The Modeling Insanity Podcast
The Modeling Insanity Podcast
Episode 50: The State of the Hobby with Special Guest Dave Grummitt
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Episode 50 – The State of the Hobby
For our 50th episode, we invited Dave Grummitt, Managing Editor of Military Modelcraft International to help us tackle one of the biggest questions in scale modeling: What the hell is happening to our hobby?
Nothing is off limits.
Has social media made the hobby better… or has it turned every build into a popularity contest? Are “likes” replacing craftsmanship? Are model shows still the heartbeat of the hobby, or are they becoming an excuse to shop and complain about the judging? Have manufacturers made kits so good that we’re running out of excuses for our own mistakes? And here’s the question that may start the biggest argument of them all… if you’ve got 800 unopened kits stacked to the ceiling, are you really a model builder—or have you become a plastic collector with a building problem?
Riv also takes shots at those keyboard warriors on social media, the fear of honest critique, shrinking attention spans, aftermarket overload, YouTube experts, and whether we’ve become so obsessed with buying the next “must-have” kit that we’ve forgotten the simple joy of actually sitting down and building one.
Nobody was safe. No opinions were filtered. And if you’re looking for an echo chamber, you’ve picked the wrong podcast.
Will everyone agree with us? Absolutely not. In fact, if this episode doesn’t make you nod your head, laugh out loud, or yell at your speakers at least once, we probably didn’t do our job.
So pull a kit off the shelf… preferably one you’ve owned for more than ten years… grab your favorite beverage, and join us for a conversation that’s equal parts thoughtful, hilarious, and guaranteed to stir up debate.
This is Episode 50 of the Modeling Insanity Podcast. The glue may be dry, but the opinions are anything but.
Opening and end music by Supernova by Arthur Vyncke https://soundcloud.com/arthurvost
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Join the Podcast on Facebook on The Modeling Insanity Podcast Page
Email the Insanity Crew at modelinginsanitypodcast@gmail.com for any comments or suggestions.
There's people who feel emboldened enough to act like a bunch of arrogant pricks on that page. And you know what? Come at me. I don't give a shit. I can I can I'm a big boy. I can defend myself. You want to go toe-to-toe? We'll do it. And this is the thing. They take these people's posts, they put it on that page, and they want to ridicule or or belittle people or whatever. Because it makes them feel better, because they got little dicks, tiny dicks you guys have. And it's not my fault that you got a small dick, that you got to worry about fucking complaining about other people because your life sucks. And trust me, I've seen some of your people's pages in your personal life, and I can understand why you're so miserable when you go on those pages to talk about other people's stuff. And I will say that honestly, and I'm not doing that to be a funny guy. You know what? You want to get personal? Get personal. A lot of those guys who post on those pages, I've seen their personal Facebook pages, and I can understand why they go on that page and are miserable. And if I was them and had that Facebook page, I would be miserable too. Sorry, I went there. It's the 50th fucking episode for causing trouble. All right.
SPEAKER_10Hey, everybody.
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SPEAKER_04Frankie Denati. Hello. Steve Santucci. Hello.
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SPEAKER_04Rob Adams. Yo yo. And we have two special guests, our resident car guy from our Model Car Mania podcast, Mr. Jason Hanscombe. Hi, everybody. And my boss from Military Modelcraft International, Mr. Dave Grummet. Good evening, all. So Dave finally has made it. We've been trying to get Dave on for like the last six episodes, but Dave is finally here. And what better episode to be a part of than our 50th episode? This is our 50th episode, which is a milestone. This is not our hundredth. I understand that this isn't a big deal, but for us, 50 is a big deal because I could honestly say, and I think that Rob Adams um will agree with me when I say this, that when we first started the modeling insanity, a lot of people are like, ah, they're only gonna last a couple of shows. A couple of shows and they'll be done.
SPEAKER_21And you know what? I was doing some math last night and I was like 50th, but if we released every two weeks, we'd be at 100. You know, we would be at 100.
SPEAKER_04We're about 60 something episodes with our specials.
SPEAKER_21We're in for what three years now?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we started in 2023. Um, we are in it for three years. If we did every two weeks, like a lot of the other shows do, we would be at a hundred. And listen, I respect all the other shows that do it every two week drop. The Model Geeks, good friends of ours. Whitey's a good buddy of mine, as well as you know, El Prez and Frildo and Samo, and now D-Rand is back. You know, the Pod Father at the on the bench. We also got, you know, our buddies over there at the Beyond the Box Art podcast. Also, the posse guys they release every two weeks. But are you just releasing to release, or do you release because you feel like you got something to talk about? I know that you need a steady schedule sometimes to keep people engaged, but I also feel like every three-week recordings is always better, and I don't feel rushed sometimes to get the episodes edited and out, but we also do other podcasts on our little insanity banner, unlike the other shows. We have the Court of Scale Madness, which we're trying to release more episodes on, as well as the Model Car Mania show, which focuses on car shows. So a lot of these other podcasts don't do that. We do so, and we also do the live cast where we do every week, and that's also other content. So we do bring a lot of other content than just the modeling insanity podcast. So that's a big thing that people need to understand. And 50th is a big deal for us, and we're gonna really I want to cause some trouble on this show. I want to engage and have a lot of great discussions. I want people to talk about this afterwards, and there's gonna be a lot of good uh points to discuss about the state of the hobby. That's gonna be the main topic of the show. No other topics. We're gonna talk about some other things first, but when we get into our main topic, it's gonna be the state of the hobby.
SPEAKER_10Rob, I have an email to read out, which I have been told to do so at the very start. And it starts by saying, for the love of God, Rob, shut the fuck up for two minutes. We'd like to congratulate Rob Riv and the whole modeling insanity podcast team on reaching episode 50. Although, if if we're being honest, it feels more like you've reached episode 300. Not because you've been around that long, but because every time Rob answers a simple question, it somehow turns into an episode of The Sopranos, the director's cut. By the time he's finished explaining why he prefers one shade of olive drab over another, you've aged disgracefully. Drunk a bottle of bourbon or three, and the dog has learned to drive. Seriously, though, 50 episodes is a fantastic achievement. Producing a podcast consistently takes far more work than most listeners ever realize, especially trying to edit this lot into some semblance of an order. And you've built something that's informative, entertaining, and a genuine asset to the modeling community. Congratulations to the entire team and Rob from all of us at Beyond the Box Art, Brownie, Dan, Shane, Nev's, and Hamish McBalders. Here's to the next 50, which, if Rob keeps yaking at his current pace, could see us through to about 2042. We're beyond.
SPEAKER_06Preach, Box Art, preach.
