Kids These Days by Lee Kolosna

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Lee Kolosna, born in 1958 (like yours truly,) is a top-notch model-builder and former contributor to the website modelingmadness.com. Over a decade, he contributed 120 "Modeler's Musings" to that site, all about modeling.  Tragically, a hard drive crash and inadequate backups vaporized all of his "monographs" as he calls them.

I found this essay around 2001 and kept it because I guess it "spoke to me".  Whether it's a hobby, pastime, or tradition, once those keeping the flame reach a certain age, they go through their own version of the "seven stages of grief", distressed and depressed that it won't be passed on and will become irrelevant to future generations.  And of course, discussions to prevent that irrelevance always begin by talking about why "kids these days" just can't see how cool/fun/important our stuff is, and if could only enlighten them.....

This essay is in two parts.  While reading them, try to imagine Lee's assessment of the possibility of getting youth to take up plastic modeling while competing with today's smartphones and social media.

It's a wonderful tribute and poignant testimony to a special time -- our time -- that will never return.  I've gone through my seven stages already.  In a future Christmas, my grandkids will both be getting Tom Daniel's Snap-Tite kits under the tree.  I'm not going down without a fight.

-- Dave

This essay was republished here with Lee's permission--DR

Kids These Days - part 1

The children of the Western World today are the most spoiled generation in history. In the past twenty years, we have moved from an adult-centered society (as it should be) to a kid-centered society. In our execution of duties as parents, we have ended up doing everything for our children: we organize all their sports activities, we cart them around town in our minivans and SUVs from soccer practice to violin lessons to Karate meets, we arrange our family vacations at Disney World for their pleasure, we endure birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheeze because we think our kids deserve it, and we shower them with unneeded and expensive toys like Sony Play Stations, Nintendo Gameboys, Furbys, Pokemon cards, and other vacuous time wasters. Instead of teaching them the values of patience, hard work, and the joys of striving for a goal, we pander to their demands for instant gratification. Do they appreciate it? No.

This generation of brats dresses either sloppily (baggy jeans and backward ball caps for boys) or like hookers (bare midriffs, hip hugger jeans, and spaghetti-strap tops for girls), showing disrespect for their elders and the institutions that we have worked so hard to create and maintain. These kids don’t even dress properly for formal occasions like church, and getting them to say even one sentence without randomly interjecting the words "like" and "you know" is a major undertaking. We allow them to have their own TVs, VCRs, credit cards, cell phones, pagers, answering machines, and computers. We even buy them their first cars as soon as they are able to drive.

We look around at our model club meetings and wonder where the kids are. We look around at model contests and wonder where all the kids are. We look at the hobby shop model isles and again wonder where the kids are. I know where they are – they’re all at the mall hanging out with the other juvenile delinquents. This generation of children has no intention of ever knowing the pleasure of quietly building a model over many evenings because all they want is something to satisfy their selfish need for flashy entertainment. If it can’t be done in a matter of minutes, they aren’t interested. And don’t even bother trying to give them a sense of history, as most of these kids can’t even find Europe on a map, let alone have any idea when or why Pearl Harbor was bombed. It’s always me, me, me, and, "What have you done for me lately?" with these kids. They are self-absorbed, manipulative, and have no comprehension of what makes this country great.

Oh, hogwash!

These are arguments you see and hear often about the general malaise of our everyday lives and the perplexing behavior of our youth. People seem to forget that the Baby Boomers (that’s us!) are responsible for long hair, free love, disco, the Pet Rock, and liquid soap. In the end, we will have much to answer for. Besides, it’s easy to blame the kids when it is in fact the parents who are empowering the behavior described above. These arguments often extend to explanations about why kids don’t seem to be interested in building models. I don’t believe any of it. The kids today are not much different than we were, and our children’s children will be about the same as well. It is very easy for the generation in power to complain about the incoming generation’s lack of appreciation for their elders and their collective experience and hardships. The classic story about having to walk to school, five miles, in the snow, uphill both ways, is a unique manifestation of this belief. Remember that our parents once thought that we were useless and had it way too easy. Now they want us to manage their investments and promise that we won’t banish them to nursing homes. We seem to be the ones in charge at the moment.

