When I was a kid (pre internet days) I was into various hobbies and would drool every time I saw a hobby shop, only that was few and far between.
When I was real young we had one in an old mill building downtown. I think it went out of business when I was 10 or less.
I remember walking in the door and seeing all the incredible stuff: model airplanes, R/C cars, model railroads, etc. I remember the walls were covered with the colorful boxes from floor to ceiling. I also remember that the glass display cases were always crowded with people talking to the staff, making it near impossible for my short self to see the really interesting stuff.
sigh
I remember vaguely when it closed. I remember getting into model railroads and having to settle for what either KB Toy offered or having to travel to some far-off place for a real hobby shop (which was a huge treat).
A few years ago, a real hobby shop opened near where I live. I went in once and was amazed at the vast selection. The store isn’t huge, but isn’t tiny, either.
Two weeks ago I drove by that same new store and noticed that the old K-Mart building beside it is being renovated for some new hobby shop (forget the name). From the looks of it, and remembering the size of that old K-Mart, the new store will be huge!
Are hobby shops making a comeback? I would have thought that the internet had doomed them for good. Or maybe the internet opens people’s minds to new hobbies and those same people get tired of ordering online and waiting for the merchandise to arrive?
Whatever it is, it makes me wish I was 10 again!
So, anyone else seeing a resurgence in hobby shops?
I haven’t noticed a resurgence, but I did discover there’s a Hobbytown USA in town. There’s also a small, traditional hobby shop that I’ve been to, and another place called Mike’s R/C that I didn’t know existed. My impressions: The small hobby shop is too small. Half of it is devoted to plastic models and a few Guillow’s kits, and the other half seems to be for fantasy things. Hobbytown USA has lots of r/c stuff, but it all looks pretty generic (as would be expected from a national chain).
I still have boxes of un-built Estes rockets. I should try to make some time and build them. I have several Astron Sprints, which was always my favourite. There are a couple/few Alphas and Skyhooks, too, as well as several others. BTW, Estes bought Cox in 1996. They stopped making the Cox engines in 2009, and the remaining inventory was sold. A new company called Cox International, and another new company called Vintage Glow Engines are selling the engines now.
And speaking of Cox engines… Free flight airplanes. I had a Midwest ‘Sniffer’ in the late-'70s. (NB: The image is actually a Super Sniffer, but the planes look alike. The Super Sniffer was bigger than the Sniffer.) The Sniffer used a Cox .020 engine, and it flew like a dream. Good thing I lived in the desert! Kids nowadays probably wouldn’t understand the thrill of building a gas-powered free flight airplane and sending it aloft. It’s so much easier to buy a radio-controlled, electric-powered ‘park flyer’ that’s already built and requires no work, nor understanding of such things as aerodynamics and weight-and-balance. And what if it gets lost? :eek:
I have at least one Sniffer kit I bought several years ago. There are far too many tall trees up here to fly it if I built it, and the only clear area is the bay. Even with the tide out, when it’s a vast mud flat, it’s not an environment that is kind to balsa and tissue. Geez, I’m acting like a modern kid who expects to get more than one flight out of a toy! But given a large enough field, I’d definitely let 'er go. Or perhaps I could make it r/c, since r/c gear is so much smaller and lighter nowadays.
Boxes of Estes rockets, boxes (and indeed, stacks) of plastic models, boxes of Guillow’s airplanes… So many things to build, and so little time!
I think hobby shops are really key to developing the inquisitive nature and skill at building things that makes a really interesting an interested mind. My nephew is a little young yet, but I am glad to report that his dad and I, together with another uncle, have pretty interesting hobbies that play into this well.
My main complaint with hobby shops is that they never have anything larger than D rocket engines. I am scratchbuilding a rocket now that should have its first flight on a G or H, and will eventually use a K to hit 10,000 feet and Mach 1.25.
Thankfully, the Internet is the biggest hobby shop ever - not only can everything imaginable be found for sale, there is also tons of discussion of even the most abstruse hobbies.
I’d love to do high-power rocketry. But I have many other priorities and don’t have the time to devote to getting a license, and I’d rather channel my funds to something that will get me off the ground. (Oh, I was so tempted last week, when I found a 1970 Grumman AA-1A for only $17,000!) And of course, weather and terrain is a problem in my current area.
It seems to me that the brick and mortar hobby shops are still disappearing. No question, there are exceptions, but I remember most decent-sized towns having a couple of good shops dealing in everything from plastic models (this was my thing) to gaming figures. These days it seems like you need to go to a major metropolitan area to find one.
The good news is the reason for this–the internet–makes it effortless to find that elusive item you never seemed to be able to find. And buy it for a good price, too. The bad news is, you can’t turn the item over in your hands and make an informed buying decision if you’re not familiar with the item or its manufacturer. You can’t hold a paint bottle up to the light and see if it’s the hue you really want. You can’t stand at a glass case and see the handiwork of local hobbyists who have donated one of their items for display…
The shopping power of the internet is amazing, but I truly miss the days of the local hobby store.
I spent many happy hours in the late 60s at hobby shops. Mostly I was searching out model planes, but I liked slot cars, Big Daddy Roth-mobiles and monster models too. I moved on to other things, but I still love checking out models in gift shops and museum displays. My favorite hobby shop* growing up is gone now, but there are still 3 or 4 places in area that seem to be doing okay.
*at the old Hacienda Gardens shopping center in San Jose-- it was a required stop every Friday right after I got my allowance.
Oh, yeah. But for the same price I could get a flying aircraft, and not have to spend years building it. My dad was building a BD-5A, but the moving company smashed it. He took the insurance money and got a Skyhawk. Now, if they still made the Quickie Q-200…
We still have several very good hobby shops in our area – but, it is a big metropolitan area. I got back into model rocketry a few years ago, and have been able to get much of what I’ve needed locally…and, if not, some of the online hobby shops (as well as online stores for the manufacturers) are pretty great.
Hobbytown USA varies quite a bit, from what I’ve seen, based on local demand and / or the interests of the local franchisee. Some of the more craft-oriented chains (Hobby Lobby, Michaels) at least carry some entry-level supplies for model-making, rocketry, etc., so they’re maybe better than nothing.
Another factor, beyond the internet, is that, compared to when I was a kid, it seems that relatively few kids get into the sort of “building things” hobbies (trains, models, rockets, slot cars, etc.) to which hobby shops cater. The lure of video games and computers are probably just too strong.
In addition, I suspect that comparatively fewer adults are into those hobbies (or return to them in adulthood). So, there’s just not the same kind of demand that there used to be.
I don’t think there’s any hobby shop renaissance going on. The business continues to suffer from online competition. Plus most hobbies as a whole are in trouble - I think the cliche is that every year, the average hobbyist age increases by eleven months. Kids aren’t starting into hobbies like trains, models, rockets, etc.
Oh man, I used to love when my dad would take me on a special trip to the dollhouse store. A whole store full of extremely expensive dollhouse stuff. I would save up all my money for the trip and end up coming away with maybe a $10 1/2" dinner plate and a little paper Racing Times.
I’m lucky, I’ve got D&J Hobby only a few minutes away. That store is pretty impressive, if a tad bit expensive. Can’t blame them on that; they carry some really hard-to-find items.
I worked for five years in a Hobby Shop. Most of our regulars were men over the age of 30. They came from all walks of life. At our store the regulars would come in on Friday nights and sometimes Saturday morning they would pick up their reserved magazines and each one of them would spend a shit load of cash every weekend. I had a feeling most of them weren’t building many kits but just collecting them.
The key to keeping the Hobby Shop industry alive I believe is fathers bringing their sons to shops as kids, it plants the bug in them and some may return to it later on in life as a hobby.
I used to build military kits, paint minatures, RC gliders but my interests have changed.
They had some really neat kits at the store I worked at sold a paper clock model. They whole thing was a series of paper parts, cut and glued together that worked like a real clock once assembled the only foreign object in the model besides just paper was a pile of pennies used for weight as the pendulum to keep the clock ticking.
Alas, one opened up in our town just before the economy cratered. Bought a 300-in-one electrical set and a visible Wankel Motor from them before they closed down.
Well, for me, I depended on hobby shops in the 80’s, and ventured into high end R/C cars and trucks, and getting into nitro powered R/C cars/trucks by the early 90’s, all via Tower Hobbies, which was all mail order. They had killer magazines (the annual, full-sized ones). You had to read all the information to really learn about the quirks, tuning, etc.
Nothing has done more for hobbies than the internet, but to fully qualify the comment and quantify the impact, I believe the R/C and hobbies were, very recently, the single biggest Ebay thing going. The message board and the resources… just WOW.
I’ve got 60+ MPH 4wd nitro cars, and nitro ridiculous trucks… and there is no way I could have learned everything from brake upgrades, transmission tuning and just, well… everything… without the interwebs. Oooh… I wonder if this Italian racing engine will mesh properly with the new gears I bought… and I wonder if these clutch shoes/springs bite to early… off to the message boards.
So, I drooled at the hobby shop, and found the people running them to be pretentious jerks.
Today, HobbyTown USA is a nice place to visit for face time and chat with real people… and let them check out your rides. Haha.