SPEAKER_04Excellent. That's awesome. That was funny. Thank you, Brownie. I do appreciate that. Dan Brazil and the other guys at Beyond the Box Art podcast. That's awesome. I appreciate that, Brownie. Right, guys? Do we appreciate the Beyond the Box art guys?
SPEAKER_14Yeah, thank you, guys.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you would have thought the pod father of Whitey, those guys, but they don't they don't care about us. It's okay. I understand. Even though the pod father will be at my house this Friday, I gotta pick him up at the airport. I'm gonna spoon him. I'm gonna do some really bad things to him when he's here so he can always remember and stay with me on Long Island. But uh no, listen, it's a big I think it's a big achievement for us to get to 50. Like I said, we're about 60 somewhat episodes in, but we will get to 100 eventually, God willing. Our health is and everything stays the way it is. I think that the podcast is healthy. We get a lot of listens, and I do appreciate that. It's a lot of fun. And the insanity will always be the way we are. We're gonna be off the cuff, we're gonna be unscripted, we're gonna be unedited. Well, not we're edited, but not like we're gonna be um uncensored. You're gonna hear, you know, I I think that works. I know a lot of guys out there do podcasts wish they were a little more uncensored, and it's actually makes the podcast better. I don't care about being family friendly. Your kids should not be listening to this.
SPEAKER_11No.
SPEAKER_04And I also don't right, and we also don't take, you know, money like I say this all the time. We're not a Patreon type podcast, so we're not really held to a standard when it comes to consistent releases, you know, talking about things in a certain way. We do our own thing. If you don't want to listen, just turn us off. If you want to listen, keep going. And as always, always unscripted, always unscripted, always unscripted, even though this is might be a little more scripted because we did discuss a lot of the things we're going to talk about in some ways. Because I really want this to be impactful. An outline is different than a script, right? And like I said, I've got Mr. Dave Grummet here. Um, and we are recording earlier on a Sunday because of the time difference, and and our good friend Jason Hanscom is here as well because I wanted the car angle on this show because of the state of the hobby, which is really important. But uh, I do want to just say a couple of things before we get to our topic. And you know, I gotta do a little rant again. Here's a little rant just for our 50th. We need a rant. All right, Chase.
SPEAKER_07When do we not need a rant? Well Thursday.
SPEAKER_04Go ahead. This is my little discussion rant. This might just make a small short discussion before we get to our main topic of the state of the hobby. Everybody knows how I kind of like to, you know, promote some of the builds that I do. Mr. Dave Grummett is here. We do meet once a week, usually, and discuss like things we're gonna do in the future and how we're gonna do it. And we did discuss uh doing the JS2 from Royfields and how we would do it. I didn't know that Dave originally wanted to make it a feature on the cover, which I think was a great idea, and I do appreciate it. And it's made a great discussion on social media because people really liked seeing a naked model. I know people bust balls, but the naked model on the cover was actually a really cool thing, and I do appreciate that, Dave.
SPEAKER_21And the word naked appeared right on the cover, which is cool, you know. It it that that I'm sure that grabs a little bit of attention to naked, right?
SPEAKER_10I think to really sell that point, you should sell the magazine in stores wrapped in cellophane behind the counter, behind the counter, yeah.
SPEAKER_21Next to the playbook, show ID and shit.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, next to the playbook, but you know, Rob, I cannot think of another. I don't know if armor model in the Japanese magazine has had uh uh an unpainted model on the front, but I can't think of an English language publication that's no, I can actually, I can think of one AV modeler, Lee Lloyd. Yeah, AFV modeler. Um there was a guy called now what was his name? Lee Lloyd. He Lee Lloyd, who did the Churchill, yeah. That was that was the only one I can think of.
SPEAKER_04The Tiger One, I I thought it was the Interior Tiger One he did, the Academy, which was the big one. Like he came caught.
SPEAKER_22He did a Churchill as well, didn't he? He was a great modeler, Lee. I mean, he caught a fellow off the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_04He was also a really tall guy, really tall guy, really, really tall guy.
SPEAKER_21He's like, Wow, you're really tall.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, big tall guy.
SPEAKER_21It's true.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's a relative thing when you're me. Everybody's tall. No, but you're right, though. And but that's not the rant, though. That's the the appreciation of doing it, but it also caused a nice little discussion about it. My little rant is this because when I did originally post pictures of the JS2 from Rye Fields, a lot of people got a lot of great response. Like, great response. I think that uh, you know, the the the algorithm was outrageously good for that model, but some people were saying, Oh, well, you know, which they copied Tamiya's model. And I know the last episode I kind of talked about how like people just like to just complain about shit and things like that all the time about models and stuff. And I don't want to get into these back and forth, especially on my modeling page, because I try to be, I don't want to be a dick, right? So I'm going back and forth with a couple of people, and I'm like, in a lot of ways, it is very similar to the Tamilla kit, but the Tamia kit was an excellent kit, all right? It's an excellent kit, and it and if it's gonna have similarities or if the people at Roy Fields use that as the basis for making their model, so be it. Does it make a difference that that Tamiya did this kit now going on 20 years ago?
SPEAKER_21It's the same subject, there's only so many ways you can break it. Only so many ways you can do it, right?
SPEAKER_04Right, and that's my thing. And and Roy Fields took it to another level. The hull was split, that workable suspension, it's articulating, uh, workable tracks, 3D printed muzzle brake, and the Tamiya kit it's a two-piece barrel with the muzzle. There's a lot of things that Roy Fields did so much better that they improved that kit so much more than what the Tamiya kit was. And they also offer this aftermarket kit to go along with it. Now, you don't have to buy it. If you want to upgrade your kit like I did in the magazine, you got to spend an extra 30 bucks and you can get this full crazy update set. Two big sets of photoatch, you're gonna get a full 3D printed barrel and muzzle brake, you're gonna get all these 3D printed fittings for the whole model to change out, all this stuff. It's so awesome. Then my rant is this I'm sick and tired of people fucking complaining about models on social media. You're gonna sit there and and you know, and though those are listening, knows who I'm talking to, right? You're gonna sit there and complain about a model that you never even built. You never even built the model, you haven't built the Roy Fields JS2, and you're already gonna piss on it because you think, oh, well, it's a copy of the Tomia, because you heard it was, or you heard about during development what they were doing or not doing. These people probably never even built the Tomia kit. I'm not sitting there bitching about stuff that I did, they're just complaining about the manufacturer, which I take offense to if you never built it. If you built it and you want to have an honest opinion when you build it, then come back to me. But until you build it, keep your mouth shut. Simple as that. I don't want to hear you complaining about a model that you never built. If you built it, I want to hear it. But if you never built it, I don't want to hear what you gotta say.
