Years ago on Revell model kit boxes, they would have an Application Form for Revell’s Master Modelers Club. One of the questions they had on the form was “Where did you buy this kit?” The options are amazing. These days, if you want to go to a brick-and-mortar store to buy a model kit, you are pretty much limited to a hobby shop or one of the full-line craft stores like Michael’s or Hobby Lobby. It wasn’t always like that, as the Revell Master Modelers Club application alludes to.
As a kid, most of my first kits came from the local K-Mart. For 99 cents, you could buy one of Monogram’s Snap-Tite kits IF you had the extra change to satisfy the Governor’s Sales Tax–that brought the total to a whopping $1.03, and with my weekly allowance and the revenue gained from a few collected Coca-Cola bottles, I could swing it. As my tastes matured, I found that the kits cost a bit more, so instead of a kit a week, I’d get one every two weeks. I learned early in the game that big kits were the thing for birthdays and Christmas, but the average model car, plane, ship, or tank were easily obtained on my own.
Aside from the K-Mart, the local SuperX and Eckerd Drug stores carried kits. If we couldn’t get to the K-Mart (which required a ride in the car), we could always ride our bikes to the drug stores and see what they had. One summer, I believe that my brother and I nearly bought out the SuperX store’s model kit stocks–there was the Revell box-scale A-5 Vigilante, the then-new Revell 1/72 scale F-15 and F-16, and some of the newest MPC annual car kits. The Eckerd location usually had more cars than planes, but between the two of them, we could get kits when we wanted to.
Then, one day, we went to the Lionel Playworld across from the mall. I was in awe–the plastic model section was huge! The shelves seemed to stretch to the ceiling, and the aisles seemed to go on for miles. There I saw my first MPC “Profile Series” kits, as well as my first large-scale kits of not only airplanes, but ships as well. There were kits from Airfix, Matchbox, Revell, AMT, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg….why, there were kits from pretty much every domestic and some overseas manufacturer. I remember getting a scale model of the Hindenburg once–it may have been the Testor’s kit, I can’t recall. I remember also getting the AMT Kenworth from the TV show “Movin’ On”, and I though it was one of the neatest kits I had ever built.
Not to be outdone, Sears had a pretty sweet model selection too, upstairs in “The Big Toy Box”. I remember seeing kits of airplanes that I swore couldn’t have really existed (the Messerschmitt Me-410, for one), and of exotic sports and racing cars. I think I also caught my first look at Monogram’s big 1/48 scale bombers there, too.
It seemed that every store you went into had at least a small selection of model kits. They were at the local Jefferson’s and Woolco. Walgreen’s and McCrory’s had a few. They had models at the local U-Tote-Em and Mister Grocer convenience stores. They even had models at the then-new Skaggs-Albertson’s, a grocery store! You would have to shop at one of the high-end fashion stores (and that included JC Penney, too) to find a store that didn’t have model kits!
Of course, there was the hobby shop. I’ve written a little bit on how I discovered the local shop, and I’ll regale you with more of that tale later. Suffice to say, if you built models, you didn’t have too far to look to find them.
As I got older, one of the things I enjoyed most was cruising the town and stopping in at some of the places I knew had a model selection, just to see what they had that looked interesting. I came across quite a few neat kits from time to time in the most unlikely places. I also recall going to the K-Mart in Daytona Beach and discovering the complete line of Airfix’s 1/24 scale airplanes on sale for $5 (that’s no typo–five dollars a pop). Not my bag, I passed, but I did mention this to my college roommate, who quickly took his leave. He returned about 20 minutes later with a large stack of kits–I believe he bought every last kit the store had. The Embry-Riddle bookstore at one time had some model kits, and I still have a Williams Brothers C-46 that I bought for $4–they had it priced as a wrench.
Something happened over the years, and model kits started to slowly disappear from store shelves. Perhaps they were loss leaders. Perhaps the various parent companies started doing cost analyses and decided that the model kits were taking up space that could be used to sell something with a higher margin. First, the convenience stores dropped them. Then, some of the department and discount stores stopped carrying them. Albertson’s (as the chain was known after Mr. Skaggs and Mr. Albertson parted ways) sold off their kits and re-vamped the stores a bit. The drug stores held on for a while, but soon they, too, decided that cheap toys were better items to sell. The discount store hold-outs (Jefferson’s, Woolco, The Treasury, and Zayre, to name a few) stopped carrying models before their respective owners declared bankruptcy.
By the mid- to late-1980’s, you could find kits at only a few selected places other than hobby shops: K-Mart and their competitor Wal-Mart had them, and Lionel Playworld still was hanging on. Then Lionel Playworld went out of business. Toys-backwards ‘R’-Us never really had a large selection at all, but what they did have disappeared. Then K-Mart and Wal-Mart cut way back in what they carried. And, finally, Wal-Mart dropped all but a few basic kits a few years ago.
The sad thing is that a lot of kids these days have no idea what a model kit is, let alone know how to build one, simply due to lack of exposure. We saw model kits everywhere. All of the kids on the block built models. These days, without knowing a modeler, kids haven’t a clue about scale modeling. And that is a shame. Model building teaches a great deal–history, spatial relationships, creativity, patience, and attention to detail are but a few of the things I learned in my lifetime of putting little plastic airplanes, cars, ships, and tanks together.
If you want to do a good deed, take a kid–your kid, or your niece or nephew, or the neighbor’s kid–to the hobby shop. Buy a Snap-Tite kit and build it together. You’ll have a blast, and your young friend may learn a thing or two. While they may not pick up the hobby immediately, they’ve at least been exposed to it. My wife, brother, nephew, and I have done this in the past, and we’ve all had fun together. You never know–later in life, they may wander past a hobby shop, take a look in the window, and see a kit. Then they’ll remember the fun they had….
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and I bid you peace.