-time attention for at least a few weeks.)
A couple of months ago my 8-year-old grandson came for a visit, and my wife and I decided to try to get him interested in model building. We knew he had at least some interest in dinosaurs, so I ordered a Tamiya "Triceratops Diorama Set" from Squadron Mail order. The kit was superb - one of the most ingeniously-designed, well-molded, well-presented plastic kits I've ever seen. It kept Ben and me busy for a total of about ten hours. It cost (including shipping) $42.00. The experience was thoroughly satisfying, and the "Tyrannasaurus Diorama Set" is on the Christmas present list. But I found myself thinking that if Ben were my kid, and he got as interested in models as I was when I was his age, keeping him supplied with kits would bankrupt me in a matter of months.
We all know, of course, what the tradeoffs are. Those $20 1/72 fighters from Tamiya and Hasegawa belong to a completely different world than the 50 cent Airfix kits I brought home from the hobby shop when I was twelve. Somewhere between the 1960s and the 1990s, plastic modeling turned, almost entirely, into an adult hobby. I find it interesting to read the ads that Dragon publishes these days to promote its latest armor and ship kits. "NEW TOOLING - interior detail on periscope inside commander's hatch cover." "NEW TOOLING - slide-molded rifle barrels with hollow muzzles." "Photo-etched clips for separately-cast tools on fenders." "Bonus clear flight deck to display interior detail on hangar deck." "Aircraft conveniently molded in clear plastic, with separate propellers and landing gear." Such ads make me, with fifty years' experience under my belt, drool. But could a twelve-year-old even read the ads - let alone build the models?
I worked my way through grad school in a hobby shop in Columbus, Ohio, between 1973 and 1980. At least half the merchandise we sold in those years was bought by or for people under the age of sixteen. I few months ago I asked a good friend, who owns a fine, long-established hobby shop in Newport News, Virginia, how many of his customers were under sixteen. He laughed bitterly and said, "Zero." I made some sympathetic remark to the effect that the last five or ten years had seen the younger generation drop out of the hobby. He replied, "Where have you been? That happened twenty years ago."
Airfix - rest in peace.