SPEAKER_21I don't what's your opinion on the actual build? Great.
SPEAKER_04The kit was amazing, it was a great kit. I didn't have one problem building that kit. I enjoyed every minute of building that kit. There was no problem. I mean, listen, when you're working with FordWedge and you're trying to get things to fit, then sometimes you gotta work a little things. But when you're when it comes to the base kit, the kit was amazing. I agree a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_22I mean, uh you know, uh the GS2 is not a complicated vehicle, right? Yeah, not at all. It's a big lump of hull with a big lump of turret on the top with a few bits on the side. I mean, how else can you do it? But as you say, you know, 20 years on, you've got different technology, you've got the 3D printing, you've also got uh you know, you and I mean Ryfield are are probably, I think, in my opinion, probably the top manufacturer at the moment in terms of innovation, in the sharpness of their molds and everything. If you don't want to build it, don't build it. Right. Simple as that. Yeah, you don't have a right to an opinion if you haven't built it. Right. We see this the slightly different kind of level or the different end, if you like, of the new some of the new airfix kits. So the new airfix uh Saracen or or or when they did the store what and people like moaning about oh, it's airfix, it's all shit. People will buy that kit and people will enjoy making it, and that's the bottom line.
SPEAKER_21Airfix has come a long way in the last few years, too.
SPEAKER_04Right, and that's gonna be part of our topic, too. When we're gonna get integrate that into our discussion, but yeah, I build a lot of models, I build a lot of models, armor, and I think that have a really good gauge on what's good and what's bad. And I'm not blowing smoke up Ryfield's ass when I write on my post that this is one of their best kits because it is now. Did they copy certain things? I don't hear people going, oh well, you know, that new Asuka Sherman is like the to me a suspension, or to me, it copied the suspension from Asuka, which they did, yeah.
SPEAKER_21But there's only so many ways to fucking create a model from a real thing, right?
SPEAKER_22Right, they're all gonna be similar, they have to be, and if somebody's done it really well, you think, oh, you know what, they've done it really well. I'm gonna do it really shit.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna do it really well too. Exactly. I mean, listen, Jason, you're in the you're like knee deep in the car model sort of the hobby. I would say wait. Is it similar stuff?
SPEAKER_16No, no, I don't see similar. I mean, people don't really pick apart manufacturers or kit specific kits per se because of copying stuff. I mean, with the car stuff, you've got like AMT makes a lot of the the old school muscle cars. To me, it does a lot of the new stuff. You don't have a lot of like manufacturers doing the same thing, so we don't see that much at all.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, that actually makes sense. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, yeah. Now that I think about that.
SPEAKER_04So I had to get this out though, because it really because I hate when people have to be experts, like everybody's a fucking expert today.
SPEAKER_06We had a big discussion on it. You and I. We talked as soon as that post came out. I called you up and we were I'm like, who are these people and where do they get their special knowledge of who built this kit and who they copied from? Nobody's got it. You can't shut up.
SPEAKER_21Well, I mean, think about it. You can only break it down in so many different ways, yeah. Right, right. So it is what it is, and it's like, oh, you went to a different factory, now it's built a different way. No, it's still built to spec.
SPEAKER_06I said the exact same thing Dave said. I said, Rob, I said, how many different? I mean, it's a Joseph Stalin, it's a giant piece of pig iron.
SPEAKER_04I built the Tamiya kits, I built the 35th scale kit with the full ABER update sets, the ABER barrels. That's a hundred and forty dollar kit with all the upgrades and tracks, right? You get Lincoln Lend tracks with the Tamiya kit, the Dryfields kit gives you these workable tracks, which are excellent, in my opinion. So if you want to build a Tamiya kit, you gotta buy to make it to a standard that I appreciate for myself. You gotta buy a $30 upgrade set from ABER, you gotta pay $20 for a barrel, you gotta pay another $30 or $40 or more for tracks aftermarket to even make that model to the standard that I want to build my model at, which I done. I also built the quarter scale TS2. I built both those models using a lot of upgrade sets from ABER, and then I built the Royfields model with their upgrade set, and it's amazing. And for a fraction of the price that you would need to upgrade the to me kit, you can build that Royfields kit.
SPEAKER_21Right. So the Ryfield kit out of the box is it good enough?
SPEAKER_04Out of the box, it's better than the to me kit bar none. I challenge anybody that with that question. Out of the box, model to model, it doesn't even come close. It's not even a discussion. I challenge people to come back at me after you build the model. You want to come back with facts? Come back with facts. Only only person so far that I know of that's posted that model. Now, listen, people might have built it already over the last three weeks since I posted it. But at the time of me posting that model, I don't remember ever seeing anybody build that model yet. I haven't seen any finished bottles of people building. People probably bought it, it's probably sitting in their stash, which we're gonna get to when it comes to the state of the hobby. But again, you want to complain? You know, complain on your own page, man. Complain on your own page. This is my opinion. All right, so we're gonna do is this we're gonna just talk to Mr. Dave Grummet for about 10 minutes before we get to the state of the hobby because this guy's been dying. He's like, you know what, Rob, we we're collaborating now. Every week, guys, I ring him up. I said, Rob, Rob, please collaborate. Please, please. Yes, he begs me to come on the show.
SPEAKER_06I didn't do that. No, he just wants to keep you all to himself. You're his special little friend, and he's just like, Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, so Dave is here, and we're glad to have Dave here. At last, and I know Dave's been on a couple other podcasts, and Dave is a podcast now. You know, guys, you're a guest on a lot of shows now, not just modeling shows. Many podcasts, but not this one, not this one. Now you're on, but you know what? You've been saved for the important one. Like you give it on episode whatever, just some random number before 50. It doesn't mean as much, but you're on the 50th show. It's important. 50. It's a golden anniversary right now. Right? Tooch is tooch hasn't said a word. Hold on. Before we move on to Dave, just so Tooch doesn't feel left out. Tooch, how do you feel today? I feel fine. Where did you go last night?
SPEAKER_07I don't know where where'd I go last night?
SPEAKER_04You went out to dinner for our anniversary. Had a good time, right? How is that? Look at this guy. He's he's picked out like he never ate before.
SPEAKER_07I did not pick out. I I you did.
SPEAKER_04You look you look like you look like you like eating your pork chop with your hands. I'm like, Tooch, what a high-end restaurant, you're not supposed to pick the pork chop up with your hands. Oh my god, why do I even bother?
SPEAKER_06See, did he eat like he was in prison, Tooch? Does he eat like he's in prison? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Oh my god, he's scarred. He was done before I even got like watching this guy eat. I ate maybe a quarter of my meal.
