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Death of the Hobby


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7 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Yeah, that's kinda the point I was making when I mentioned that, for the most part, we don't see (on this board) those modelers. There are multi-hundred dollar 1/24 kits of very interesting subjects, beautifully done. People wish for a Cheetah kit. Well, I have a real beauty, but it's not cheap, and the number of people who even know what it is is, apparently, too small to justify ever tooling one for injection-molded styrene.

I hear you regarding the expensive kit builders. Definite lack of participation..i see the MFH kits and they blow me away in the detail, the price though...I would like to see Revell do 1/16 scale drag cars again, not rehashed kits of the Hawaiian or Revellution but current cars, with molding and detail like their recent 1/32 aircraft. Not going to happen, i know, but i can dream...Tamiya doing current F1 cars in 1/12, even the electric ones.

Don

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31 minutes ago, von Zipper said:

One of the best things to happen in the hobby of building model cars is the digital camera and sites like this to share this solitary hobby . 

I certainly agree with that. The whole internet thing in general too. I've learned more about modeling on the web in a relatively few years than I probably would have known in a lifetime without it. Add the to-your-door availability of anything imaginable (though I DO miss the old hobby shops), and exposure to a range of kits and products that no real "shop" could ever stock even a fraction of...yeah, it's pretty good times.

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In my opinion the death of the hobby won't come from lack of interest of new builders.

Creating, making and putting things together will always be a human interest for many many people.

Among the things that do the most damage and will help kill the hobby off bit by bit are the critics, the complainers and the whiners that lament everything and anything about every kit on the market. Making those not in the know think every kit is trash and not worth buying or building. 50 pages on roof lines and literally heated arguments about exact curves of decals using graphs and charts. 

The ones that criticize people for just trying to share the hobby, with others telling people that they aren't good enough or that their skills need more work before they should try showing it off, etc. Honestly, what kind of person feels the need to trash others work on their hobby? Do woodworkers leave horrendously cruel comments to each other in such great numbers? Models seem to attract that type of angry unhappy person like fly paper.  

The guy that tells a kid they 'need' an airbrush to make models or they 'have' to have this and that and not just telling them they can grab a kit and have fun making it, that the rest will come to them as time goes by.  No man, you have to buy only AK interactive paints or just throw that kit in the trash.  Wait, that's not the perfect Chevy green for that year, why are you even showing this to people?

Trust me, those types of people and their attitudes that they must thrust onto everyone else do far more damage than kids not wanting to assemble stuff. 

I've watched to many scare newcomers off than they ever bring in. We need to find a way to get those folks to stop that kind of thing and support each other more.



 

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Licensing Schmishensing. 

Fojitsu and Hitaochi decals, sweet! The square fan shaft nice too. I'm holding out for a MFH Subzero multimedia kit though. ?

There are some great cars available in high end resin kits that would sell in volume though. Platz/NuNu/Belkits has hit a groove, and there's lots more. Same with diecast.

Why there isn't a McLaren 720 model 2y after it came out is dumb. 570 ok, but model the car that runs mid-9's dead stock.

991 GT3RS, 991.1 and 991.2 both, GT2RS, M3, M4, M2, even AMG, Porsche and BMW SUV's. That's what people buy. Panamera kit ok, but limited. Why it rather than GT2RS?

No detail kit of a current Mustang and it's thru it's 1st facelift already? One of few actual non-SUV's Ford will sell, and one sold worldwide? Of course no kit. Not even a snap-Plus with headlight fix and waterslide decals. Box art that makes you want to buy it (Mustang, both Raptors, and GT kits have WORST box art for cool cars), can hardly tell Raptor from Raptor, and they'd all sell if people knew what and where they were. 

#biggersigh

Saw a comment here on a build by someone new, in eastern Europe. Put vinyl roof on the car, had decent trim strips, tried, did better than I would. Someone commented "you don't have seams on your vinyl roof".

Really. Between struggling with English, noob on board, and I'd guess hard to get kits of US cars, that's pretty cringeworthy. Hadda add that when I saw Chris's comment. 

Edited by DukeE
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43 minutes ago, hpiguy said:


...Among the things that do the most damage and will help kill the hobby off bit by bit are the critics, the complainers and the whiners that lament everything and anything about every kit on the market. Making those not in the know think every kit is trash and not worth buying or building. 50 pages on roof lines and literally heated arguments about exact curves of decals using graphs and charts. 

The ones that criticize people for just trying to share the hobby, with others telling people that they aren't good enough or that their skills need more work before they should try showing it off, etc. Honestly, what kind of person feels the need to trash others work on their hobby? Do woodworkers leave horrendously cruel comments to each other in such great numbers? Models seem to attract that type of angry unhappy person like fly paper.  

The guy that tells a kid they 'need' an airbrush to make models or they 'have' to have this and that and not just telling them they can grab a kit and have fun making it, that the rest will come to them as time goes by.  No man, you have to buy only AK interactive paints or just throw that kit in the trash.  Wait, that's not the perfect Chevy green for that year, why are you even showing this to people?

I'm curious about which boards and clubs you hang out at. I'm just not seeing that depth of deviltry anywhere I go, and certainly not here.

And yeah, some of us who are really familiar with a particular car may criticize a glaring error that somebody got paid pretty respectable money to get RIGHT.

But in the end, most people I see agree to disagree, and even the most harsh critics often buy poorly-rendered kits and do their own corrections...and then post their results so that those who like their models to look like the subject they represent might be inspired to work a little more out of the box, and be a little less accepting when mediocrity is IN the box.

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2 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I'm curious about which boards and clubs you hang out at. I'm just not seeing that depth of deviltry anywhere I go, and certainly not here.

And yeah, some of us who are really familiar with a particular car may criticize a glaring error that somebody got paid pretty respectable money to get RIGHT.

But in the end, most people I see agree to disagree, and even the most harsh critics often buy poorly-rendered kits and do their own corrections...and then post their results so that those who like their models to look like the subject they represent might be inspired to work a little more out of the box, and be a little less accepting when mediocrity is IN the box.

You should go have a look at some aircraft model sites. Can be pretty entertaining at times. Have everybody from casual builders to those that are ultra serious about dead nuts accuracy, and everybody in between. For the most part things are ok, but sometimes...

Don

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Duke, I appreciate what you say about the Lego Chiron. As a retired engineer I can see the educational benefit of the kit and mentioned that it was a brilliant concept in itself but disappointed overall as a model to me. Other posters have argued that Lego were probably not aiming for a true replica and are probably correct. Personally I think that Lego could have gone that extra mile and made the body look more realistic. As far as the educational side goes, this kit price wise does not appear to be aimed at kids.i

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On 9/28/2019 at 11:38 AM, Richard Bartrop said:

Brian I'm with you on '60s sports cars, and I'd still like to see someone release a Cheetah kit.  Mind you, I think those classics from the '30s are pretty sweet too, and the cars from the dawn of the automobile age have their own funky charm.   That said, those new Aston Martins look pretty nice.

I like some of the Japanese scifi kits.  I'm not always familiar with the series they come from, but some of the designs are really cool.    I have this one the build pile right now.

yamato-2520-6d907fa4-dc4a-47a4-a020-fa8d

The hobby is changing, and not all of the change is bad.

I was in a real slump a few years back and I was barely completing a model car per year. I picked this up and it got me back in the groove again...had a blast trying new to me weathering techniques.

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On 9/28/2019 at 3:52 PM, hpiguy said:

The ones that criticize people for just trying to share the hobby, with others telling people that they aren't good enough or that their skills need more work before they should try showing it off, etc. 

No, no, that's constructive criticism. It's been decided.

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I think the hobby is far from dead. The Hobbytown USA in Cincinnati recently decreased the amount of space devoted to cars and increased the space for Gundam kits. They are selling lots of them, and it is to a younger crowd. Gundam may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's still model building, and I think we all know that for many of us, the kits you like are just the gateway drug to the hobby. Ironically, when I got back into the hobby around 1987-88, it was because I found some cheap Revell Robotech kits at KB Toys. They just looked like they would be fun to put together. I quickly went back to cars and over time, deviated to planes and armor. I think that if Gundam pulls them in, many of them will branch out over time.

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3 hours ago, DanR said:

I think the hobby is far from dead. The Hobbytown USA in Cincinnati recently decreased the amount of space devoted to cars and increased the space for Gundam kits. They are selling lots of them, and it is to a younger crowd. Gundam may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's still model building, and I think we all know that for many of us, the kits you like are just the gateway drug to the hobby. Ironically, when I got back into the hobby around 1987-88, it was because I found some cheap Revell Robotech kits at KB Toys. They just looked like they would be fun to put together. I quickly went back to cars and over time, deviated to planes and armor. I think that if Gundam pulls them in, many of them will branch out over time.

The Gundams also highlight that sticky issue of licensing, and how that has changed..  Bandai owns all the rights to Gundam,  whether it's models or the TV show.  So they sell the TV show to the broadcasters, and then sell model kits in response to the demand created by that show.  A nice setup, if you can make it work.

It used to be, the car makers saw car models as advertising, and would actually assist the kitmakers.    Now the car companies view models as another source of revenue.  That's certainly going to make things tougher for anyone wanting to make any new car kits.

Now the car companies still believe in selling to the young, but their focus is now on video games.  Advertising to old cranks is largely seen as a waste of money, so maybe there is a reason to try and encourage more young people to get into car modeling.

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