Just out of curiosity...

Old Ordie

The year I was born:  

• The first commercial TV station in America, KDKA-TV, went on the air, making me the same age as home television.
• Harry Truman was sworm into his first full term as POTUS.
• The first VW Beetle was sold in the US (24 years later, I bought my first brand new car, a VW Beetle, for which I paid $1,100.00).
• NATO was established.
• English astronomer Fred Hoyle coined the term Big Bang.
• Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a US citizen also known as Tokyo Rose, was convicted of treason.
• The first 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun prototypes were completed.
• The USSR tested its first atomic bomb.
• The B-50 Super Fortress Lucky Lady II, piloted by Captain James Gallegher, made history's first non-stop around-the-world flight.
• The People's Republic of China was officially proclaimed in Beijing (Peking, in those days).
• The rationing of clothing, begun during WWII, was officially ended in Great Britain.
• The world's first jet-powered airliner, the DeHavilland Comet, made its first flight.
• An ice cold bottle of Coca-Cola cost five cents.
• A Hershey bar, which then weighed more than twice what it weighs now, also cost five cents.

A lot more stuff happened, but I'm sure you're tired of reading trivia about 1949 by now .

Ozzman, I notice no one has yet answered your original query, which was something like, "who here is 21 or younger."  Interesting ...

I do recall seeing a few under-21 responses the last time the subject came up.

Tokyo Rose was American?? I had no idea!

VanceCrozier

I do recall seeing a few under-21 responses the last time the subject came up.

Tokyo Rose was American?? I had no idea!

Yup, Tokyo Rose was a native-born US citizen.  She was visiting relatives in Japan when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and was detained by the Japanese government.  She was forced to do the propaganda broadcasts she made.  In spite of that fact, and the fact that there were other English speaking Japanese girls who also made some of the infamous Tokyo Rose broadcasts, she was indicted on eight counts of treason, and convicted of one.  The US government tried mightily to not charge her with anything after she returned home, but a massive (and persistant) wave of public opinion to the contrary forced their hand.  (Beware the mob ...)

Maybe the younger modellers are yet to be heard from ...

ice_spy

looks like im the young one 34. The era of the first home computers. the commodore 64

Same here, 34

I have been modelling since I was about 8 years. I tapered off in my teens and then went mad again at 20. For the next 20 years, I assembled rather more exotic and expensive models. Again, while raising a family and running a couple of businesses, work on models dropped off until just a few months ago. Now I am into it again.

In short, I was a modeler before my teens and was following in my dad's footsteps and I am still carrying the flag today at 65.

Oh, one more thing...I had a digital watch, the first in my classroom. It was Texas Instruments, the kind that you press a button and the time (hr and min) light up in red on some kind of grid, not an LCD. yuo press twice and it shows the date and three times and you get the seconds. It was sooooooo cool.............

56

Only been modeling again for a bit over a year.

Agree about the costs getting out of hand, but then when I did it as a youngster I didn't feel the need to buy an airbrush, 12 kinds of glue, sanding sticks, files, etc. etc.  I couldn't believe how much I had spent on supplies and tools after 4 months of modeling.

48 going on 49 in October.

I'm a child of the 60's - born in the year of the rat....1960.

Born in the year of the Dragon 1940. When I bought my first car, a '53 Chevy Convertible, in 1959, gas was $.32/gal. and "cigs." were $.32 a pack. Been building models of all types since 1946.

Jim

Rob Gronovius

Car kits at Walmart are nearly $20. For that amount of money, my kids can buy an older DS, Wii or PS3 game.

You know, my own kids were about the age of yours when the first decent Nintendo decks came out.  They were hip-deep in games, and that stuff was all they wanted.  I tried to get my son interested in model building, and, if he had been, I might've been back in the hobby 20 years or so sooner.  After three kits, only one of which he built by himself, he told me he didn't want any more, and that was that.  He still plays electronic games to this day, though, and is really into it.  I think you're on to something ... it may not be looking good for the model industry in the long haul.

Old Ordie

Rob Gronovius

Car kits at Walmart are nearly $20. For that amount of money, my kids can buy an older DS, Wii or PS3 game.

 ... it may not be looking good for the model industry in the long haul.

Consol manufacturers are their own worst enemies. They either sit on the system and ride it into oblivion or come out with new systems that aren't backwards compatible (only plays new style games and not the old style).

Sony's Playstation 3 was the first system to get the clue; that is, be something other than a game system straight out of the box. Blu-ray disk players were still new to the market and the PS3 was marginally more than a BD player. So for a slight increase in price, you got a game system and a BD player. Now it streams Netflix as well.

Online MMORPGs that are PC/Mac based have become more popular. No saving the game, jump on anytime, play solo or with a group, play for a half an hour or play for half the day. It uses a laptop or PC so it doesn't require a game consol. If you play on a laptop, the game is portable as long as you can find a good wireless hotspot or internet cafe.

Lately, many of the MMORPG games have real world stores in which you can pay real money and get exclusive (albeit vanity) items in game. For instance, the World of Warcraft sells pets and exclusive character mounts (does the same thing as regular in game mounts, just look different) for real money.

65 this November. This has been discussed on the S.A. side also.I know of 2 or 3 members there who are under 21 and these guys can build like CRAZY! The majority of us are old enough to buy beer & tobacco legally.   

I, like others here & there,feel the price keeps out a lot of younger builders along with electronic games,texting,Facebook and other wastes of time. I DO feel that military modeling IS more expensive than model cars.

I'm so old my first model was flaked from a chunk of obsidian and the marbles we played with as kids were all made by dung beetles.

I'm exactly 4 months younger than the maiden flight of the B52!

The day i was born Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time.