SPEAKER_04You're such a liar. Don't even go there. Don't even go there. You only eat a quarter of your meal.
SPEAKER_07Three quarters of my free my uh my pork shop still upstairs.
SPEAKER_04No, you're three quarters of the second pork shop. You ate the other pork first, not the second pork shop.
SPEAKER_21I can't eat that much anymore.
SPEAKER_04Well, you right.
SPEAKER_06Well, you got the filled up on one Parker House roll. Dave, if you ever break bread with rib, bring a napkin. You're gonna need it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I make a mess. All right, Mr. Grummet. So just give a little back. Listen, listen, get the obviously give a little background about yourself a little bit. Just so those who are listening who might not know who you are or what you do, just give a little background about yourself, and then we're gonna get to our main topic. That's what we're gonna do. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_22So I've been editor of Military Model Craft International now for 17 years, believe it or not. Oh wow, yeah, holy shit. That's a long time. Um yeah, it is a long time. It's it's actually the longest time I've ever done anything, basically. Uh whether that's jobs, being married, or anything. I mean, yeah, you know you haven't been married that long. Uh no, I've not been married 17 years yet, no. So, you know. Oh sure, wow. So I was just um uh a modeler, and uh in my model club, there were several guys who wrote for Military Model Craft International, and I started writing for them. And the editor at the time was a guy called Tony Little. And those of you who follow me on Facebook who who know I am know that basically in my day job I'm an academic, I'm an academic historian. So writing and and and those kind of things are something I've I've always done. So I was helping Tony with a little bit of the editing and contributing quite regularly. And in 2009, a friend of mine, Simon Barrett, who's still you know a great modeling guy, and we always go to the shows together, uh, and he's very much part of the guidelines kind of team. Simon and I went to the Torrent show in in Spain in April 2009. And when I got back, I had a phone call from Tony, and I and I said, I said, Tony, hey, I've just had a great time. He said, Look, my wife has just died.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, and and his wife, and his wife had literally had a heart attack and died that day. Um and Tony said, I I can't do the magazine anymore, you're gonna have to take it over. So that's how I became in those circumstances. That's how I became editor of Military Model Craft. To be honest, I was just gonna finish, I was just gonna do that issue for Tony and then let him carry on. And and and actually, you know, that he was not in the state where he could continue. So that's how I started editing the magazine. So I've always edited the magazine alongside my regular job, and the magazine really took off in a sort of a different sort of on on a sort of a different level during lockdown. And I'll do a shout out. Now, to somebody who was really instrumental in that action, that was Chris Medins. Because at the time, Chris was editor of our aircraft modeling magazine, scale aircraft modeling. And Chris and I both we made a big push on Facebook to you know to grow the magazine because, like, we were like, fuck, this is you know, we're as a business, we're fucked because all the shops are closed and no one can buy a magazine. What are we going to do? So we had to make you know, we had to find new markets, and and we reached out through Facebook, and that's really where what we have today, and I'll talk a little bit about this, Rob, if if you like, but yeah, I feel that the magazine now is a community, and and Rob and I talk about this a lot, and it's basically like it's like a big model club, isn't it? You know, it's like a you know, we see the same guys in there, we've got uh uh you know, we've got the Facebook page, we've got a big page of of MMI contributors, which is about I don't know, there's about 200 people there who have contributed, and every month we have new contributors to the magazine, and that's so important to me because you know you know it's about making the magazine publishing side of things, publishing in the hobby, accessible. I mean, I mean, you don't have to be the greatest modeler in the world to be in military model craft international. What you do need to do is take some good photographs, yeah. To be honest, guys, that's how Riv's snuck under the radar because you know his his models were shit, but he was always taken, he has always taken a good photograph. He has always taken a good photograph. So I think actually the first time Rob was in the magazine was what Rob five, six years ago. Uh and you you'd done a build for John Steinman. Um you'd built a Yagtiga, was it? Yeah, Yag Tiger, yeah. Yeah, and John had painted it.
SPEAKER_23And I was like, who's who the fuck's this guy?
SPEAKER_22Who's this who's this Riv guy? You know, we'll put we'll put a little you know, little footnote footnote at the bottom of the page that the right, this was built by Rob Riv. Yeah, yeah, who whoever he is, you know, whatever, you know. And then I don't know how we kind of got to where we are now, which was about a couple of years ago, wasn't it? Yeah, it's like three years now. It's about three years ago, and to be honest, I mean, I think so. One of the things that we were really keen to do, I was really keen to do, was tap into this US hobby scene because it seemed to me that at the time the US hobby scene was a little bit more connected, perhaps, than the UK scene. And we didn't have very many US readers or subscribers, we didn't have many US modelers in in the magazine. We had we had we you know, we had John, as I said, we had John Hale. John Hale is always John Hale, yeah.
SPEAKER_21John Yeah, he's been writing for us for well gosh, like how does it work when like a store, like say a store wants to carry your magazine, like a Coles bookstore or whatever?
SPEAKER_22Yes, so that's always possible. I mean, I should just say that you know, we talk about guideline, and guideline is is a kind of a it's a business, of course it's a business, but it's also a little bit of a kind of uh it's always a bit of like a hobby club in itself, in that nobody works for guideline. I don't work for guideline, I'm a freelance editor. Simon, who goes on all the shows. If you if you come to SMC or or any, everyone will will have known, you know, will have met Simon. So we had Tom, who worked for us for many years. Tom's now led. But the company's owned was owned by Alan, Alan Corkill, and Alan passed away last year. So his wife, Kim, and his daughter Steph are actually the people who run the business. So they're the people who who get the magazines printed, who will speak to people uh if you want to carry the magazine in in your stores, uh who make sure that the magazine is there for you to buy, kind of thing. But all the contributors are just basically people who I've met on Facebook. I used to, you know, I met many of them many years ago through missing links and things like that, you know, hyperscale. We were all on those forums, and we're just basically just people who've got chatting. And when I took over as editor, I think of people like Stefan Sizamanski, who's a German modeler who does small scale stuff. You know, he's been there for off and on for like 17 years. John is another guy. Ramon Seguerra, Ramon. Yeah, there's yeah, there's uh and then and then people like Lukash uh in Poland who joined us probably like a decade or so.
SPEAKER_04He's a great model, he's a good guy, man.
SPEAKER_22Ivan, uh, who's um uh Ivan Monkovic, who is actually now lives in the States. Um he's he's actually from the former Yugoslavia, but he's been working for us for well, working with us for over a decade. And then when I when I started, the guy the three guys, I'm gonna call out three guys who really gave me a boost, which was fantastic to have them because they are three really quality modellers who really made a difference to the magazine early on when I took it over, and they are Ken Abrams, yeah, uh Chris Joett, yeah, Chris and Anthony Garderos. Yeah, and those and those three guys, I mean, Anthony, I still speak to now, and he is a character. Anthony is a character.
