A study of the changing prices of plastic kits, compared to other commodities, over the past thirty or forty years would be interesting. I've been a plastic modeler for slightly over 50 years, and I've seen the pricing structure change dramatically. It's certainly true that prices - and wages - in general have gone up during that period. (I have no trouble remembering when $10,000 bought a pretty luxurious brand new car.) My perception, though, is that plastic kit prices have risen a good bit faster than those of most other things, because a number of other factors have been at work.
I had a job in a hobby shop during the mid- to late-seventies. At that time it was generally perceived that the day of the American plastic scale model kit was just about over - and that the demise of most foreign kit manufacturers wouldn't be far behind. Aurora had just gone out of business. Monogram had been taken over by Mattel, and had quit producing serious scale models in favor of "Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel," "Snap-Tite" kits, etc. Revell (the only other American company that amounted to anything) was barely holding its head above water, largely on the basis of its car line. (It was taken for granted in those days that car kits made up the vast majority of sales.) Etc., etc.
Then came the energy crisis, which, in raising the cost of oil, gave the manufacturers the excuse to raise kit prices. (I've always had my doubts about that one. Yes, manufacturing styrene does involve buying petroleum products. But the cost of styrene is a small portion of the cost of a kit. My guess is that the styrene that goes into a 1/700 warship kit costs a dime or less. A tripling of the price of styrene could justify raising the price by a quarter - but not tripling the price of the whole kit.)
A couple of other things happened during the seventies. The transition was rather gradual, and few modelers noticed it while it was in progress. One was that, as Dreadnought pointed out, the standards of accuracy and overall quality went up significantly. (I can remember when countersunk surface detail was rare on 1/48-scale aircraft - and almost unheard of on 1/72 ones.) Part of that improvement was due to advancing technology; the computer has made a big contribution to kit design and mold production. But a big part was due to consumer demand - and the expression of consumer demand. Prior to the mid-sixties or thereabouts there was almost no such thing as a published "kit review." But organs like Airfix Magazine, the British Scale Models, and the late, unlamented American Scale Modeler turned modeling enthusiasts into readers, and Airfix found its watermelon-sized rivets getting lambasted and ridiculed in public forums. Kit manufacturers are notoriously close-lipped about their reactions to published reviews, but there's no doubt in my mind that those reviews had an impact.
I can't agree entirely, however, with Dreadnought's generalization that the manufacturers in the early days simply weren't interested in accuracy. It's certainly true that the overall standards in that regard have gone up recently. But there was a period (I'd put it at the late fifties through the sixties) when the artisans at Revell, Monogram, and Airfix were pushing the available technology, and their own very considerable skills, to new limits with each new release. That was particularly obvious in my own personal favorites, the sailing ships. The Revell H.M.S. Victory didn't have to have "wood grain" etched into its deck planks, or little coils of "rope," with individual strands, to sell well. And the 1/110 figure of Captain Bligh in H.M.S. Bounty didn't have to have buckles on his shoes. And the general in the 1/40-scale "Combat Team" didn't have to have George Patton's facial features (sculpted, as Dr. Graham reveals, by the artist who later sold Mattel the original master for the Barbie Doll). For that matter, the Revell Arizona didn't have to have anchor buoys molded into its hull halves. Maybe the modern adult modeler wishes it didn't, but in those days that was considered state-of-the-art detail. Those guys were genuinely proud of their attention to detail and accuracy - for good reason.
That rise in publications was symptomatic of the biggest change that was taking place in plastic modeling: it was becoming an adult hobby. Dr. Thomas Graham's excellent history of Revell explains that, in the 1950s, model building (mostly plastic model building) became an extremely popular activity for American youth. (I suspect similar stories could be told about England and various other countries.) A survey conducted by Boy's Life magazine in the mid-fifties found that modeling was the most popular hobby among American boys. In the seventies that changed - rather rapidly. There were all sorts of reasons; competition from TV and other electronic media, the coming of the computer, the Vietnam conflict (with its associated impact on the popularity of the military), etc., etc. Throw in the rise in kit prices (the days of the 50-cent kit and the 10-cent tube of glue were over), and it's not surprising that kids quit buying models.
The disappearance of a huge chunk of the market obviously had an impact on another big aspect of the business: the number of kits that could be sold. When I had my job in the hobby shop it seemed to be a generally-accepted truism (though I certainly didn't have any great secret inside sources) that a plastic kit was expected to sell about 100,000 copies in its initial release in order for the manufacturer to break even on it. That figure determined the price of the individual kit. I have no idea what the corresponding numbers are nowadays, but my guess is that a for a kit to sell 100,000 copies in its first year would make the manufacturer think he'd gone to heaven. The market just isn't as big as it was in the days when, as Dr. Graham puts it on p. 35 of his book, "The typical eight to fifteen-year-old American boy could hop on his bike, ride to the neighborhood Woolworth, and check out the newest assortment of kits sitting on the hobby shelves beside the toy department" - and, one might add, purchase one of the bigger, more exotic kits in that assortment for $2.00. (Nowadays a lot of fifteen-year-olds would be embarrassed to be seen hopping on a bike for any reason - unless said bike had an engine attached to it.) A few months ago I had an interesting conversation with a friend who's run an excellent hobby shop in Newport News, Virginia for many years. I asked him how many of his regular customers were under 20 years old. He laughed bitterly and said "none." I asked, "when did that happen?" He said, "at least twenty years ago."
There is, of course, a trade-off. The products we get nowadays are, in general, of far higher quality than what we were buying fifty years ago. (I do think it's interesting, though, that Revell is still making money off that old, nearly-fossilized Iowa-class battleship that first hit the store shelves in 1953.) The pricing structure really has changed. There was a time when, as a near-starving college student, I routinely bought kits out of curiosity. (Maybe I'll get around to building it someday, but if I don't - hey, what the heck, it's only a couple of bucks.) I can't do that any more. I'm making a lot more money than I was back then, but the $20.00 (or more - lots more) that the latest state-of-the-art warship kit costs is far more than I consider pocket money. I don't think I'm alone in that respect.
I rather suspect that, in future years, the first decade of the twenty-first century may come to be seen as another "golden age" in the history of scale modeling. Dreadnought is, of course, right: the proliferation of "cottage industry" firms, the proliferation of photo-etching and resin casting, and the availability of the internet to get products into the hands of consumers have all combined to put high-standard modeling within reach of people who couldn't consider it before. I remember when writers in respected journals solemnly agreed that reproducing a radar screen on 1/700 scale was impossible. And who would have dreamed, even ten years ago, that we'd see the day when we'd be able to choose from two, competing, state-of-the-art series of styrene Essex-class carriers?
But I do worry about what's going to happen to the industry in the next decade or two - just like we worried about it back in the seventies. It survived those years. In some ways it's a better industry, from the enthusiast's standpoint, than it was then. The kits are, in general, better, the supporting structure (research material, journals, aftermarket parts, materials, tools, etc.) has improved immeasurably, and we now have the internet. On the other hand, the local hobby shop is almost gone from the landscape, and the lack of kids getting into the hobby makes one wonder where it will be in a few years. (I belong to a fine ship model club that meets in Beaufort, NC once a month. It has a membership of about 30. I, at age 56, am one of the half-dozen youngest members.) But I suspect that fifty years from now somebody or other will be buying and building scale model kits.
Please pardon the self-indulgent musings of a certified Olde Phogey. But this is stuff I can't help thinking about whenever the subject of "how much things have changed" comes up.