What have the department stores done to all the models?

QUOTE: Originally posted by jinithith2 well, I have a hobby shop that is about 5 minutes walk from our house and about 30 minutes car ride,

Originally posted by Bgrigg I think DURR has a point with the PC factor. I remember building models as a kid and taking them to school for "show & tell". I wonder how a military model would go over in a culture that doesn't even want images of guns available to kids? [/quote i took one of my models to school for show and tell....for Teacher Cadet class in highschool....For as into modeling and as young as i am i really hope to see modeling continue for a long time.....i think the big thing is that models just won't be in stores that you can walk into but just on the pc......] Reply Edit djrost_2000 Member since February 2003 From: Where the coyote howl, NH Posted by djrost_2000 on Monday, August 29, 2005 8:29 PM I had a LHS 35 minutes from me. It closed down so I went to the LHS that was 45 minutes from me. That closed down so I went to the LHS 1 hour from me. I just found out he may be closing down because the rent is going up. If he closes down I will do all and I mean ALL of my model and supply dealings online because there won't be any stores close enough. I've got Wal-Mart but the only thing I would buy there is thinner. I'm also a wargamer. I play military simulation boardgames and do miniatures wargaming. In the 70s the hobby was totally thriving. Then came computers and video games and the hobby dropped off quite a bit, but miniatures gaming has continued to do well. It's like someone on one of my wargame forums said about the gaming hobby. You won't see many young people entering it but we will all be playing in our arcane groups. My nephews expressed interest in gaming and model building but before you know it they are glued to the gamecube. But enough depressing rant, the scale model hobby is at its Zenith right now, lets enjoy and bask in the glory. Dave Reply Anonymous Member since November 2005 Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 12:11 AM Greetings fellow modelers. I’ve read through all three pages of posts and cannot add much that hasn’t already been said with a few exceptions. I’m a career military man (19 years thus far). One of the catch phrases we use a lot is mentoring. I believe it applies in this thread. By mentoring I mean that if you truly care about something in your life it is in your best interest to ensure that that belief, interest, or the like is passed down to those coming up through the ranks. Now while a lot of that has numerous military implications and implied tasks it can also be applied toward the subject of what we perceive to be at worst a dying hobby or at best a hobby that has evolved into something we’re not entirely sure we approve of. In my case I decided to do something about it. I have 5 kids three of which are boys. I purchased a B24 model after my grandfather recently passed away to build it in memory of his service as a crew member in the European Theatre. As I was building it I was sure to insert some small snippets about the plane and what little I knew about my Grandpa’s service (He didn’t speak too much about it.) Eventually my morsels of info sparked my 15 and 12 year old boy’s imagination. In a few weeks one was building a P51 and the other a Chevelle. Now we often sit together at the dinner table at night building our kits and inevitably talking about the history of the cars, planes and armor we’re handling. Things have progressed to the point that my 15-year-old recently had a birthday. When asked what he wanted as gifts he asked for a nice beginner’s airbrush and as many models as he could get. Someone mentioned the decline of history in general within our culture. I agree with that but do not stand for it in my family. Perhaps it is the military who prides itself in it’s history especially from the viewpoint of learning from past battles to capitalize on the successes and learn from the mistakes. Perhaps it’s pride in my family’s participation in the many wars that have been fought. All I know is that like with modeling, I have done my best to ensure that my children do not follow the mind melting video game droves that seem to pervade the halls of their schools. Now I know this doesn’t address the decline of the LHS or the stockage level of kits in the larger department stores, but it does have to do with keeping the hobby alive. The future of any belief, interest, value or the like is most often in the hands of those who care about it or share in it. If we do out best to pass along our love for the hobby and history we can honestly say that we’ve done our part to ensure things live on. I know I was disappointed when a local distributor closed its doors a few years ago. I have a Hobbytown nearby, but it’s small at best. Longs Drugs still has an entire side of an aisle devoted to models and rocketry. From what I’ve read it looks as if my Longs is the exception not the rule. I too have relied more heavily on online shops every year though I do buy most of my tools and paints from my LHS. There really isn’t an easy answer. All I know is that I shall not let the hobby go quietly into the night. I still have one more boy to teach when he gets old enough. Perhaps one day we can do our own family group build! Regards, Paul Reply Edit mikepowers Member since January 2005 From: Ohio Posted by mikepowers on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 7:52 AM I think jtilley and fargoth