SPEAKER_04He's put an old model of Ken in the magazine a few issues back, remember? He got ken out of the woodwork. Um, you know Ken Abrams, he lives up in Massachusetts. Ken's a great guy, he's a great modeler, too, but he's a great guy, man. He's a fun guy to hang out with. Wow.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, well, those three guys really helped me. Mirat Osgul from Turkey. Yeah, he's another guy who who helped me early on. We had German modelers, someone who who we don't see now, but who was a great, great modeler, a guy called Eric Helm. Eric was a fantastic modeler, German guy. And all of these guys were just people who I'd met online, and and I said, Look, I'm editing a modeling magazine now, guys. What could you know? Can you help me out? Can you do some Uzgar Gunner is another guy, German modeler?
SPEAKER_21Is the editor the guy that picks what goes into the magazine as well? Absolutely, 100%. So you're not just correcting words and making pictures look nice, you're the guy that picks like how the magazine, yeah.
SPEAKER_22My time as editor is like 20%, you know, correcting the words and and organizing the pictures, and I send that to my designer. So for a long time I worked with a guy called Mark Smith, who was brilliant, and I now work with Andy, who Andy Whitaker, who's a great designer. And and I mean, Andy, Andy's lifted MMI. I mean, Andy's not a modeler himself, but he's got a really good sense of what modellers want to see on a page. And it works.
SPEAKER_04In the magazine, a military model craft. I mean, a guideline's got a lot.
SPEAKER_22You also do fantasy figure international, can't figure out the international, which is of sci-fi models, miniature painting, war hammer, that kind of stuff. Yeah, so about 20% of my time as editor is spent on that kind of, you know, just editing the words, sending stuff to the designer. 80% is building relationships with your contributors.
SPEAKER_21Thank you for the answer to that question. I appreciate it. Yeah, I did not know that the editor was actually the guy. Like I thought the editor was just the guy that corrects photos and words, right? So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_22So everything you see in MMI is because I have made a conscious choice to do it. And that's why having so Rob joined me, you know, say three years ago, and and soon after that I said, Rob, you know, will you be my kind of assistant, you know, assistant editor? This is what we call we said, well, I mean, I've got to throw him a bone now and again.
SPEAKER_04Right, you gotta do it once in a while.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, like these guys.
SPEAKER_21You created a position for this podcast.
SPEAKER_22I I did, you know. But to be honest, having a you know, talking about it and talking about having a having a feeling of what people what people are doing in the hobby, you know, because I I mean I'm a modeler. I used to buy, you know, before I became editor, I used to buy four or five modeling magazines a month, and and it was the highlight of my month going into WH Smith. I lived in Croydon at the time, going into WH Smith, which is like the kind of Barnes and Noble equivalent in the in the UK, on the Thursday when the magazines came out, and I was so excited, you know, to see what was in them.
SPEAKER_04And I looked, you know, that was that was a big deal. I was the same way. I used to look forward to going to those who remember baseline models on Long Island. We used to go in and he used to have all the magazines in the in your file, and you used to go there at the beginning of the month, and he would have all your magazines and just dump them right on the table.
SPEAKER_21Well, you could do that at the comic book stores too, right? Yes, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yep. It was just it was just great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_21You just had all your issues for the month, and you pick up your envelope and you're good to go.
SPEAKER_22You know, I kind of hope that that we still do that now, and I still hope that people have that enthusiasm and and that kind of excitement when it's time for the magazine to uh to drop again. And you know, I really feel that my passion for the hobby, my kind of interest in the hobby, and Rob's interest and passion for the hobby, and all our contributors' passion for the hobby is reflected in the pages that people you know pick up and flick through. Because if it's not, what the fuck are we doing?
SPEAKER_04You know, why are we bothering? Exactly. And listen, I think not because of the involvement, but military bottlecraft has set the standard for a lot of things, especially right now, the way the hob, the state, when we're gonna get to the state of the hobby, that's the topic of how I think it's gotten it's done so much, like you said, getting more contributors in, the diversity of contributors from different countries, not just in Europe, but also here in the states. And we talk, we're always trying to get more American contributors. I'm always trying to motivate people to try to contribute, those who I truly believe have the ability to do it. And like you said, you don't have to be the best modeler in the world, you know, you just got to be able to build a good model and be able to describe it and take some good pictures and have this content, just content.
SPEAKER_22And and one of the things I think that's really important and what make what sets a magazine apart, because you know, you can look at pictures of on the internet, can't you? But what you need in a magazine is something to read.
SPEAKER_21No, and it's nice to be able to fold over and have that picture right there every time you want to look at it, right?
SPEAKER_22It's super helpful. The text has to say something too. I mean, one of the things I think that I really appreciated when Ken and Tony and Chris were writing for us, that those guys and they did some special issues where it was only those three guys, isn't it? And they they did one on uh British Army of the Rhine, uh, they did one on kind of technicals. But what was great about that was that they really spoke about that journey of making a model of what was fun, what went wrong, what they were trying to do. It wasn't just like you know, I I I you know I use this product, I use that product, you know.
SPEAKER_04That's what I try to do when I write the article. I try to just give them the journey of what it was like to build this thing, absolutely, and and and you know, Chris Johnson, Chris Johnson, the Canadian Chris is on. Yeah, he's Canadian now, you know, but that you know, we don't hold that against that.
SPEAKER_22Never mind. But you know, Chris writes really beautifully uh about modeling, and and and he's absolutely honest because he you know he he he basically fucks up every model he builds, as far as I can see. Uh uh you know has to have to find some work around, and you would never know. You look at the pictures, you never know. But that's what we all do, isn't it? Every model that we build, well, I I don't know about you guys, but certainly every model I build, there's something goes wrong. Something goes wrong.
SPEAKER_23Every model you build, but that is part of the that's part of the end, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04And I try to tell people that all the time when they when I speak to them, and I'm like, you don't know how many times I mess up models, like how many times I have to remake things or make things over. You don't see it, you see the end product, you don't know what the what I went through to get to this point. Sometimes it doesn't work out the way it was supposed to. Yeah, exactly. How many you know models get thrown against the wall, like we talked about on the live chat.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, yeah. It's like that whole kind of like there's a synchronized swimming thing, isn't it? Where it's all graceful on uh above the water, you look underneath and the legs are going, you know, yeah, all over the place. Yeah, absolutely. And and and that's what any hobby's like. I mean, it's you know, it's like sport. I mean, you know, people who come and watch uh uh a sport. I mean, my wife's uh uh an athlete, and and people would go and watch her uh you know taking part in competitions. Oh wow, that's really great. You know, what they don't see is all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. What that's what the really good articles in MMI do. They capture the what goes on behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_21I'm glad that that's the standard that you've chosen because I've got a pile of fine scale modelers, you know, and they've gone downhill a lot.
