Toys?

[Guest]

My mother in law asked my wife to get her a Christmas gift which she could then give me. My wife dutifully asked me and I dutifully ordered a 1:48 Tamiya Wessex from Amazon. The confirmatory email I received described it as a 'toy'. I started wondering what is the ratio of children to adults build kits.

Aidan

[Guest]

I read somewhere that the age group most common for scale modeling is 45-55.

dont know how they arrived at this though Aidan, i know a lot of us built as youngsters ... then life got in the way .... then we started up again.

[stona]

I'd say 40+. There are of course a few younger,even youngsters,but it is predominantly a hobby enjoyed by people with more experience

Luckily there seems to be a fairly steady flow of people coming in or coming back to the hobby.

That's life,a lot of us find that we have twenty odd years where there's no time (or money) for a hobby.

Steve

[colin m]

I read somewhere that the age group most common for scale modeling is 45-55. dont know how they arrived at this though Aidan, i know a lot of us built as youngsters ... then life got in the way .... then we started up again.

Yes, that sounds like my story !

Colin M..

[Guest]

They typically get swept into the same loose category as 'toys' but while it doesn't bother me I don't believe they can truly be classified as a toy at all, for the simple reason that a toy is an item designed, built and intended to be 'played with' a decent scale model cannot be played with without damage occuring, they are display pieces, art would be a more accurate description, is someone buys a painting, it's art, if they paint it themselves, is it a toy suddenly? If you buy a 'commemorative BoB hurrispit' from franklin mint in a glossy sunday mag, it's a display piece, why not a toy? the people ordering would say, ahhh, because it's not intended to be played with and so we come round again to scale model kits!

If I were being really picky calling an iphone or a games console a toy would be more accurate, though users/buyers would likely disagree.

I know that I use mine less as a telephony device and more as a means of entertainment than I ever did when all you could do with them was phone and text.