Is this an aging hobby?

[Busdriver 6209]

11 hours ago, SuperChamp82 said:

Wow - quite a lot in this one 

Firstly, if Tamiya do see RC as a lucrative, funeral it’s likely another 40 - 50 years before the kids who enjoyed their Worlds success in 2002+ finally push up daisies 

That would give their RC range a c. 100 year lifespan start to finish - so (at roughly halfway through) there’s ample time for opportunity ahead ? 

Secondly, I’ve built Tamiya kits with both my girls when they were 8 - 10 years old and they loved having fun with their kits for another 2 - 3 years afterward - so its not that RC doesn’t appeal to youngsters / its def down to what kids are encouraged to try 

Thirdly, my kids drifted away when 12 - 13 purely because there are so many other things competing for their time / interest these days - v few of which will end up ingrained in their nostalgia / so RC isn’t alone 

Anway - on my darker days I see Tamiya currently raking in money through lazy re re and commodity chassis hosting cheap / boring shells 

They then don’t compete in racing anymore - so there’s minimal / no innovation coming back into the mainstream kits 

Thats no doubt profitable for Mr T but hardly a recipe to tempt youngsters into anything more than a few, short years with Dad ? 

Especially when other RC marques are more robust bashers or far better competitors 

Can Tamiya do what Lego did and rebrand RC to another generation - yes, without question 

Movie tie ins, smartphone control, onboard cameras, racing your kits virtually etc could all do the equivalent - with other ideas just a question away …

The trouble is, Lego were forced to reinvent themselves because they otherwise faced insolvency / extinction 

It’s therefore ironic that our best way to preserve our hobby is arguably to force Tamiya into similar reflection - and stop filling their coffers buying current laziness 👍 

Interesting 🧐 

[c64orinoco 667]

On 2/15/2022 at 5:42 PM, Misterp180 said:

Lego went through a tough patch back at the start of the 00’s and had to turn their business model around to appeal to a new generation of children.

One of the things Lego had to respond to - and they have, very successfully - is adult-age fans of Lego. That's a huge part of their market.

[GeeWings 2830]

1 hour ago, c64orinoco said:

One of the things Lego had to respond to - and they have, very successfully - is adult-age fans of Lego. That's a huge part of their market.

Yes, but the AFOL market is still a small percentage of total revenue, though Lego won’t give exact percentages.

The biggest issues were production costs spiralling, a ballooning numbers of parts, loss making sets and massive over investment in non-core offers (into digital etc).

They got on top of that, made mass redundancies, consolidated and then made a strategic direction to bring fans to the centre of their design process. Licensed sets were a hit and the partnering strategy followed a more careful shared investment approach.

[c64orinoco 667]

24 minutes ago, GeeWings said:

Yes, but the AFOL market is still a small percentage of total revenue, though Lego won’t give exact percentages.

I don't think it's a small percentage. For example - the big Millenium Falcon set - it's defintitely targeted at Adults Of A Certain Age (40-50) with the nostalgia factor of the original Star Wars films.

I think Lego gets a very large proportion of sales in the 'nostalgia' market. Come to think of it, so does Tamiya.

[dannymulder 766]

Lego did something good to me, started with lego 8 months ago and now I am hooked, and I like it so much that I did not touch any of my rc cars and stuff in the 8 months, still thinking of sell al my rc stuff to buy lego for it .

[GeeWings 2830]

57 minutes ago, c64orinoco said:

I don't think it's a small percentage. For example - the big Millenium Falcon set - it's defintitely targeted at Adults Of A Certain Age (40-50) with the nostalgia factor of the original Star Wars films.

I think Lego gets a very large proportion of sales in the 'nostalgia' market. Come to think of it, so does Tamiya.

Lego don’t provide exact numbers but given their recent market update and targets that have been shared it’s assumed the AFOL market is around 10%. Remember most AFOL kits are licensed and Lego pay a hefty sum for most of those licences, Star Wars especially. 