SPEAKER_04Some magazines have. Some don't have the contributors to, and um fine scale mags, fine scale model here in the United States. Jason, did they even I don't even know if they do hard copies no more. I think it's 100% digital again, isn't it?
SPEAKER_21No, no, they do hard copies. They still do hard copies.
SPEAKER_04They do, yes. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, like I get the one my wife puts it by stocking every year, and it's great. You know, it's the it's the Christmas one that just kind of does whatever, and it's like it's but it's like a $20 fucking magazine, man. It's expensive.
SPEAKER_16What they stopped was so they used to do a model car only one, and they stopped that. Um, that's once a year they do a contest issue, right?
SPEAKER_04The great scale modeling or whatever.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, yeah, and the pictures are fucking terrible, man. Yeah, you'd be all over that shit. They're terrible to the point where uh to the point where this year I told my wife, don't buy that magazine again.
SPEAKER_04That's the most important thing for a model magazine is the photography. Yeah, and and and like you said, like bad photographs can make a good model look bad.
SPEAKER_21It almost looks pixelated, you know what I mean? Like it's fucking terrible.
SPEAKER_04The paper, it's a lot of things, yeah.
SPEAKER_21All that.
SPEAKER_04So, Dave, anything else you want to talk about before we go on? Because we're gonna really have a great discussion. Go on, I'm sure I'll chip in. Well, I appreciate you, and I do appreciate you allowing me to be a part of that too, because I do, you know, I love it, and it's a good big part of my life too now. And I enjoy it a lot, and it's great to promote the hobby in that way, and it's very positive. And you're a big part of that, Dave. I know that you know, you I know you always say, Well, I'm not building as much anymore, as much as I was, and so on and so forth, but you contribute to the hobby in such another way that it gives people a lot of enjoyment, and it'll give us, you know, I know there's a lot of guys that we have in our circle that always talk about looking forward to the newest issue of MMI, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, I I really appreciate that. I mean, and and again, I really I mean, the magazine would be nothing without its contributors. I mean, you know, I mean, and we've got, you know, in the last issue, we've got we've got three of them on this call. We've got, you know, we've got Frank, uh, had had has some tracks, we've got yourself, and of course we've got Steve. And Steve, you know, is contributing reviews, and that's really important. So if people can't, you know, don't feel up to, you know, maybe you know, doing a full article, by all means tell the community about you know a kit that you've made or something. Um, because we you know we don't get kits for reviews now. Um, very few you know manufacturers have got very tight margins, the cost of shipping and and all the rest of it. You know, if if people have bought a good kit and uh or a bad kit, whatever, you know, share it with us. And uh, and you know, and I think that's that's great. I mean, I think some of the you know, I I I love uh uh Steve Andriano's uh does all these reviews of the Vargas kits, and he's you know, and he tells it how it is. I mean, some of them are great, and some of them are yeah, he loves it.
SPEAKER_04I I appreciate you, and I'm sure Steve is listening. You know, he's always asked. You think Dave will want me to do this good for a review? I'm like, message him, I'm sure it will be. I was like, Yeah, you're a terrible modeler, but you do good reviews. I tell him that all the time. Uh, yeah, but I do appreciate that, Dave. So we'll this is what we're gonna do before we go on to our topic, and it's gonna be a long one, and we're all gonna be involved in this. We're going to do our first ad spot, and unbelievably, it's gonna be for guideline publications and military Modocraft International.
SPEAKER_19Guideline publications caters to all hobbyists, whether they be newcomers or prize-winning modelers, dedicated collectors or military and aviation enthusiasts, our trademarks of high-quality photography, well-written and informative text, and accessible design features across all our magazines. Fantasy Figures International, Model Car Truck Motorcycle World, and New Model Pharma, as well as our flagship titles, Scale Aircraft Modeling, Toy Soldier Collector and Historical Figures, and the number one military model magazine in the world, Military Model Craft International. Military Model Craft International is the essential monthly magazine for the serious military modelers. It step-by-step builds the best modelers in the world, unrivaled presentation, and exclusive reference articles. You can't afford to be without Military Model Craft International if you make armour models. We pride ourselves on our integrity and honesty. It is a reputation hard-earned and cherished by everyone associated with the company. Our values as a company have helped us succeed and grow, and we look forward to serving the hobby community for many years to come. Guideline Publications and Military Model Craft International is a proud sponsor of the Modeling Insanity Podcast.
SPEAKER_04All right, we're back, and we are gonna dive into our topic. And one of the reasons why I wanted to do this topic, and we all agreed to it, and we all said this was a great topic to do for our 50th, the current state of the hobby. I think it's a great way to maybe have an open discussion. Maybe we're gonna talk about things that people maybe not normally always openly talk about. Maybe they're thinking about it, but I also think that it's gonna be great to have different opinions and hear everybody's opinions on a lot of the things that we're gonna talk about. And I think this is gonna be a lot different than a lot of other episodes we've done. It's gonna hopefully doesn't sound too scripted because we do have a couple of things that I want to touch base on, but I want it to be um really off the cuff when it comes to the responses, and I think that's gonna be you know really important. One thing that we just talked about with Dave is we were talking about the how the hobby's grown, especially when it comes to the magazines. I always worry about the fact that is the hobby really growing, or is it just that social media, it's like a mirage where a lot more people who maybe are discussing and talking about the hobby, but maybe they're not really participating in the hobby as much as they should be or could be, and they're just spending more time complaining or talking about things, or maybe looking at people's models on social media, all right? I don't know that's a good way to start. So um a couple of things that we could talk about when it comes to this, I think, would be like, you know, obviously there's a lot of social media engagement, but you don't normally see that really translate to show attendances, right? You go to some of these shows and you have all these people talking about models, but you go to some of these local shows and the attendance is as much as you did, especially at Amps Nationals this past year where the attendance was a little lower, right? Are younger modelers uh are they really getting involved in the hobby? Not necessarily Gundams, and we can touch base on that because that is part of the hobby, but the traditional aspects of the hobby, like the armor, aircraft, car parts of the hobby. Also, we talked about social media. We just talked, I just talked about about maybe YouTube and so on and so forth. Is it making it is YouTube and social media making the hobby look healthier than it really is? Are we mistaking again online activity for a healthy hobby? So, this is where I wanted to start this off. I think that uh the hobby is really healthy in a lot of ways, but I think that social media and a lot of the stuff that's online, I think might really uh give like a mirage of really how healthy it is, or how how much participation there is in the hobby because of you know, you can participate and be like, you know, that unsilent majority or silent majority, however you want to say it, by posting, you know, critiques or giving opinions on social media. But is that really indicative of how well the hobby is? So we're gonna go to Justin, take this away, and we're gonna see where it goes.
SPEAKER_10I think the hobby is expanding. Um, I do think that social media ha it's a double-edged sword. The social media aspect of this hobby is it does bring new people in, but at the same time, it can also turn people off when you get ding bats that want to call out the nonsense, the bullshit, right off the bat, come at people for things. There are times where I do that, but it's typically when it's the same person posting the same shit over and over again and asking the same exact question over and over again. But for the most part, I do like to try to to be that ambassador, to give out the knowledge that I have and help make a modeler better. Usually when I'm coming at people, it's because it's the 30 years, never had a problem. That crowd is the crowd that I'm usually coming at. That crowd is what turns off a lot of people into from away from this hobby or at least away from sharing what they're doing in the hobby.
SPEAKER_04Spot on, Justin. I like I like that response. Jason, what about you?
SPEAKER_16Well, so as somebody that has a uh a very small YouTube channel and an also somewhat smaller Facebook group, I do see a lot of people coming into the hobby because they've air quotes found me or somebody else, either on YouTube or through Facebook, and it's inspired them to get back into things. But like Justin said, you do have a lot of the and I I hate to say this, I find it's mostly baby boomers that are very much stuck in their ancient ways, and they also seem to be more freely able to tell people that they're wrong, even when they're not, that might deter people. But I I'm gonna have an off an optimistic outlook, and I'm gonna say that I think social media is helping the hobby. Grow at this point, at least from the car side of things. Okay, Rob.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So you're you're you're partaking into something.
SPEAKER_21I didn't know I didn't know I was next.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's the whole idea. Well, what this is a podcast. We're supposed to jump in. I shouldn't I shouldn't have to moderate, but I moderate it.
SPEAKER_21Tucci is mad at me. So, anyways. Here's where my thought comes from the car shit. Because I started off as a car model builder because that's all I was I had available to me at the time. But I always looked at it like there's no detail, there's no nothing in this shit. You know what I mean? That they were they were fucking terrible. I mean, yeah, okay, they were. You got a car, you got a car at the end of the day if you built it.
SPEAKER_16You're correct, you're correct in some aspects.
SPEAKER_21And that's where my issue with car building comes in. And don't get me wrong, I like building bikes, I like building cars, and especially the Tamiya kits, they're nice. Uh the Meng 19th scale kits are really nice, but that's where I feel that car modeling is let them down. And now you're getting into 3D printing, and everybody gets these nice engines shit that they always wanted, right? Great. But it's it's taken this fucking long until you guys have been able to catch up to every other kind of modeling, right? I'm not hacking on you, Jason.
SPEAKER_16You know, that's fine. Oh, yeah, I understand that completely. You gotta realize though, from this side, from the car side, so you go to an IPMS show, and you've got the car guys who believe me, there are, and I'm glad I'm on this podcast because I can speak freely, there are more than our fair share of douchebags in the car side of the modeling uh hobby. Well, when you go to an IPMS show, you got a group of car guys, and we're there, and the the armor and the aircraft guys basically treat the car guys like the redheaded stepchildren of the hobby. We're not welcome at a lot of these shows, and it's more thought we already established that. Yeah, exactly. So, how do you expect us to integrate ourselves and to be on your level when we're basically like, oh, I guess okay, yeah, I guess you guys can come in. I guess you can put it on the city.
SPEAKER_21But I honestly think that it's the state of the kits themselves.
SPEAKER_16Well, so that's yeah, you're right, and I was gonna touch on that later on, but there are some companies that are severely lacking with their with what they're putting out for kits nowadays, but there are also some companies, Mobius, for example, who do a really fantastic job of producing a kit that has very nice, very accurate details.
SPEAKER_04We're definitely going to touch space on that again later, some other things too. And that's a good question to ask about the state of the hobby. But yeah, um I like the debate, man. Just debate it. That's why we're doing this.
SPEAKER_21That's the thing that I've seen that's you know lacking in why it hasn't drawn me to that.
SPEAKER_10I did want to jump in and on both of your points, Jason and Rob, that the car side is where I have seen the most of the D-bags, most of the opinionated assholes that if you're not doing it the way that it was done in the 70s and 80s and the 90s, you're doing it wrong. And it's unfortunate because of places like Hobby Lobby that dupe people into thinking they're getting super crazy discounts on model cars by marking it up and then giving it a 40% discount. You get a lot of gatekeepers, you know, guys that have built that Hemikuda or the freaking AMT Camaro, and I'm just throwing cars out there, I'm not even 100% positive. But they go to Hobby Lobby and buy the same models every two weeks when the discount was rolling, and they basically will gatekeep the automotive modeling world with their attitude of a hobby's dying because the kits don't cost what they used to cost, testers enamel doesn't exist anymore, future floor polish, blah blah blah, yada yada, Rustaldium 2x, blah blah blah. And the automotive side, you know, obviously it's not everybody, but it's a lot of them. One particular group in in particular, uh, that will go unnamed, is the place where all of this scum and villainy hang out.
SPEAKER_16Are you talking about Lucas C? We're not talking about Lucas C, but we are uh well, I you know what I will 100% say that we're talking about the Lucas E.
SPEAKER_10I was trying to not drop names, but okay, yes.
SPEAKER_16I literally don't, I literally don't care. The problem, Justin, is is what what is happening, and maybe I think a little bit of it on your end, you're focusing on all that negativity and all those idiots, you know, it's like I could care less because there are a group of car modelers that aren't like that a hundred percent. Once you focus on not focusing on that group, your horizons will open up. And the side of the car hobby for me is wonderful because I don't pay attention to that garbage, to be honest with you. I I do I name that.
SPEAKER_04Remember, I called it most high sleeve the modeling world, yeah. That page at one time, and I think that Luca and full disclosure, we haven't really spoken to Luca in in a while. He was pissed off that we created the Model Car Mania podcast, full disclosure, right? And uh, you you Jason and BG approached me uh regarding creating that podcast, and I said, Of course I'll help you guys out. I always felt Luca was a friend. He turned his back on, he didn't want to be associated with us in any way because he felt like he was being backstabbed, even though he didn't want to do the podcast no more, all right. Um, which was kind of odd. It's sort of like you don't want to date anymore, but then you're afraid that right. So when we created the Model Car Mania podcast, he kind of like got pissed off and didn't want to talk to any of us anymore, which listen doesn't matter to me. You can do your own thing, but this full disclosure on that one, this is like oh, listen, open book here. Man, we don't hold secrets here. You could say his name here, you could call it the Lucas C. Page update. I don't even go there anymore. They're much idiots.
