I was recently reading an article about the demise of railway modelling as a hobby, how it wasn’t being taken up by a younger generation and that the hobby was now largely the preserve of gentlemen of a certain age. Sadly, I wondered if our own hobby might not be suffering a similar fate? Although I’m also aware that I’m a pessimistic gentleman of a certain age.
Yes and no. Historical model making seems to be on the decline as a "mass market". Most of us on here are of a certain age and grew up with Airfix/Revell/Matchbox/Monogram (and if you were really cool, Historex....
). We rushed to the toy shop to buy a different model every week with our pocket money. Kids today don't do that as they are much less interested in historical and military subjects, probably because they didn't grow up so close to WWII like us. Same with railway modelling - boomers that grew up at the tail end of the steam age have an attraction to that machinery. Railways today aren't very interesting and don't figure large in the psyche of most kids. So the likes of Hornby/Airfix and Revell are struggling to stay relevant and as companies aren't growing.
Their problems are made worse by the likes of us older folks who are still into historical modelling. There are now so many specialist niche producers producing excellent kits in pretty much every area of interest that we don't have to rely on Airfix/Revell any more. I certainly don't.
But overall the hobby of making models is far healthier than it's ever been, largely due to the success of Games Workshop and the interest in fantasy/sci-fi modelling. Games Workshop's revenues have grown 4 times in size since 2013 and they are now £471 million each year - that's bigger than Hornby/Airfix, Revell and Tamiya together! The heart of GW's business models is making plastic models. They have shops everywhere, they sell models, paints, brushes, books, magazines and more. And the Gundam/sci-fi world is also seeing a lot of popularity among younger modellers.
So historical modelling is currently on the downward spiral, and also other trends are happening - some of the figure manufacturers on here are saying 54mm doesn't sell well compared to bigger scales, probably because most of the target market is getting older and prefers the bigger scales......
