Brown boxes

[a.w.k.]

What's the attraction of those brown boxes?
Sometimes I stand in front of the shelf and just look at them.....

[svenb]

Nostalgia 😉

[Busdriver]

Sorry but IMHO just build them

[guggles]

So plain and basic but much better than amazon packages  

[Juls1]

Argh... so many decals to cut out..

[mongoose1983]

Love that Bullhead's box. It is HUGE!

[Saito2]

Yeah, its definitely nostalgia for me. It reminds me very much of perusing some of the better hobby shops that used to be in my area. The one smallish shop I visited frequently was so packed with stock, it didn't seem so small after all. The owner keep all the those brown-box Tamiya bodies at the back of one of the isles. Occasionally, you'd see the old, full-color body box like the XR311 pictured which was a treat (just like the old tire boxes), but the brown-boxes were most prevalent. All those actual replacement parts always made Tamiyas less toy-like in my eyes back then. These were no toy store cars that just became instant junk when they were broken. These had spares just like real cars. I wish Tamiya still made complete body sets like the good old days (re-re SRBs excepted).

 

[junkmunki]

I have a collection of both the brown box kits and the earlier 'artwork' kits, and i've often wondered why Tamiya stopped doing the art boxes. I suspect it was for cost reasons, but maybe it was a marketing thing. The odd thing though, is that while most of the early hard shell kits were in the artwork boxes, the lexan shells were not, they were supplied in bags which could be hung from racking, the Audi Quattro and the racing master onroad series for example.

Im sure there is a logical explanation for it...

J

[mongoose1983]

One of our old friends @mcovalsk used to make good custom sets of the "brown boxes":

https://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.asp?cid=97902&id=6228

[Truck Norris]

They haven't stopped doing the brown boxes with artwork, but they are Japan (and maybe HK, Taiwan) only now:

Not sure why, maybe to do with shipping volumes?

[beefmuffin]

I love the body set boxes!  IMO it imparts due value to what's inside.  These days with modern or re-re bodies and decals it's all no fuss, plain plastic bags.  It's like how the old kits had nice inserts and artwork etc.  The new kits are just plain boxes inside.  The old style seems much more worth-while.  If you're going to go full in the other direction why even have box art on kits at all?  Just sell them in all mixed up in a big plastic bag, lol.

[Problemchild]

I have box envy

i can’t even compete

 

JJ