have pretty much got it covered. Thanks for you input guys. Mike Reply jtilley Member since May 2003 From: Greenville, NC Posted by jtilley on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 9:08 AM There's a danger of working onesself into a state of depression over this topic. Maybe we should step back and look at it in its broader context. When I was in college, in the late 1970s, I had a part-time job working in a local hobby shop in Columbus, Ohio. (Strete Hobbies, on Sullivant Ave. I think it's still there; I'm the one that left.) It was a fun place to work and hang out, most of the time. The owner was primarily a model railroader, but he understood aircraft, armor, figure, and ship modeling well enough to keep a pretty well-stocked store. On any evening, unless the weather was lousy, five or six modeling enthusiasts could be found in the store, spending modest amounts of money, drinking coffee, telling slightly off-color jokes, and mostly talking. Talking not only about models, but about history, current events, and all sorts of other stuff, some of which couldn't be discussed in this Forum. The customers included several guys who worked at the nearby GM plant, a railroad engineer, an x-ray technician, a high school chemistry teacher, two linemen from the utility company, a couple of clergymen, a fair number of college students, a bank officer, a computer expert from the Rockwell aircraft plant, two auto mechanics, several university professors, quite a few retired folks, and lots and lots of kids. I remember thinking at the time how lucky I was to be associating with such a group of people. I'm convinced that working in that store served as an invaluable counterbalance to the university crowd, among whom I had to spend my official working hours. Hanging out with that diverse collection of nuts also, I'm convinced, made me a better modeler. My primary interest has always been ship models, but that hobby shop got me acquainted, at least, with all sorts of modeling. I learned that ship modelers have a great deal to learn from model railroaders, armor modelers, aircraft modelers, figure painters, and insect collectors. (Insect pins are great for all sorts of jobs in ship modeling. And microscope slides come in handy now and then.) There was a widespread consensus in those days that we were witnessing the last days of the serious, adult-oriented plastic kit. American and British kit manufacturers were going out of business (these were the last days of Aurora and Frog), and the surviving ones were edging away from serious scale models. It was taken for granted that World War I, as a modeling subject, was dead. (The hobby shop crowd practically mutinied when Monogram's "Snoopy and His Sopwith Camel" came out. And I staged my own private protest when Revell issued its lighted, animated, and extremely crude Goodyear Blimp. The company sent us a finished example, complete with moving signs, for the window. I changed the lettering on it to read "Goodrich.") We thought we were practitioners of a dying hobby. Well, we were wrong. The hobby looks a great deal different now than it did then, but it not only survived - in many ways it got better. In 1978 the typical 1/72-scale fighter kit cost two dollars or thereabouts. It contained about twenty parts. The surface detail consisted of raised lines and ridiculously over-scale rivets. The wheel wells were holes in the bottom wing halves. The trailing edges of the wings were several scale inches thick - as was the canopy. The cockpit detail consisted of a seat, something vaguely resembling a human being to set on it, and, if the kit was really state-of-the-art, an instrument panel. Nowadays the latest 1/72-scale masterpiece from Hasegawa or Tamiya costs more than ten bucks. And it typically has more and better detail than the typical 1/32-scale kit did in the seventies. And take a look at the ranges of WWI kits from Roden, Blue Max, Dragon (no longer in production, I guess, but still fairly common on the shelves), and Eduard. In 1980 the only Fokker D-VII kits were the 1/72 one from Revell (not bad) and the toylike 1/48 Aurora one. Now there are at least a dozen D-VIIs in the catalog - in all the popular scales, featuring all the permutations of louvers on the cowling panels. There are even (gasp) a few WWI SHIP kits! Pinch me; I must be dreaming. In those days a modeler had two sources for kits: the hobby shop or Squadron mail order. The latter gave pretty good service, but you had to figure on waiting a week for your order to get there and the merchandise to get back. The selection of aftermarket parts consisted of several notebooks full of decal sheets. The local hobby shop, except in the big cities, does seem to be a dying species at the moment - for good and sound reasons. If I were younger and looking for a career and an investment opportunity, there's no way I'd even consider opening a hobby shop. For one thing, the sheer volume of merchandise available now is such that a store like the one where I used to work couldn't begin to maintain a reasonable percentage of it in stock. (Can you imagine how much money a store would have to invest in order to keep up with all the stuff being released by Eduard and Verlinden - just to name two?) And the internet seems to be revolutionizing the business. My wife can testify that I spend a ridiculous amount of time surfing it every day, and I buy quite a bit of stuff through it. I think it's one of the greatest things that have ever happened to modeling. But if