[Mad Ax 9313]

Fascinating thread, and I can't add much that's not already been said.  Although I wonder if there are other social factors at work.

I grew up on a TV diet of Knight Rider, Street Hawk and the Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, Smokey and the Bandit, MASK, Transformers, Pole Position, plus a host of other kid's series which might not have been directly about vehicles but generally had hero cars that came out every episode.  I was a born petrol-head, everything was cars.  Like a lot of boys in the 80s, I grew up dreaming of that day I'd get my first car, and that day I'd be able to get a really nice car.

For me, the RC hobby wasn't just about the wireless operation, the challenge of driving, the fact that I had to build it and could take it apart to repair or modify - although they were undoubtedly very important to me then as they still are now - it was also about connecting with that future dream of owning a car.  About the make-believe world in which all my childhood cars (not just RC, but Matchbox / Lego / Burago etc) existed, a world of dusty plains and blacktop highways and V8 exhaust notes and American accents (yeah, pretty much all the good TV shows with cars in were American, British stuff was utterly dull and was mostly about magic space teddybears, pirates with questionable names and boys who became superheroes when they ate bananas).  Oh, and no rain.  It was always summer in those American TV shows.

I wonder if the same is true today?  With the spiralling cost of motoring, the gradual ousting of the car from certain zones and the villainization of the motorist as a selfish polluter, are today's generation really that interested in cars at all?  Maybe I read too much into it, but I'm not convinced that every kid today aspires to own a car in the same way we did in the 80s.  In fact if you're a kid growing up in some cities today your parents might not own a car, everything you need might be close at hand and it might be just as quick to walk / cycle / bus / train to where you need to go as to drive.  It's far from that easy out in the Westcountry but that won't stop us being forced out of our cars as the world seeks to become greener and the big cities get better infrastructure (or not, as the case may be).

That said, I'm really keen to get my daughter into RC.  She got her first (a Lunchbox) before she was 3, although she hasn't driven it in over a year.  She got a mini crawler just before she turned 4.  I keep telling her that if she practices and gets good enough at driving it, she can have a full-size one and come with me on my weekends away.  She seems excited about the idea of going away, but not about putting in the practice.  My wife tells me her very best days as a kid were the times she went with her dad to country fairs and tractor shows, not because she like tractors but because her dad did, and it meant she could have constant uninterrupted time with him.  She tells me, our daughter will want that too, because that time will be precious.  But I don't know that there won't be too many other distractions.  Maybe I'll be the one cancelling RC events to spend time with her at whatever clubs she's introduced to over the next decade.  There seem to be so many different things for younger kids to do right now.  When I was growing up, the choice was football (for boys) and ballet (for girls), or cubs / scouts / brownies / guides.  Last week a 5 year old boy had to miss his theatre lessons so he could come to my daughter's birthday party.

The change in socialisation is a major thing too.  The pandemic probably accelerated it and maybe brought more adults in, but it was already there.  In the 90s, video games were mostly a solitary thing, unless a mate had a console and two controllers in his bedroom or you took your PC to your friends house and hooked up with a null modem cable.  Nowadays the solitary player seems to be the odd one out, and online gaming has become a whole new society all of its own.  Personally I really enjoyed Skyrim, first on 360 and then on PC - I did several playthroughs over several years, installed heaps of mods and still find myself longing to go back to that big, empty, cold land to fight dragons all over again.  A mate got me a copy of Elder Scrolls Online, and I hated it.  It was like trying to read a book in a busy shopping mall.  People everywhere, garishly dressed and racing around on ridiculous mounts.  Really?  That's not Elder Scrolls.  But that's the world people live in.

It's kind of changed the way in which they play, too, and what they expect from play.

How can you RC with a mate who lives on the other side of the world?

If your armour is damaged?  Just play the game some more, get it repaired.

If your RC is damaged?  Bug your parents for more money, wait for parts to turn up.

If your character is underpowered?  Just play the game some more, level up, get more power.

If your RC is underpowered?  Bug your parents for more money, wait for parts to turn up.

If there's nothing happening in your game?  Log on to a different server, or switch to a different game.  It's always playtime somewhere in the world, you'll always find someone to play with.

If there's no RC events on?  Wait up to 7 days until the next race night, or up to a month until the next club weekend.

During Lockdown 1.0, I played quite a lot of VRC Pro.  I actually really enjoyed it, I got to know some people from my local club better than I had during on-site racing, because we actually talked over Discord during races.  We rarely did that during real racing, mostly because the noise of the hall, and the fact we're standing in a line, made it hard to hear anyone except the guy right next to me.  Also some people don't like to talk while racing.  In club racing, we keep the chatter to a minimum unless we know everyone is happy to talk (that's why I raced TT01 Trucks, because nobody took it seriously  ) - in virtual racing, if you don't want to chat, you mute your mic and headphones until the race is over.

Another thing I came to enjoy was the consistency.  I could keep up with and sometimes even beat drivers who I would be 4-5 laps behind on club night.  RC racing isn't just about being able to drive, it's about prepping, tuning and maintaining your car.  The club's top racer would happily share his VRC setups with me, and I'd apply them just by clicking values on the GUI.  In the real world, I have to know how to apply his setup on my car.  I have to build my car properly, tune out all the slop, properly prep the tyres.  There's probably more going on here (I expect VRC doesn't accurately simulate the subtler aspects of racing, like bumps in the carpet or tyres that take a while to get up to temperature) and the other racers are better at handling those subtle aspects in the real world than I am, but there's a certain ease in the virtual world that doesn't translate to the real, and now that our kids live in that world, it's going to be hard to encourage them out of it.

I also think it's essential, to stop our kids becoming unhealthy and unhappy, but I expect my parents said that about my generation, and maybe their parents about theirs.

[GeeWings 2830]

@Mad Ax lots of great sentiment there. Also lots of great points that ring true even though I’d not considered them before.

I’m not sure of your daughters age but to give you some comfort; I think kids want one-on-one time with their dads (and mums of course) regardless of other distractions. My daughter loves her iPad time but will almost always jump off if she knows she gets time with me without her brother around. One day that will wain but if anything right now it’s on the increase. 

[BuggyDad 4474]

4 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

Fascinating thread, and I can't add much that's not already been said.  Although I wonder if there are other social factors at work.

I grew up on a TV diet of Knight Rider, Street Hawk and the Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, Smokey and the Bandit, MASK, Transformers, Pole Position, plus a host of other kid's series which might not have been directly about vehicles but generally had hero cars that came out every episode.  I was a born petrol-head, everything was cars.  Like a lot of boys in the 80s, I grew up dreaming of that day I'd get my first car, and that day I'd be able to get a really nice car.

For me, the RC hobby wasn't just about the wireless operation, the challenge of driving, the fact that I had to build it and could take it apart to repair or modify - although they were undoubtedly very important to me then as they still are now - it was also about connecting with that future dream of owning a car.  About the make-believe world in which all my childhood cars (not just RC, but Matchbox / Lego / Burago etc) existed, a world of dusty plains and blacktop highways and V8 exhaust notes and American accents (yeah, pretty much all the good TV shows with cars in were American, British stuff was utterly dull and was mostly about magic space teddybears, pirates with questionable names and boys who became superheroes when they ate bananas).  Oh, and no rain.  It was always summer in those American TV shows.

I wonder if the same is true today?  With the spiralling cost of motoring, the gradual ousting of the car from certain zones and the villainization of the motorist as a selfish polluter, are today's generation really that interested in cars at all?  Maybe I read too much into it, but I'm not convinced that every kid today aspires to own a car in the same way we did in the 80s.  In fact if you're a kid growing up in some cities today your parents might not own a car, everything you need might be close at hand and it might be just as quick to walk / cycle / bus / train to where you need to go as to drive.  It's far from that easy out in the Westcountry but that won't stop us being forced out of our cars as the world seeks to become greener and the big cities get better infrastructure (or not, as the case may be). 

On your point about our relationship with the car and how that changes from generation to generation, I think you're right that our childhood experience in that regard is a big driver of why rc appealed/appeals to our generation.

For me, I guess I'm sort of a natural petrolhead who for other reasons isn't a petrolhead. I like tinkering with things, I'm interested in engineering, I like the exhilaration of speed and I think the automotive world has given us some stunning design. However I am uneasy about our relationship with the car as a society. It's a very environmentally harmful element of our society and I think it generates, or at least is an outlet for, a lot of very selfish behaviour that is too often also dangerous. 

RC is harmless but if its reduction in popularity comes from us collectively as a society becoming less wedded to the car then, while that's sad, I think there's also a greater good there.

I don't claim to be without blame by the way. I do a lot of car miles myself.

On gaming and screen time, we've been lucky that so far our 8 year old has shown little interest. I'm under no illusions that it isn't coming but I'm happy that it also has its place, so long as it goes alongside enough breadth of other interests. 

[stulec52 50]

Interesting discussion. 
   How about we do something as a group to flip it around?

  Like I know most of us with kids already try to push the hobby onto them, but how about we go a step further, set up a few cars so kids and their friends can run them, work on them, whatever. 
  I feel like we most be at least partially responsible in keeping the love alive in the next generations. 
 

 I’m sure many are already doing this, and kudos to you, maybe we could share some ideas on how to make sure it’s doesn’t die off with us. 
😃

[Willy iine 18805]

8 hours ago, c64orinoco said:

One of the things Lego had to respond to - and they have, very successfully - is adult-age fans of Lego. That's a huge part of their market.

That is so true.  I don't know why the heck I want one (well it is kind of olive drab ), but that typewriter kit looks so awesome!    LOL  

In that respect, I wish there was a modern day TRF version ultimate M38 kit.. I'd get one even if it was the Bentley of RC cars..

[SuperChamp82 743]

Interesting replies guys

Re the Lego analogy, Tamiya could def follow suit reinventing niche RC if they wanted to 

But - yes - it would inherently mean moving away from shelling peas for maximum profit + abandoning some ingrained thinking - both financial and cultural 

The real point is Tamiya don’t see any immediate need - and won’t as long as ageing adults carry on buying their mundane efforts 

As soon as enough of us grow bored - or die (!) - there will be a tipping point where Tamiya start to lose money on RC - and will either respond through innovation or fold it as venerable / loyal dog that’s sadly had its day 

Personally, I hope it’s the former because there are plenty of ways Tamiya could bring RC up to date and create niche USPs aligned with their brand:

Movie tie in cars vs another re re in gold or black ?

Virtual racing - where you log your kit, motor, esc, hop ups, set up etc and an app reproduces real performance online over a variety of tracks / weather ? 

On board cameras - so you can clip your phone above the RC + drive first person ?

On board gyros / accelerometers - so your phone can guide cornering + show mph ?

There are probably lots of others if you ask the kids who are building / running / enjoying Tamiya now ?

Change would certainly add cost / complexity but - as @Mad Ax says - RC won’t survive battling new technologies, it has to embrace them 

My youngest daughter would bend my ear constantly if Tamiya produced a Back To The Future 3SP she could build, practice with then race for real or virtually against other movie cars with her mates 😂

Add any 11 year old feel like they’re driving first person and Mr Tamiya would trouser so much cash he’d need to recruit a sumo wrestler to hold his pants up !

[NWarty 1325]

I'm just here to comment about the eye-opening first post with Control Line airplanes. Talk about gobsmacked.

I grew up with Control Line planes. My father built them since he was 5 or so in the mid-1950s, my grandfather tuned Rat Racing engines for them for 40 years. I grew up on Ringmasters, Noblers, Cap-20/21s, a Dehavilland Chipmunk, holding the wing while my dad walked to the middle of the circle, wiping nitro castor oil off the fuselage and wings, and being at the flying site for hours on end. It was my childhood. I vividly remember being three years old at a RC flying Field in Houston, Texas, and watching my dad fly an old Sig Ugly Stick trainer while I sipped on a Lemon-Lime Gatorade. I learned to build from plans, grew up with an Xacto knife in my hands, zip kicker, microballoons, Sig wood glue, etc.

Fast forward to today and he still flies, having transitioned to RC years ago in the 1990s.

This is a photo of my sons building legos in his shop roughly 12 years ago. There are two RC combat planes on the workbench, the fuselage of an F6F Hellcat, and a pattern ship down on the floor at the far left.They don't have any interest in RC planes or cars, but they do love Legos, Warhammer 40K, video games, Gundam, and all things anime. They may not take after my hobbies, but we've at least sewn the seeds of nerdom with them

[Misterp180 257]

4 hours ago, stulec52 said:

Interesting discussion. 
   How about we do something as a group to flip it around?

  Like I know most of us with kids already try to push the hobby onto them, but how about we go a step further, set up a few cars so kids and their friends can run them, work on them, whatever. 
  I feel like we most be at least partially responsible in keeping the love alive in the next generations. 
 

 I’m sure many are already doing this, and kudos to you, maybe we could share some ideas on how to make sure it’s doesn’t die off with us. 
😃

Love how this topic has progressed! Kudos to @Juggular for starting the thread! Sorry for making the connection with Lego and some excellent points on the different business models. 

It is hard to see how Tamiya can find that appeal to the younger generation as it did back in the day for many of us. I agree that licences would be expensive and would dilute the profits but might get kids hooked on the hobby and lead them into discovering more of the RCs we enjoy from yesteryear. Perhaps there is some way to bridge the gap into the digital world? RC game with real world models to match those on the screen. 🤔

I like what @stulec52 says above and we should all try and do what we can to keep the next generation interested. I am only running my cars in the back yard but I have been trying to engage my Daughter (5) in the hobby. She enjoys blasting a CW-01 about in the garden and on our track. I am hoping she is better at controlling it this year!! 

She has recently decided she wants to build a car together so we’ll be getting something to sit at the table with through the rainy months in the spring and enjoy some hobby time together. We are lucky as she is more into crafts than anything else, so RC could be an extension of that for her. I fully expect her to bounce of it and onto something else as she gets older but then I did back in the early 90s (thanks Sony PlayStation!!)

Until that happens I am going to enjoy every second of it and keep enjoying my rediscovered hobby for as long as I can!

[Mad Zero 316]

Control line planes - my first experience with i.c. engines was with one when a mate at school insisted I flew his. I remember holding on for grim death as it screamed round & praying it would run out of fuel so I could stop. Hard plastic low wing thing with a Cox .049 I think. 

[M 800STD 586]

Is this an aging hobby?  No Tamiya is.

[Tamiyastef 1967]

11 hours ago, M 800STD said:

Is this an aging hobby?  No Tamiya is.

That is exactly what I could never understand. Tamiya is innovative and conservative at the same time. They started it all bringing RC to the masses with their 58001 and they continued that route off road with affordable kits (Brats and Grasshoppers) to get as most people (young people) involved as possible.

They had no competition whatsoever with their CC-01 platform but never exploited that. Other companies took lead in the crawler community without any resistance or even reaction from Tamiya. They took way too long before the CC-02 came and that's overly complex compared to the CMX/FMX platform from MST that has been on the market for decades... With their attention to detail Tamiya could have been huge in the scale community but they refuse to match body's to the correct chassis layout, for example the NSU on an M-05 while the M-06/08 is readily available, having portals but don't put them under an unimog, giving us the G500 without the IFS... 

They "invented" the M-chassis class but MST has a more affordable platform that can be changed in FWD/RWD and front/mid/rear motor position within minutes. Tamiya has no 4WD M-chassis. For example 3racing and Xpress do. Tamiya could have made tons and tons of money that they could have reinvested in the exposure off the hobby to keep it alive in the long run, but they haven't. So I'm afraid if it depends on Tamiya the hobby is aging and dying.

Nevertheless I'll enjoy it as long as I possibly can  Probably will go as far as an RC walker and/or wheelchair, just be careful the grandchildren don't get hold of the remote 

[Nikko85 3453]

Yes, when people mean “the hobby” do they mean RC, or Tamiya in general?

It would be interesting to see the demographics of other RC forums before we write off the hobby, as Tamiya isn’t RC – it’s just one facet of it.

Other bands seems younger and let’s face it more extreme and cool.

I also agree cars in general just aren’t as interesting now. Even our main car show, Top Gear has mainly giving up really focussing on cars, and instead gives you some canned banter. Cars in the 60 and 70s were fuel guzzling monsters, loud and powerful. Kids idolized them, wrote rock songs about them, had them as posters on bedroom walls.  Now they are fuel efficient, quiet, and increasingly seen as a necessity, not a romantic ideal. No one has a picture of a Prius.

I agree with augmented tech. How many of us would have bought at Tamiya in the 90s if it was still using technology from the 60s? So then, why in 2020 would someone buy something 30 years old, if not for the nostalgia? But the thing is really, is that new technologies and games emerge, and the older ones have a smaller bite of the market. Drones, FPV, robotics etc. might appeal more, and kids probably more interested in coding than engineering, because coding in 2022 is what being able to fix a machine was in 1982.

And yes, indoor hobbies like computer games compete. Remove the nostalgia and compare the experience of playing a triple A game now, to one made in 1992. Now compare driving the best RC car of 1992 to today? What’s changed? Far less I’d argue for the RC car, maybe a little more battery life or speed. Maybe you don’t need to change a crystal to race with mates, not much. 

So it may shrink a little. Or a lot. Or it may have a resurgence (like skateboarding again) but there are some kids getting involved, and hopefully they can carry on for a few more year yet, but really unless Tamiya sell as many grasshoppers to kids today as they did in the late 80s, it will have to change the game plan.  

 

[Nick G 54]

It seems to me that there has been a move away from kit form R/Cs . When I first started there were only kits , and half the fun was building them and knowing how to fix them when you broke them. 

Kid's  in general now seem not want to spend the time building. Not all by any means but lots. Although that may be just my persepsion

[RazorConcepts 2]

I'm more worried about RC forums declining. Everyone is moving to facebook groups now. 

[Mad Zero 316]

2 hours ago, RazorConcepts said:

I'm more worried about RC forums declining. Everyone is moving to facebook groups now. 

Not everyone, I miss out on a lot to do with my hobbies & interests by not being not FB but so be it, I will never join.

[NWarty 1325]

3 hours ago, RazorConcepts said:

I'm more worried about RC forums declining. Everyone is moving to facebook groups now. 

I can only hope social media trash like Facebook, sputters and dies very soon.

[87lc2 2666]

As some of the last few posts have said, I don't think the hobby is going anywhere but Tamiya fans are certainly aging.  I actually beleive the hobby as a whole has seen a resurgence the past few years and that shows in the amount of new vehicles/products being offered by all of the major companies.  I'll always love Tamiya and credit it with me getting so deep into the hobby, but there are way more interesting products from other RC companies these days.  I love them, but Tamiyas are just toys compared to some of the stuff out there.  I call all RCs toys, but you know what I mean   

I also agree with the last few posts about FB.  It and social media in general are the downfall of society, but that's a topic for another day.  Just very thankful that TC is still around and active, most of the other forums I frequented (both RC & 1:1 car) are dead and gone.  

[El Gecko 1344]

On 2/14/2022 at 7:50 PM, Jonathon Gillham said:

Who would choose a slot car set over an RC car

I did just that for about a decade, before I had enough space to store and work on my RCs properly. HO scale slot cars take up a lot less room!

My tiny apartment happened to be relatively close to some really awesome pro-level tracks, so it worked out pretty well, all things considered.

[kotaman 22]

This is a really great topic. I can't say I've got anything that hasn't been mentioned so far, as there's many observations and views here that are all accurate. But I'll have to revisit this one...