Model Contests

[BigTallDad]

I went to the Wings Wheels & Keels (WW&K) contest yesterday; after speaking with quite a few folks, it appears participation in these events seems to be dropping off.

At the WW&K show, there were eight categories for automotive; the category with the highest number of entries had seven entries. All told, there were on forty entries (total) in the Automotive/Motorcycles section...quite a drop from last year, where there were more than twenty entries in Factory Stock alone.

Some of the people I spoke with said they had attended a similar event the prior weekend and were disappointed...very few models and only four vendors.

Are you folks seeing the same thing?

[crazyjim]

Not up Ocala way, but then FAST does a model car contest and not typical IPMS with boats, airplanes, etc.  We also charge only  $7.00 for up to 20 entries. No vendors for us.

[styromaniac]

The IPMS Old Dominion Open held every February at one of the show rooms at the Richmond international Speedway in Virginia seems to be as popular as ever...showcasing scale modeling of every type...mostly military aviation and armor subjects but a decent number of automotive and maritime models...as well as figures. This winter I think they had a record number of vendors. The show has become so large it's difficult to take it all in in one day. My only beef is that in the automotive category they included muscle cars in the Street Rod category...and the three judges gave all three awards to late 60s early 70s muscle cars...without acknowledging any of the post war 40s 50s hot rod entries....of which there were several in both traditional and contemporary style. I always thought the definition of a street rod was a car manufactured in the period between the 30s and 50s modified ...

[styromaniac]

The Maryland Automotive Modelers Assoc ( MAMA ) holds an NNL event every May ...recently near Annapolis...previously in Towson just outside of Baltimore...participation seems to be holding up although like many shows these days it is an aging group of modelers...the last of the baby boom generation. One has to wonder if the hobby will attract enough younger participants to sustain itself...quite different than the boom years of the early to mid sixties when automotive modeling's contests peaked...surpassing all other types...reflecting what was happening in the full scale hot rod custom car scene. Car models were so popular back then they were sold in every type of store...five and dimes...grocery stores...hardware stores....

[MarvinGardens]

Buckeye Scale Auto Classic (held in the Columbus, Ohio area) had two buildings this year. 50-ish more models competing and one whole building just for vendors. From what I heard from friends up that way, it was a better show than last year by a LOT. 

 

Seems just your area, and possibly who puts the show on, may be why the show is slipping. Listening to the participants/vendors seems to work when it comes to improving show attendance.

Edited March 25, 2018 by MarvinGardens

[Rob Hall]

I didn't realize the BSAC was when it was this year, I should have put it on my calendar and driven down. 

[thatz4u]

6 hours ago, BigTallDad said:

I went to the Wings Wheels & Keels (WW&K) contest yesterday; after speaking with quite a few folks, it appears participation in these events seems to be dropping off.

At the WW&K show, there were eight categories for automotive; the category with the highest number of entries had seven entries. All told, there were on forty entries (total) in the Automotive/Motorcycles section...quite a drop from last year, where there were more than twenty entries in Factory Stock alone.

Some of the people I spoke with said they had attended a similar event the prior weekend and were disappointed...very few models and only four vendors.

Are you folks seeing the same thing?

If that was in Venice, FL, the club there is more concentrated in military, boats & aircraft. The club that puts it on has very few automotive builders. Sometimes their show

conflicts with a bigger show, so most dealers go where the money is.

[Eshaver]

My experience with I P M S has always been fraught with dirty politics as just about EVERY Virginia I P M S club seems to have a "Core band " of Good ole boy judges " . i simply reuse to deal with them any longer . I actually USED to be in the Richmond club too. I got tired of the Rolling eyes when I would want to discuss service stations or anything outside of WWII European theater aircraft . As far as i'm concerned , the old Dominion Open might as well tell anyone out of the military to buzz off . I go to the Tidewater Automotive automobile model show simply because THAT club and THAT contest is an automotive contest

[mikemodeler]

The last couple of model shows here in the Carolinas have seemed to be pretty well attended. They (SCMA and CKM) do a good job of promoting the shows and make sure there is a good mix of vendors and models on display. Some shows have more vendors (actual hobby shops/suppliers) but they do a great job of having a nice mix of product available to buy.

The number of models on display seems to be the same, haven't checked actual registrations against previous years but tables were full.

 

[BigTallDad]

2 hours ago, thatz4u said:

If that was in Venice, FL, the club there is more concentrated in military, boats & aircraft. The club that puts it on has very few automotive builders. Sometimes their show conflicts with a bigger show, so most dealers go where the money is.

Yes, that was Venice. Basically, there were no tables (for competition) that were full, even the military. The most densely-populated tables I saw were AirCraft/Propeller and Aircraft/Jet; those two categories occupied two full tables. I don't believe there were any other shows that weekend.

[peteski]

The model exhibition and contest my club puts on every year has had top attendance the last few years.  It is not an IPMS event.

http://classicplastic.org/events.html

[Art Anderson]

I was at the DAAM (Detroit Area Automotive Modelers) show and contest this weekend Sunday, March 25, 2018, and both the swap meet and the contest were big--in fact they announced that this year's model car & truck contest was their biggest ever, well over 300 entries, double their "normal" entries from the past several years.  While I was one of the more "senior" modelers there (approaching 74 yrs old) there were a great many in attendance far younger than me--yes the "Junior Class" was woefully small, but those "kids" who did enter appeared to be very much as intense in their passion as we older, white-headed geezers.  However, there were numerous faces in the crowd of the "adult" classes whose hair (and whiskers) were still colors other than white.