I owned a hobby shop the internet would drive me crazy. I think scale modeling, in one form or another, is here to stay. I hesitate to predict what the hobby will look like twenty years from now. What worries me most about it is the shortage of kids getting into it. The web is a great source of information and merchandise, but, as fargoth implies, it's not so good at mentoring. Three cheers for his efforts to get his kids into the hobby - and get them interested in history. Those of us who care about the future of modeling would do well to look for opportunities to get kids into it. The ship model club of which I'm a member, the Carolina Maritime Modelers Society holds an annual event at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. (We also hold our meetings there - last Saturday of each month at 2:00; new members and visitors always welcome.) In conjunction with the museum's annual Wooden Boat Show every May we stage an exhibition of models, which is open to the public. In one corner of the hall we set up a big table stocked with extremely simple boat model kits. (The guys in the museum's boat shop make them on the bandsaw, using scrap lumber.) Two dollars will get a kid a six-inch-long fishing trawler, along with the assistance of a veteran modeler to help build it and all the necessary tools and materials (i.e., a bottle of Elmer's glue and some felt-tip pens). Average time expended on the model: fifteen minutes. Typical reaction to the experience: sheer ecstasy. End of rant. If all of us will spend a little less time typing dumb web posts like this one and a little more time encouraging youngsters to build models, maybe we can save our hobby - if not western civilization. Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery. Reply mikepowers Member since January 2005 From: Ohio Posted by mikepowers on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 3:37 PM "Dumb Web Posts"? Excuse me, but even these so called dumb posts serve a purpose. There are truly dumb posts in these forums but I don't call a post that deals with the direction that the hobby is taking, dumb. In fact, I was just elightened and actually given some hope about the hobby because I was given a history and an accurate representation about the present state of the hobby. So, you could say that it was instructional. But if you want to call it Dumb, well, thats your aopinion. Reply Borg R3-MC0 Member since September 2004 From: Utereg Posted by Borg R3-MC0 on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 7:42 AM I'm not that negative about the way the hobby is going. Yes., a lott of LHS's are closing but I don't think this is specific for modelling. A lot of other small shops in my neighbourhood are closing as wel (grocery, small clothing shops, the milk man etc.) Internet is going to be one of the most important distribution channels for models, but this goes for a lot of other products (computers, electronics etc.) as wel. Reply Anonymous Member since November 2005 Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 3:52 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by mikepowers Rmember the days when you could walk in to a Toy's Are Us and see a whole row of models? And rockets. Now if you were to go in to Toys are Us, you won't find one model or rocket. I think this is terrible. If the biggest toy store can't carry even one model, does this say anything about the model industry and where it might be going? Your hard pressed to find any stores carrying models. Wallmart is the exception but there selection is crap and have only a few kits. Of course there is Hobby Lobby but there few and far between. Hobby shops are disappearing, stores that carry models are disappearing. Heck, you use to be able to go in to a drug store and find models. What has happened? I miss the good ole days. Just venting,,, a little. Thanks for listening. Well I think what we are seeing is that model companies are catering to the younger crowd, all these "Pimp your ride" kits and crap, its the snap-together, screw together models, or pre-built. Reason that the prices are though the roof is because models aren't what the use to be, they're machine made. I get the hand made kits from Solvokia and Austria. Also modeling is nolong a hobby for younger kids, playing the Xbox is. I admit to playing game systems, but not 24/7. And then I get pissed because they get everything wrong. Reply Edit clairnet_person Member since July 2005 From: Vancouver,Canada Posted by clairnet_person on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 12:34 PM lucky for me my LHS is probably one of the biggest RC shop in my area so it's probably gonna be around for quite a while. One of the cons is that they have a relatively small number of plastic kits is somewhat limited but the amount of paint and supllies is GREAT!!! Current builds: Monogram P-40B Revell F-15E Reply mikepowers Member since January 2005 From: Ohio Posted by mikepowers on Friday, September 9, 2005 7:44 AM Right on Able. Reply 1234 JOIN OUR COMMUNITY! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. Login Register SEARCH FORUMS FREE NEWSLETTER SIGN UP By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. View our Privacy Policy. FORUMS PRODUCT REVIEWS READER GALLERY HOW TO VIDEOS SHOP ABOUT US FREE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER SIGN UP By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. View our Privacy Policy. More great sites from Kalmbach Media Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy