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What happened to plastic model kits?
I was participating in the current thread, "Has electronics died as a hobby?". The discussion, talking about putting electronics together made me think about plastic model kits. What ever happened to them? You could find model kits everywhere. Car kits, boats, army, sci-fi, you name it, they were at practically any store you visited. I remember building the Batmobile and the Starship Enterprise. That one came with all the wiring so it lit up. I built superhero kit's, ships and cars. The last one's a put together were based on Robotech. I want to introduce my 11 year old son to model kit building. I guess the only place to find them now is online, and even then! Remember taking the parts off the frame they came on? Plastic cement, Testor paints, placing the decals in the water and crossing your fingers that they did not float off the paper and stick to itself? Filing and sanding the parts of excess plastic. Yes, it was a chore. But once you had the finished product, wow! What an accomplishment! Anybody still do that or has it become a lost art? That was way more fun than video games of today. I'm telling ya, the kids of today are missing soooo much! What a shame! -Koa- May 15 11 06:57 am Link Model kits sucked You can find them online if you want them May 15 11 06:59 am Link There's a little place by me called Herb's Hobby Shop, and they have an entire freaking ROOM of plastic models. They have fantasy stuff ( dragons, castles), trains, planes, even gundam robots ( I wanna start getting into building those ^_^) http://catalog.herbshobbiesandcrafts.co … p?cPath=25 You can buy stuff directly off their site May 15 11 07:00 am Link SPRINGHEEL wrote: Oh my God! You must have terrible patience with that kind of response! But I hear ya. Those things tested your patience to the max! May 15 11 07:01 am Link No shortage of shops in the UK May 15 11 07:05 am Link Plus, you get all of that glue to sniff. You'll be the hero of your local huffers! May 15 11 07:18 am Link -Koa- wrote: Get them online or in a hobby store. May 15 11 07:29 am Link I see model kits all over the place...however for the real quality kits it's places like the Hobby Lobby that carry a nice line of kits. Plus you can find them on line in infinite number. I used to love building car models back in H.S......I'd super detail them with plug wires, brake cables, opening doors, uphostelery the works.....took me weeks and weeks of building just one kit. Kids today, if my grandkids are the example, don't have the patience. Electronic games give an immediate response. I find it sad becasue it taught me so many things.....like patience for one. May 15 11 07:29 am Link FKVPhotoGraphics wrote: I think iPod has an AP for it. May 15 11 07:49 am Link I used to love to work on models of WW II era military vehicles and airplanes. My favorite ones were from a Japanese company called Tamiya, and their line was pretty extensive and the models were nicely detailed. As the OP said, it seemed that model kits were available in more places, but now it seems that they are relegated to specialty stores. I was in Hobby Lobby recently and was shocked at how pricey the kits are these days. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the fact that the plastic is a petroleum product, but I also realize that I when I was buying the kits it was over 30 years ago. I just might indulge myself in a second childhood and built a Spitfire or P 51 Mustang kit one of these days. May 15 11 08:10 am Link Model kits have suffered from a confluence of issues. In the 1950s & 60s, kit manufacturers had incredible support from the companies that produced the full size subjects. So when a kit company wanted to make a model of a Ford Galaxy, Ford would provide all sorts of help. Now, there is no assistance from the manufacturers, and instead there's licensing fees. Even worse, race car models not only have to get licensing from the car manufacturer, but also from the race organization and all the sponsors that are emblazoned on the car. One of the reasons for that early support from manufacturers was that model making helped teach a skill set that could be adapted to the workplace. All of those companies needed patternmakers, assembly workers, etc., and model building helped develop spatial reasoning and toolwork. As manufacturing became more automated and computer design overtook conventional patternmaking, the skill set brought about by model building was no longer one worth developing. At that same time, modelers who embraced the hobby began pushing for greater variety and more realism in their model kits. Where a model from the 1960s might have 40 parts, model kits nowadays can easily have ten times that, if not more. The push for greater variety led to more companies creating model kits. In the 1960s, there were perhaps a dozen model kit companies. Now that number is in the hundreds. With that kind of competition, these companies are not able to produce the quantities they did in the past. A kit run in the 1960s could be several hundred thousand units; now those numbers are in the tens of thousands. Because there are fewer units produced, plus the increased complexity due to the rise in detail, the kit company has to increase the per-item cost to recoup their development and production costs. Even with production in China, model kits can exceed $200. Because of the rise in prices and huge number of kit companies, general stores cannot afford to sell model kits any more. A father walking through a store with his child is not very likely to drop $200 on a whim, and ordering from 100+ companies is just too time consuming. Because model kits have moved away from easy-access points of sale, the hobby has taken another hit. Out of sight, out of mind. May 15 11 08:27 am Link When I was a kid the ceiling of my room was full of model airplanes, mostly fighter jets but I had a P-51 in there also. I remember going to my local K&B store to pick some up. Wal-Mart used to carry a lot of them too. But they are harder to find now... May 15 11 08:35 am Link You can find them at Toy's R Us, WalMart, Target and many other stores... They arent that hard to find.. May 15 11 08:45 am Link You might also look at paper models. You can't get the multi-curved surfaces that you do with plastic, but they can be pretty amazing.    