So, why don’t we see kids interested in modeling? This is a simple question that has complex answers and bears some discussion, which will be done over two installments of Modeler’s Musings. In part 1, we will address the factors that influence the average child’s life, and next month we will explore some of the external contexts for wanting to take up the hobby of scale modeling.

One of the most common complaints heard is that models have become too expensive for kids to purchase and enjoy. Having two sons, I see firsthand that money is rarely a problem when it comes to affording a $25 Gameboy cartridge or a $50 Play Station disc. Believe it or not, allowances have gone up commensurately over the years and kids usually have the funds they need to do what they want. Christmas and birthday money from grandparents and other family members also fill budding bank accounts very nicely. We look in horror at the $65 Tamiya Swordfish, but a Revell-Monogram NASCAR kit goes for a very affordable $10 or so. In fact, most car kits are reasonably priced. High-end kits from Tamiya and Hasegawa and the like are really aimed at adult modelers, anyway. The days of 99-cent Aurora kits are over, and today’s kids understand that. If you take that 99-cent model we made in 1965 and adjust the cost for inflation over the past thirty-five years, it would come out to be around $6. Today’s $10 kit has far more detail, better decals, better accuracy, and better fit than the old $6 kit. Of course, those old Airfix and Lindberg stinkers are still out there and we can build them for nostalgia’s stake if we want, but I’d rather spend my money on a superior Academy or Revell-Monogram kit.

I believe that one of the biggest factors in whether to build a model or not is the simple fact that there’s a lot more out there for a kid to do. In addition to the above-mentioned frenzy of participation in sports (in geographically dispersed locations), kids are loaded down with tons of homework that takes hours to do each night. The trend in the past two decades has been to pile on the homework, with the idea that giving academic pursuits to children will somehow keep them from becoming hoodlums hanging around on street corners. Parents also arrange special tutoring in math and reading to ensure that their kids are getting the best possible instruction so that they can get into the premier colleges and universities. The children have lives that are scripted from the second they get up until the time they go to bed. What little free time they have is often squandered, unfortunately, on the boob tube, and not on building plastic models.
When I was a child, TV had just become commonplace. We had a whopping three channels to choose from. No Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or MTV. Other than watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, or the sparse Saturday morning lineup of cartoons, we didn’t spend a lot of time watching TV. Not so today. With cable television feeding us 100 channels and more, the opportunities to waste time watching TV are plentiful and addictive. I maintain that our generation was attracted to model building partly because there wasn’t much else to do on a rainy day.

Another big factor in the decline in scale modeling has to do with the sheer number of alternatives that one has when the decision has been made that one wishes to possess a miniature. I remember wanting a model of an X-15 badly (like most kids in the 60’s, I was consumed with the Space Race), so I walked down to the local Woolworth’s, bought a neat box-scale kit of the X-15 and NB-52 mothership, slammed it together in an hour, and began exploring the upper reaches of the stratosphere that very afternoon. We used to build models mostly for the privilege of owning a miniature that we could play with. The building process was merely a way to get there, and let’s face it – we usually did a crummy job. We had no other alternative for getting a cool spaceship or a fast fighter jet. Today, a kid can buy a ready-made metal die-cast model or ABS plastic toy that has perfect paint and markings, is more durable than styrene, and often has blinking lights or sounds. If you were nine years old, what would you pick: the ill-fitting AMT Star Wars X-Wing fighter model kit or the pre-assembled and painted Kenner toy with laser blaster sounds and Luke Skywalker action figure? For most, it is a no-brainer.

Legos, K’nex, Playmobile, and other similar toys have also made a big impact on kids’ participation in scale modeling. Gone are the days of Lincoln Logs and simple block structures. Lego produces very cleverly engineered kits that build up to become a miniature spaceship, car, boat, or airplane that kids find really cool. Parents like them because they don’t involve toxic and messy glue or paints, and they allow the child to build alternative variants. Kids like them because they’re fun to build and always look just like the picture on the box when done. Lego also has a fan club you can join, dedicated enthusiast web pages, and even a theme park in California. When it comes to birthday party gifts, a parent will more likely choose the Lego set rather than a model kit from Revell-Monogram.

Another alternative is found in the world of electronics. Computers and video games are marvelous time-wasters, but they also allow one to experience some of the thrill of playing with a miniature. With my X-15, zooming at Mach 6 over the top of my mother’s rose bushes, I was engaging in an imaginary world. Today, computer and video games bring some of that imagination to us with great ease and a lot more pizzazz. I can fly just about any hot fighter jet I want in a variety of flight simulation games, and with it I get realistic sounds, cool explosions, stirring music, and excellent graphics. While I don’t have a three-dimensional model in my hand, I do get the virtual experience of actually being there, and for most kids, this is a perfectly acceptable substitute for building a model.

The same thing has happened to the hobby of slot car racing. In the 1960s, just about the only way to race a miniature was to use slot car technology. Today, we have the option of radio-controlled cars, or we can go down to the video game parlor and pump quarters into the racing game machines, or we can buy a video game console and play one of the many racing games on the market in the privacy of our own home. You can tell what option most kids (and adults) have taken, as slot cars have diminished to the point of invisibility.

You see the model manufacturers trying to keep up with the die-cast trend by offering model kits that are pre-painted and assembled, and this may or may not be successful for them. Traditional modelers scoff at these kits, but one must recognize the manufacturer’s attempt at new and creative solutions to counter declining revenue. If they don’t make up sales with the pre-made kits, then they will either have to severely curtail their presence in the marketplace or even leave the business altogether. It is a disturbing notion to those of us dedicated to the hobby, but the signs are clearly there.

Next month, we will look at the unfortunate decline in access to model kits, as well as the changes in external influences that create the desire to make a model.

Lee Kolosna

Kids These Days - part 2

Being the father of two boys, I find myself constantly surrounded by children. There are kids everywhere I go, either at school during drop-offs and pick-ups, or on the athletic fields and gyms, or even in my own home on afternoons and weekends. Since my modeling desk happens to double as my kitchen table, there are usually streams of neighborhood children passing by as I work on my latest project. Often they will stop to see what I’m doing. Like a good parent, I will stop my efforts and show them the model I’m working on, let them hold it, and maybe explain a little about the history behind it. The response is always positive as they tell me how "cool" it is (as opposed to the few adult friends who know that I build models as a hobby – their reaction is invariably a look of incredulity). They will hover around the table for a few minutes, and then invariably drift off to the TV room to play the latest Nintendo video game. I often wonder whether this brief glimpse into the process of building a scale model will plant a seed that will inevitably grow and bloom into participation in the hobby, or whether it will register virtually nothing at all? I fear that more often than not, it is the latter.

I encourage my own children to build models, and they do so occasionally. I’m with them every step of the way, fighting the urge to butt in and do it myself. They make all the mistakes that I did when I was young, only I didn’t have a father who had a hundred bottles of paint, several airbrushes, and a complete set of modeling tools right there to offer solutions to their problems. They do seem to enjoy themselves, but I can see that the passion isn’t burning in their bellies the way I remembered it was for me. You can put a Tamiya Birdcage Corsair kit in front of them and they have absolutely no idea what it is (other than being a moderately interesting airplane with funny wings) or what it was used for. Being my offspring, they get a lot of exposure to modeling clubs, modeling contests, reference materials, closets stuffed full of old kits, and so on. But will it mean that they will someday fill the shoes of their old man? I doubt it.

Model clubs often see similar results when they do Make-n-takes or modeling demonstrations at the local mall or hobby store. Kids stop by, exclaim over the models for a few minutes, debate internally whether they can sneak a touch, and then leave, resuming their normal (i.e. non-modeling) lives. The opportunity to become really involved with the hobby is laid out for them on a silver platter, yet it doesn’t seem to hold much more that a passing admiration. Why is that?

I think that a lot of it has to do with subject matter. In part 1 of this monograph, we discussed how demands on a child’s spare time, coupled with the large number of alternatives that exist for obtaining a scale miniature, makes it more difficult for the hobby to attract new blood. In this concluding chapter, we will explore the nature of external influences and how well scale plastic modeling fulfills the need. We will also discuss the declining potential of access to model kits.

The world of adult modeling has been influenced greatly by the military and related hardware. World War II and Cold War subjects inspired the first sets of plastic aircraft and armor model kits made in the 1950s. There is no surprise in that, as the parents of Baby Boomers were most likely participants in the World War II and Korea. Someone in our immediate families either served or was affected by the events surrounding the wars, and we often heard about it around the dinner table, picnics, and family reunions. As kids, we were constantly reminded of the conflicts by many of the TV shows that we watched, like McHale’s Navy, Rat Patrol, Combat, Twelve O’clock High, and even Hogan’s Heroes. We saw reports from the jungles of Viet Nam every night on the world news. You really couldn’t avoid it, as the military, for better or worse, had a very high profile in the 1960s. Our newspapers and magazines hailed the latest technological developments in our struggles against the evil Soviet Empire. New weapons were developed and deployed continuously and we were led to believe that these technological achievements were necessary to protect our freedom. There was almost always a new aircraft or rocket or ship being tested, and it was relatively easy to get a kit of the latest addition to the arsenal of democracy.

As they say, that was then, and this is now. Over half a century has passed since World War II and the memories are starting to dim. The veterans are dying off in droves, documentaries like Victory at Sea and The World at War are relegated to the History Channel, and the war is made briefly real only through the occasional big-budget movie like Saving Private Ryan and U-571. Because of the debacle in Vietnam, the image of the US military to the general public sank to levels not seen since the turn of the century. In addition, the reduced threat of nuclear war (thank goodness) has reduced the number of people enlisted in uniformed service, the overall number of bases has declined, and overall awareness has become less widespread. Kids today are taught that war is bad, which it undoubtedly is, but somehow the notion of serving one’s country has also become a bit less noble in the eyes of the general population.

Growing up in South Florida, I distinctly remember seeing B-52s, F-106s, and F-4s flying over my house daily. Forty years later here in North Carolina, my own kids never see a military aircraft, let alone anyone in military uniform, despite our being only a ninety-minute drive away from three major installations: Fort Bragg, Cherry Point MCAS, and Seymour Johnson AFB. What this all means is that they have virtually no context in which to place an F-16 or M-1 tank or Spruance-class destroyer. To them, it’s a somewhat interesting piece of machinery that they see every couple of years or so when their old man drags them to a museum or air show. They look at the models built by Baby Boomer modelers and feel almost no connection to our kits or even to us.

Similar events have occurred in the world of space exploration. When we won the Space Race in 1969, the passion and drama of the quest seemed to evaporate almost overnight. The Space Shuttle, for all its marvelous engineering, has been in service for twenty years and has flown over a hundred times. Each mission has all the excitement of a trade union convention. I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, I knew every astronaut’s name and a lot about the machinery that propelled them into space on their heroic journeys. Today, a space shuttle mission has a bunch of uniformly bland, over-educated "mission payload specialists" who perform obscure experiments in space for a week or so and then come back down with the briefest of mentions in the news media. The hardware hasn’t changed much, the missions are all more or less the same, and the public routinely ignores the program. Why would a kid want to build a model of something that means virtually nothing to them? I know that I wouldn’t, if I were young.

So what about cars and science fiction subjects, where access is steady and constant? The tremendous popularity of NASCAR fueled the rise of Monogram and ERTL kits, but again toy technology has rushed in and provided many more options than a plastic model. We can get a miniature of Jeff Gordon’s Chevrolet in just about any scale and price range. Only one of the options involves self-assembly and painting by the purchaser: the model kit. Also note that the car industry, like the space program, has settled into a rather boring groove in the past decade. Kits exist for 60s muscle cars such as the Pontiac GTO or the AC Cobra, as well as for mundane things like a ‘57 Chevrolet or a ‘64 Ford Galaxie 500, mostly because they were all pretty different. Today, we have hundreds of cars and trucks to choose from, and they possess a numbing similarity of design. Does the latest Honda Civic provoke the same response that we had when we saw the Ford Mustang for the first time? Today we still get the inevitable kits of Firebirds and Corvettes, but never something a boring as a Toyota Camry or an Oldsmobile Intrigue. Will future modelers be clamoring for kits of a 2000 Pontiac Aztek, like our generation did for a ’59 Ford Edsel? I don’t think so.

Science fiction subjects, like those from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 still enjoy a healthy response from the kit manufacturers and indeed represent the greatest potential for growth. The toy robot phenomenon is huge around the world. We Baby Boomer modelers tend to ignore these models, probably because we have no context in which to place them. Instead, we clamor for a North American A-5 Vigilante kit, which we’ll probably get because of the combined strength of our disposable income. But as we start to die off in the coming years, will there be anyone to replace us? I think the jury is still out on that one.

If we could suddenly become eight years old again, would we eschew the modern temptations of video games, Britney Spears CDs, and Razor scooters for the quiet pastime of building a model? Some might, but a lot of us wouldn’t. Those that did would most likely not search high and low for a kit of, say, a Bristol Beaufort. We would more likely build miniatures of things that we thought were cool to an eight-year-old, like maybe a Plymouth Prowler or a dinosaur. Of course, we would be tempted to just get a diecast replica and bypass the building process altogether. We didn’t have that option in 1964, but we sure do now.

The last item of discussion has to do with access. Supposing that we actually do want to build a model kit, where do we get one? We Baby Boomers used to be able to find them in toy stores, five-and-dime stores, drug stores, bookstores, department stores, candy stores, and even hardware stores. Forty years later, models are gradually becoming the sole providence of specialty hobby stores. Even then, not all of them are well stocked in plastic kits, and we have to fend our way through the mountains of collectibles, the radio control stuff, the beads, and the diecasts. Even big retail stores like Toys R Us and Walmart have depressingly small selections of kits and more importantly, supplies. To me, this is the single greatest indication that our hobby is in decline. The chances for impulse purchases have decreased exponentially from the days when model kits were ubiquitous. If a kid rarely sees them for sale, the chances that they will develop some kind of desire to own one are correspondingly small. The really sad matter is that the retailers don’t devote a lot of space to plastic model kits because they are slow sellers. This is the harshest of capitalist realities, and it makes you wonder if the industry will soon begin circling the drain.

Is the hobby doomed? No. People will be building plastic kits forever, just like people still get all giddy about constructing model railroad layouts or building models of wooden sailing ships. Time and technology are passing our hobby by. The basic framework of our kits was formed in the very early days, and even with the introduction of new materials like resin and photo-etched metal, it remains essential the same as it was in 1952. I believe that the plastic model industry is headed for a serious reduction in size and scope. We’ll be able to get stuff from a few specialty outlets, accessible through mail order or the Internet. But the glory days are coming to a close, and new generations will move on to some other type of leisure activity. We sure had a nice run at it, didn’t we?

The dilemma the modeling community faces is whether trying to entice kids into the hobby is ultimately a lost cause. Should they keep putting on demonstrations at the local hobby store, provide junior categories at contests, and orchestrate Make-n-Takes? Yes, they should. It is much better to go down swinging, rather than to get a called third strike. At least, I think it is. It certainly can’t hurt, and it just might influence a select few, who will one day inherit the wonderful hobby that has been so pleasurable for us for the past fifty years.

Lee Kolosna