Our hobby, building models in an "analog" way, entering an "analog" contest in this, an increasingly "digital age" appears to be incongruous,. an "anachronism" in this, a much more modern age, but that is something to be overcome, and that won't happen if all we adults (younger as well as older) just sit back, and lament, wring our hands, shake our heads in sadness--in seeming "disgust".  As part of my trip to DAAM this year (just as last year) Dave Metzner and I stopped at the Henry Ford Museum, courtesy of a well-known Detroit Area resin-caster who's got a part time summer job (weekends) as a docent at the Henry Ford and its adjacent Greenfield Village--and we could not help but admire the rather large group (about 20 or so younger kids having a blast at a bin full of Lego's, putting together what those kids saw as "models" of stuff THEY were inspired by, touring that massive museum.  I'm willing to bet that at least some of those pre-teen kids will attempt, at some point, to build some sort of "classic" plastic model kit--not all, but some.

Purdue University  (just a mile or so from where I am sitting, and where I still work a "semi-retirement" sort of gig) has had, since the early 1970's, a program for "gifted and exceptional children", a program in both the fall and spring semesters each and every year called "Super Saturday", which covers all manner of interests; in the summer, it's called "Super Summer" both programs covering 12-16 weeks.  For about 15 yrs or so (1974 though 1989) a late professor in the College of Liberal Arts (and a model builder) and I taught a weekly, Saturday morning 2-hour class in "plastic model building" which was so popular that we had to limit the number of kids who could join the "course" due to our being able to use just one classroom--meaning about 30 school kids, both boys and girls, ages 9-about 13 or so, both boys and GIRLS.  While of course, today, the vast majority of those kids, now grownups have moved on, away from our twin cities (and BTW, those kids came from as far away as 50-60 miles every one of the 12 or so Saturdays to be a a part of that--and I do know that someone else is still offering that very same course today, as I have seen the results in a classroom there in a building I used to clean just 4-5 yrs ago, as part of what is now "Super Summer"--the same program, offered for 10 weeks every summer.  Indiana being still a very "rural" state in which there are several "statistical metropolitan areas", 4-H is a very popular program every summer--every one of our 92 counties has a 4H program, including Marion County (Metro Indianapolis is an example) and model building is a fairly popular 4-H program still, and plastic model building is, certainly in many counties here, a fairly popular classification.

Of course, only a fraction of today's kids in such a program have, and will continue to have, an ongoing interest in such programs--but think about it, the same is true of virtually EVERY such program (regardless of the subject or interest) as kids grow up--kids who participate in say 4-H, just as with Boy- or Girl-Scouts will necessarily at some point, will move on to other interests--no matter the young-age area of interest, no matter the "event area" that captured them for a few of their growing up years--that has been the way of such childhood/teenage areas of interest all the way through the history of such things.  If you think about it, SERIOUSLY,  how many adults today go camping "out in the woods" in tents and sleeping bags, who did such things as Boy- or Girl Scouts, really?  Only a percentage, and I would submit, a rather small percentage.  Be it a "young age" or raising a calf, a pig, chickens, wood-working,  "roughing it" in the woods with a canvas tent & sleeping bag, or a model kit--most any of those things they got exposed to as kids, many if not most will move on to other interests, other "passions", their trophies and ribbons of youth to become something that some will display in their homes to show their kids, probably more likely, their grandkids.

Face it or not, guys, while many of us who frequent this, and other online forums are PASSIONATE about our hobby, never--not even in our younger years as teenagers and young adults did we ever really "preach" or "practice" the "gospel" of the hobby we loved as say, 8 to perhaps 15 or 16 yrs old, to the age groups coming up behind us--no we did not, no we really don't even today (myself included!).  I will submit that the same is very true of just about any pursuit that any who read this drivel of mine here, period.  I know I have not.  I think,  that at the age I am, nearly 74 yrs old, no kids of my own (not for lack of trying!), and that is nothing at all we need be ashamed of--the very same thing can, I insist (!) has been true of most any generation that has come before us, since time immemorial.  While the building of plastic model kits was, in my boyhood years of the 1950's, of FAD proportions, by 1970's that fad was running down, fading--I know that now, being as I was, fairly deeply involved in hobby retailing--other competing interests were already raising to our (often uncaring) eyes.  By the mid-1960's, it was slot car racing, then it was real cars, girls, as our "Baby Boomer Generation" began to come of age, Girls (who became our wives and in most cases, the mothers of our children (and children, all the way down for generations, have reached out often to interests that differed from their parents).  For example, my parents, having been born at the opening of the 20th Century, who were expected, when they were mere toddlers, to follow traditions as old as civilization itself, to aspire at being as good (if not better) than their parents and grandparents at the simple, yet laborious tasks their ancestor's daily lives, instead went on to move onward and upper (how many of your parents--or grandparents churned perfect butter every week?)

As for me, I am about to expose two of my great-nephews,  age almost 13, the other just 8, into the idea of making something with their own hands that interests them as much as it does me--building a model car.  I hope I am not stupid enough to expect either of them to become as passionate as I've been for the last 66 yrs though, but both are passionate about doing stuff with their hands, building things, making things.  A man, in my boyhood, told me once, that "Throw enough mud balls against the side of your barn, some will stick", and I believe that is true.  So, if we are to spread the concept, the passion we have for building models, especially models of automobiles, that becomes, or so it seems to me, very much the same thing--"throw enough balls of that "mud" against the wall of kid's minds, and some of that surely will stick."  Does that make any sense at all?

[Art Anderson]

BTW, at DAAM, I had a boy, 13 yrs old, taller than me, stop at the Moebius Display, talked with him at great length, who, after the awards, where my WW-II "right off the Ford Motor Company Assembly Line" Ford GPW Jeep, asked me to show him in detail what I had done to build and finish it--he was definitely deeply interested.  Will he, in future years, go on to continue his 13yr old interest in building model cars?  I have no idea, but still, he was deeply interested enough to engage me on his own terms--so who knows?