May 15 11 09:08 am Link As a kid, I spent countless hours in the basement, building all sorts of them, mainly cars. The last one I tried to do was a very expensive large scale kit of a Lamborghini Countach that friend gave me for Christmas. It took me two weeks to finish the engine alone. Then I figured out that for the time it was taking to build it, I could build the real car in that amount of time. Since I was building real cars for a living back then, I quit the plastic one, and went back to the real car in the garage I was doing at the time, since that paid better. I do have to say though, building those little plastic cars, taught me a lot of skills that I still use today building big plastic cars. May 15 11 10:28 am Link Some of my happiest memories of childhood are of building plastic model kits with my Dad. They are still around. May 15 11 10:31 am Link I loved building models. When I was a kid, my dream job would have been building scale models for movies - but that's not done so much anymore. I did a lot of scratch building for a European model railway as well as plastic kits. I have also gotten into building wooden ship models, you might want to explore that, it's a nice option. May 15 11 10:37 am Link We use photoshop to make them look plastic nowadays. Oh, wait, not that kind of plastic model. May 15 11 10:50 am Link ArtisticPhotography wrote: This is why i loved building battleships,the most parts and the most glue you had to use May 15 11 10:53 am Link SPRINGHEEL wrote: Seriously???? May 15 11 11:11 am Link Cherrystone wrote: I wish I had my trains. Those things would be worth real money today. May 15 11 11:12 am Link Paramour Productions wrote: Ahhhhh. May 15 11 11:23 am Link They have a billion of them on Amazon. I used to do them when I was younger but they required too much patience. Glueing itty bitty hinge joints on my '72 Corvette just wasn't my idea of relaxing. Plus, I was quite clumsy and would always end up with parts glued to my fingers. I did enjoy military men. Errr...I mean, buying an army of those little GI or Revolutionary war soldier characters and then individualizing them into an army. I even had a regiment of Zombie Confederates at one point. Those were really cool... May 15 11 11:26 am Link Paramour Productions wrote: One of my businesses was a model train shop. At one time there was some serious money involve with collections. Did you know that Frank Sinatra collected trains? His collection at one time was valued in excess of FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!.....he used to send out agents and bought out entire collections. I knew a person who had a very big collection of Lionels, the preferred mfg, and sold it to Sinatra for 1.4 million! May 15 11 11:29 am Link Cherrystone wrote: Lionel "tintypes" are worth a lot of money if they are in good shape. I own a 1938 lionel tintype... May 15 11 11:32 am Link If there's no hobby shop in your area, try a large "arts and crafts" type store. I bought a RC car part at a hobby store to rig something to fall down on cue (don't ask)- upon entering the store, I quickly realized that the usual customer was neither young nor female. May 15 11 11:33 am Link I was selling them for a bud from work and he had thousands of model kits. The majority that sold went to texas / new york and unite kingdom. Mostly air craft and military model kits too. however when the economy sank, sales did too... almost to nothing! May 15 11 11:36 am Link FKVPhotoGraphics wrote: My thing was the most made set by Lionel circa 1940, so there are gobs of them around. Grey colored locomotive, hooks & eye type chrome car couplers. I wanna think I had 5 cars total. Got a buck fifty for them on eBay in 1998. May 15 11 11:41 am Link I have about 300 kits in the basement waiting for my retirement. Unfortunately, my eyesight is getting worse so I may not be able to build them after all. I liked cars and motorcycles the best, some tanks and military vehicles and just a few planes. i t taught you patience, that's for sure and a nice skill in painting with an airbrush. May 15 11 11:49 am Link I loved building car and miltary models as a kid. They're still out there at local and online hobby shops. Prices are through the roof, depending what you want to build. Some plane kits gor for up to $100+, and that's not including all the aftermarket photoetch parts and accessories to be had. Here's an example of some detailing. http://www.clubhyper.com/forums/plasticpixframe.htm Here's another with a lot of scratchbuilding. http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/ … pic=230540 May 15 11 12:42 pm Link Welcome to old age ... now people say things like "what's an arcade" when you talk LMAO May 15 11 12:49 pm Link -Koa- wrote: a more enviro-friendly alternative ... May 15 11 01:28 pm Link You do realize that plastic model kits are merely a gateway drug leading to... BALSA WOOD KITS!!! That's when you trade in that sissy glue for the real thing...DOPE!!!  May 15 11 01:38 pm Link But once your model airplanes burn real jet-fuel you never go back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EA2a1-wxhU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCE0vffMm5w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRIRe0n2mh8 This is an F-22 Rapter that is turbine powered and uses thrust vectoring. Jet Legends in China is creating the kit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsfjOK_LcNE May 15 11 05:13 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: So... the US won't export F-22s, but China will May 15 11 06:48 pm Link i built quite a few when i was young, 1/32 and 1/64 scale. also put together many slot cars, painting them on the inside one color and it showed entirely different on the outside. one of the things that lead to lowering the popularity was the glue. glue sniffing became a rage in the late 60's early 70's by teens and parents wouldn't allow it in the house. it never caught my fancy but i saw some fucked up kids after they squeezed it into a paper bag and and hyperventilated with it. not sure, but i think hobby shops still restrict sales of the glue to minors. building models was a great pastime growing up. you couldn't be sloppy, it took meticulous work but when that '57 chevy was complete it was a work of art to be proud of for sure. perhaps i'll put my guitar down that i can't seem to master and stop by a hobby shop to bring that back to life... May 15 11 08:12 pm Link i want to build the death star  and a few other pieces i love model kitsMay 15 11 08:15 pm Link Toxic Iifa wrote: Okay, but I'd suggest something in the 1/10000 scale range. May 15 11 08:22 pm Link People had more free time back in the day. May 15 11 08:34 pm Link SPRINGHEEL wrote: pffft. May 15 11 08:39 pm Link |
While I did sell my very cheap tin Lionel set from the early 40's, I still have my others upstairs in the attic. 
