Good LHS in Dallas/FW?

Shoot over to Hobbytown Plano, see Richard he has a good selection.

Thad 

 

Kevleerey wrote:

Hey, I'm in Dallas for a while. Since there are no good hobby shops around home, does anyone know of a good place down here? I believe there's a few Texans here, but anyone from this area? I'll probably be here til thursday or friday. Appreciate your help! -----------------------------------------------Kevin

Roger that on HobbyTown Plano, corner of Park & Independence.  Not a typical Hobby Town.  Has a good selection of plastic plus some aftermarket stuff.  Asst Mgr Richard Winston does what he can to keep the local modelers happy.   

In my opinion, the second best Hobby Town in the area is South Arlington, across from Parks Mall (I20 & Cooper).  Has a good selection of plastic.   The staff is more knowledgeable about RC than models.  

Other HobbyTowns --

US 75 at Walnut Hill, North Dallas.  Typical HobbyTown fare.  Small plastic area,  huge RC area. 

Hulen Rd, south FtWorth.  Small, typical Hobby Town.  one aisle of plastic.  save the trip.

Lewisville -- haven't been there.

 Other hobby shops

Hobby Annex -- Preston Rd at Campbell, North Dallas.  Between LBJ Freeway (I-635) and the George Bush Tollway.   Aircraft, Armor, Figures & some aftermarket.  

Hobby Lobby -- scattered around in several of the strip malls.  Check their website for a 40% off coupon good this week.

If you're around the end of August,  Squadron will be having another Open House in conjuction with the Verlinden MasterCon.   Shopping at Squadron is like walking around though a huge well-stocked hobby shop.   There usually are not special sales prices - most everything is full retail - except for the scratch & dent table 

Unfortunately two of the best hobby stores in Dallas/FW closed just a couple of years ago:Hobbymaker in Bedford, and Phil's Hobbies in Carrollton. Both were excellent.

Wild Bill's in Irving is an old fashioned Hobby store and a trip back in time. They have a lot of older, hard to find plastic kits and you will find it well worth a look. The store is located on Shady Grove Road.

MAL Hobby Shop, while not a large retail store, is a distributor for many international Hobby magazines and publications, and has an excellent selection of those. Their location is on Irving Blvd. also in Irving.

Just for reminiscence sake among fellow Dallas natives, Dallas also used to be the home of the superb Model Soldier and Military Antiques gallery THE MILITARIA, first in the Quadrangle, secondly located on Fairmont street, and finally in Plano. It and the Royal Guardsman in European Crossroads were my FAVORITE places to visit as a kid. Ah, the passing of time and great retailers.:(

Fritzfix wrote:

Wild Bill's in Irving is an old fashioned Hobby store and a trip back in time. They have a lot of older, hard to find plastic kits and you will find it well worth a look. The store is located on Shady Grove Road. MAL Hobby Shop, while not a large retail store, is a distributor for many international Hobby magazines and publications, and has an excellent selection of those. Their location is on Irving Blvd. also in Irving.

I forgot to mention those two.   They could be worth a trip.  They are only a few blocks apart.   Start at Wild Bills on Shady Grove, then double back northbound on Nursery to Irving Blvd, & turn left onto Irving.  MAL is actually a block off Irving on Lee St -- a little hole in the wall.   Ask Ed Seay to see the "vault" of estate-sale kits.

 

Edit:  changed direction of turn off Nursery onto Irving

Fritzfix wrote:

Just for reminiscence sake among fellow Dallas natives, Dallas also used to be the home of the superb Model Soldier and Military Antiques gallery THE MILITARIA, first in the Quadrangle, secondly located on Fairmont street, and finally in Plano. It and the Royal Guardsman in European Crossroads were my FAVORITE places to visit as a kid. Ah, the passing of time and great retailers.:(

Oh my, and such a good reason to visit the Quadrangle.

Also gone and long missed would be Preston Center Hobbies.  And Valmont HS on Valwood Parkway near 35E.  CRS just kicked in and I can't remember the neat HS that was in Valley View Mall for the longest time (and my biggest regret, too--they put out 5-yeah five--of the Monogram 1/32 Mitchell put-together-with-an-included-screwdriver kits, and I did not buy even one--and more than had the money for them all <doh!>).

Was a quaint place on Spring Valley almost on top of Central, but it faeded away long ago.  The most-missed, of course, would have to be the truly, really, local shop that was biking distance from my house in the shopping center between Cox and march on Forrest Lane (and an M.E.Moses 5 & Dime, too). 

If you go back far enough in time, you might be thinking of TOYS BY ROY. They had a store in Valley  View Mall (among others) that was WONDERFUL, and my favorite as a kid. A fully stocked hobby department, and all sorts of neat toys from all over the world (plenty of war toys, Britains, Castles playsets from Germany etc.).

Sadly, the vastly inferior toy chain Toys R Us put them out of business when they rolled into town.

Is the hobby shop you were thinking of on Spring Valley and Central THE HUSSAR? It was a bit like THE MILITARIA (Model Soldiers and Militaria), but wasn't there too many years. I believe the owner moved to Oklahoma and set up shop there.

I too remember as a kid that M. E. Moses, Ben Franklin 5 & Dime, Gibsons and Woolco stores all had lots of kits (Revell, MPC, Monogram etc.) for CHEAP. Many allowance dollars were spent in all those places by yours truly.

Hello!
Thank you all very much for your help. Here's the plan: Tomorrow I'll head SW to MAL and Wild Bill's. Then on Friday when I'm heading home, I'll stop by Hobby Town Plano and Hobby Annex. So if I tell 'em you guys sent me, do I get a discount? But seriously, thanks again for the help!
------------------------------------------------Kevin

Kevleerey wrote:

do I get a discount?