Went to openning day of Packer training camp on Thursday.  Found out that the rookies who rode my daughter's bike to the practice field were born AFTER I graduated from high school.  Siiiiiigh....

Eric

castelnuovo

Oh, one more thing...I had a digital watch, the first in my classroom. It was Texas Instruments, the kind that you press a button and the time (hr and min) light up in red on some kind of grid, not an LCD. yuo press twice and it shows the date and three times and you get the seconds. It was sooooooo cool.............

LOL!!!  I had the exact same TI watch!  I remember how I was the proudest kid on the planet when my great aunt sent me the watch as a birthday gift.  Then, one day when I was playing in the tub I looked down and realized I was still wearing my watch.  I think that was the first time as a kid I ever had a curse word enter my stream of thought.

Eric

I remember watching the moon landing on a black and white t.v.  I think at the time i was building amt's 56 ford vicky the drag version.  Man has my painting improved. Been a long time since i left a thumb print on a fender !  Im 47 ish. Anybody else remember t.v. pre color?

littletimmy

 Anybody else remember t.v. pre color?

Was there any other kind back in the 1960s? 

I was 21 years old when Israel carried out the commando raid on Entebbe, Uganda. That was a loong time ago!.....

littletimmy

I remember watching the moon landing on a black and white t.v.  I think at the time i was building amt's 56 ford vicky the drag version.  Man has my painting improved. Been a long time since i left a thumb print on a fender !  Im 47 ish. Anybody else remember t.v. pre color?

I think it was only in black and white anyhow, so no loss there. The color shots are stills, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Rob Gronovius

littletimmy

I remember watching the moon landing on a black and white t.v.  I think at the time i was building amt's 56 ford vicky the drag version.  Man has my painting improved. Been a long time since i left a thumb print on a fender !  Im 47 ish. Anybody else remember t.v. pre color?

We're about the same age, so yes I do remember. I also remember we didn't get TV 24/7 like today (anyone remember the Star Spangled Banner being played at sign off?). We got maybe 4-5 channels via the roof top antenna.

My father is color blind and as he ran the roost saw no real reason to own a color set. Well, he was cheap in the wallet too, although a wonderful and big hearted man.

They did not have a color TV until I was away at college, with, guess what, the old b/w Zenith set.

Saturday mornings we would go to the supermarket and run the tubes from the TV and the stereo through the tester.

Even "stereo" is a dated term now, I guess. Funny that, once a coveted item.

So yes, all of my TV up till I was eighteen was b/w when at home. Saturday Night at the Movies, Wide World of Sports The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, Father Knows Best, Ed Sullivan.

Yeah Rob, you would wake up in the living room at 2 am with either a snow screen and hissing, or the flag and music.

Try coat hanger wrapped in foil. Later he got a chimney mounted antenna with a motor and a remote control. That was pretty cool.

Probably the best old memories I have was him "tuning up the car". Can't do that anymore.

Rob Gronovius

littletimmy

I remember watching the moon landing on a black and white t.v.  I think at the time i was building amt's 56 ford vicky the drag version.  Man has my painting improved. Been a long time since i left a thumb print on a fender !  Im 47 ish. Anybody else remember t.v. pre color?

We're about the same age, so yes I do remember. I also remember we didn't get TV 24/7 like today (anyone remember the Star Spangled Banner being played at sign off?). We got maybe 4-5 channels via the roof top antenna.

And better quality, more entertaining programs on those fewer channels too

My parents never had color TV until after my dad retired. My dad had bought one of those color prisms you stuck on the screen. It was supposed to make it look like color TV but it didn't. It looked terrible but dad thought it was great and he was the boss.

Jim

Holy hell, i never knew things were so hard in the olden days How did you guys stand it? Black and white TV? only 4 Channels? It must have been terrible lol.

Scorpiomikey

Holy hell, i never knew things were so hard in the olden days How did you guys stand it? Black and white TV? only 4 Channels? It must have been terrible lol.

As I remember, we had 3 channels available in Miami back in 1964. Channels 4, 7 and 10.  Wasn't bad at all since we had a bunch of great shows.

I know the thread was asking who was under 21, but since the older folks are chiming in, I'll put in my 2 cents.  I also watched the moon landing.  We had just got our first color TV.  I remember sititng in back of the set, watching the vacuum tubes start to glow as they warmed up!  I was just a little tyke back then, but the moon landing was a really big deal, and even a small child could feel the excitement building as the launch date neared.  Personally, I am grateful that I was able to witness the moon shot, the advent of color TV in our lliving rooms, microwave ovens, personal computers, and of course the Internet  It is reassuring to know that life could exist without all the things we take for granted today.

I don't think the TV shows were better back then, but one difference is that they were a lot less mean.  I think Candid Camera was the closest thing to a reality show, but the pranks were harmless.  Compare with Jacka$$ to see what I mean.

I think the older generations considered building models no different than riding a bike or looking for bugs under rocks.  It was just a part of beng a kid.  I can't recall anyone being concerned if a dimension was a fraction of an inch off.  In the 1960s-1970s, I think the truth of the matter was that no one really knew.  All we cared about was that the model built fast, all the better to meet its demise with firecrackers (and gasoline/newspaper)!

I don't know if this is true, but is seems to me that the modern day under-21 modeler takes the hobby a little more seriously than we did when we were kids.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that we have become more concerned with accuracy and detail, and have passed this thinking onto the younger generation.  Anyone can confiirm or deny this?  Inquiring minds want to know.

My parents never had color TV until after my dad retired. My dad had bought one of those color prisms you stuck on the screen. It was supposed to make it look like color TV but it didn't. It looked terrible but dad thought it was great and he was the boss.

Haa, I remember seeing those in Woolworths. I so wanted my parents to buy one.