Both HT Plano & Hobby Annex offer discounts to IPMS members.   Since you're a 'ferriner' you may need to show a membership card ...

Fritzfix wrote:

If you go back far enough in time, you might be thinking of TOYS BY ROY.

The very place.

Is the hobby shop you were thinking of on Spring Valley and Central THE HUSSAR?

No, it was a 'full service' sort of shop, small, too--maybe 40x60.  It was on a go-to-repetitive-meetings route I was stuck in, and one day I just pulled in to see what was in the shop only as wide as their own sign.  Scored a pretty good deal on the then-new 1/16 Monogram (?) Kenworth kit--wonder what happened to that one?

I too remember as a kid that M. E. Moses, Ben Franklin 5 & Dime, Gibsons and Woolco stores all had lots of kits (Revell, MPC, Monogram etc.) for CHEAP. Many allowance dollars were spent in all those places by yours truly.

Yeah, and in the 70's, the LHS stocked only 'Practra and whatever that old line of airplane dope was.  But, the M.E.Moses had Testors paint.  Next door to the M.E.Moses was one of the original Ekard's Drugs, too--and they had Guillows kits in their 6' wide floor-to-ceiling "kit" area.

Thanks for the advice! I went to Wild Bill's and MAL yesterday. Why can't they have stores like that around home? Oh well, too bad. Anyways, at Wild Bill's, I got some paints and Academy #1370 German Destroyer set. Then I went to MAL. At first I thought well, there can't be too much in such a small shop. But then I started looking around. I got a $21 Dragon Stug III, which I had wanted for some time. Then I found some small stuff. A set of Italeri Jerry cans and Sturmtruppen for $3 each! A Dragon 7.5cm Leichtgeschutz 40 w/ Fallschirmjager set- 2 small 75mm guns and 7 figs for $9, still better than retail and a kit I'd not seen. And last, but Definitely not least, a Tamiya King Tiger. Came with Eduard PE set (Both from an estate sale) for$33. There was a Dragon one too, but I didn't pick it up. Maybe I shoulda, but I have plenty of stuff to build for a while. Hey! I have a stash now! Cool... 6 kits for $75. Thank you all very much. I don't know now whether I'll hit the other 2 stores now or not-already spent all my money. But thanks again for your help, those were the 2 best HS's I've seen. Good deals and staff who know their stuff. Well, I'm heading home in a while, then I can start building!

Glad we could be of help Kev, and nice to hear you enjoyed yourself. Since moving from my native Dallas to South Western Ky/Tn, I now live in "mail order only" land (and I'm not talking about hobby related things only....can you say Green Acres?!).

MAL and Wild Bill's both are a hoot. Didn't know Ed had an "inner sanctum"....

Anybody remember the Collecter Shop? Half dolls and stuff, half toys/trains/plastic? Alway had some good AM, good kit selection. They went away several years ago, had a big store out by Town East Mall in Mesquite.

Fritzfix wrote:

If you go back far enough in time, you might be thinking of TOYS BY ROY. They had a store in Valley  View Mall (among others) that was WONDERFUL, and my favorite as a kid. A fully stocked hobby department, and all sorts of neat toys from all over the world (plenty of war toys, Britains, Castles playsets from Germany etc.).

I'm an electrician, and the company I work for did the electrical portion of the recent renovation on Town East Mall. Towards the beginning of the project I had to do some work in "The Tunnel", the space beneath the first floor of the mall. Does anyone remember what Town East used to look like a long time ago, with the ramps and all that that ran up to the higher levels?

When I was in the Tunnel I saw a part of the old floor that used to be that lower level in the middle of the mall that went down to where Lone Star Comics used to be. Anyway, somewhere down there Toys By Roy was written in spray paint on a grade beam, I assume to help someone find their way in the subterranean landscape.

Kinda rambling I know, it was just something that reminded me of very early childhood. That was my favorite place in Town East, but that's been so long ago I don't even remember anything about it other than it was a toy store.

I'm 35 now. How long was Toys By Roy around?

And M.E. Moses.

WOW.

 That goes way  qwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww4fvvvvvvvvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee5

Sorry, that was my new kitten stepping on the keyboard.

Anyway, yeah, that goes way back. I used to go to the one at Buckingham and Garland Road, then North Star, with my mom when I was really little.

 

Hi Tabascojunkie,

Toys By Roy was around for at least a decade or so. I remember it in the 1970's through to about the mid 1980's I believe. A truly great toy/hobby store.

I remember the Collector's Shop too. The hobby section was in a separate room in the back of the store. It wasn't around for too darn long as I remember.

There was also a hobby shop in Arlington during the 1980's (I Believe off of 303, in a strip shopping center) that had a lot of Model Soldiers, but was only around for a brief time. Anyone remember the name of that shop?

tabascojunkie wrote:

Does anyone remember what Town East used to look like a long time ago, with the ramps and all that that ran up to the higher levels?

Well, I rode the bus to Skyline past the place from '75 to '78; I'm not sure I'd recognise my memories of the place <g>

I'm 35 now. How long was Toys By Roy around?

Hmm, I want to remember Valley View mall was finished when we moved to Dallas in '71; I know they were still there in the early eighties; not sure about middle 80's; Prestonwood Mall, and the Addison/Galleria area had sucked a lot of the shoppers away from VVM by then.

Egads, the math just filtered into my head, you were 6 when I graduated HS; I was young just a couple days ago--wonder where that went ? <g>