SPEAKER_10It's kind of like when you get divorced and you find out that the person you left is dating the team boy trash version of yourself, exactly what I mean. Yeah, hold on.
SPEAKER_04I want to I want to try to get I want to get I want to get Tuch and Frankie and Dave's opinion on this. Remember if we were guys remember what then what the question was. So Dave, do you remember what the question was?
SPEAKER_22Not really, but I I'll I'll uh just come in on the cars because because I um the one thing I've never done in my life is make a car model, but what I'm with why the fuck not well uh but but what I'm with is what you're talking about, actually, I don't recognise from a kind of UK European perspective. One of the highlights for us every year when we go to the Mosson show in Hungary is looking at the car models because the creativity and the just the skill in modeling. If we think that you know what we're trying to do in when we make models is recreate the world in miniature, okay. Yeah, if we have a shrink ray and we shrink it down to 135th scale or 120th scale, and it looks like the real thing we've won. So when you go around that competition table at Mosson, and they are mainly, I would have thought, I don't know where the guys are from, but mainly from Poland, Hungary, uh, Italy. The car models are consistently the best. There's a guy, and I sorry, I I forget his name, but he does sort of classic um motorcycles in 135th scale, racing motorcycles from from the early 20th century.
SPEAKER_21In 135th scale, where's he getting these things?
SPEAKER_22He makes them himself. Ranch building, yeah. Yeah, and they are just the most amazing pieces of model making you've ever seen. Every aspect of it, whether it's the figure painting, whether it's the groundwork, whether it's the actual building of the model, yeah, is just superlative. And it's funny listening to what you're saying about car modelers maybe looking being nostalgic, looking at at what modeling used to be. Because when I look at these guys in Europe, they are what modeling should be and is now.
SPEAKER_16Yeah.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, and that that's the problem.
SPEAKER_16Well, so from my perspective, in the northeastern part of the United States, when you go to an IPMS show, you've got and I'm just getting into this type of stuff. I mean, I'm just getting into armor, I'm just getting into aircraft. And I have a fascination for it and an appreciation for the builds. But when you look at the automotive, some of the automotive stuff on an IPMS table, at least in my part of the country, you're seeing whole engine detail, you're seeing legitimately beautiful paint jobs, you're seeing models that are fully lit, dashlights, taillights, headlights. They're just amazing. And I don't mean this in any offense, Rob, but for someone to say you build a car model at the end of the day, you got a car. Well, you're not looking at it from the right perspective at this point.
SPEAKER_21Well, no, I no, I and I will agree with you on that. That's what I'm saying is where the kits themselves let you down, right? You have to do all that shit.
SPEAKER_04Well, straying away from the original topic of this part. Let Frankie jump in.
SPEAKER_06First of all, all of us on the pod, the the regular cast, we all have stated and we believe that we're in a bit of a golden age, but the hobby's doing as well as ever. And I see that anecdotally when I when I when when I run, you know, I'm the president of our club, I I run our show. We've seen it, it's expanding, we know that. But I did some research and I found a 263-page report on strategic revenue insights about the hobby. And they're indicating the research from the sky is that this hobby is looking at a 5.2 to 8.5% compounded increase every year until the mid-30s. It's a one and a half billion dollar industry is the projection. And they talk about why, and they talk about the fact that it's a surge in demand, specifically, believe it or not, aircraft and automotive kits are what are pushing the demand. Yes, the Japanese market is probably the market with the greatest growth. North America and Europe is next. There's now growth in the Middle East and Africa with young people picking up on the hot. Stuff like snap together kits. Aoshima, I'm a fan, I don't build cars, but I've seen Aoshima's got a whole line of ricers coming out, right? That are snapping together kits. Aoshima said, Oh, is that what Bandai's doing? Let's do it too, right? Make those easy to build kits in order to get someone in. Because the easier and smoother that process is, why we all of us recommend Tamiya to guys who want to build armor, right? And and stuff like that. But the market analysis shows, right? Figure kits, because of anime and manga and collectors are increasing. The 3D printing is brought on. Online retail, but online presence, YouTube, social media, our pages, right? I'm up to almost 3,000 followers on my little Big Daddy's Plastic Fantastic, which I can't.
SPEAKER_04Do those guys know what they're following? Jeez. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_06Well, you know, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. But there's also a trend in DIY and crafting. And so people want to do that, right? Like the little model shows are coming out, not the one that Rob and I did and apparently never got made, but you know, there's people doing doll houses and stuff like that. There's an interest. The health benefits have been identified in several studies that talk about these things. We talked to Patriot Models on our live stream just a few days ago, where he does an actual work with PTSD veterans and can show them reliably how working on a model kit can help improve their enjoyment, their life, their symptoms. There's the quality of life improvement is there. I do it predominantly for the it's quality of life for me because I like doing this, it keeps me busy, keeps my brain active. It brought me these friends, right? It created us a gang of niche internet micro celebrities. Right? But uh so to me, is the hobby growing? Yeah, not just gunpla. I see it in everything. We've got a few young people that have joined our club recently. When I uh set up a display at my college where I work, the lady who runs the DIY craft lab, she was like, I'm getting lots of people coming in. Most people don't go to clubs, don't go to meetings, don't go to shows, but they're there. We know that. We wouldn't have thousands of followers on our mediocre little Facebook pages if we didn't have people interested and just always watching from the sideline. The noisy ones we'll hear about, right? Like us, the ones that either have a voice or feel they need to have a voice, those will always be there. But as far as growth goes, I'm glad that I'm building kits now. I have more than I could ever want. I have a wealth of riches to pick from. A lot of us are looking at our stashes with vapor lock.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I'm gonna build something, I'm gonna go look at my stash, and then you just sit there. Well, that's gonna lead into this next question, so that way Toots can jump in on this one. And I'm glad you mentioned the stash because are stashes now becoming more collectors? Are we becoming are people becoming more collectors now as opposed to back in the day, as opposed to you know, buying kits to build?
SPEAKER_06All I'm talking about now is we now have the ability to have a stash of what we want, right? You're not stuck just buying frog models because that's all there is, and you'd like to build a nice kit. But I'm talking about, but we have guys, we do this now. Guys are looking at their stash, going, Fuck, I don't know what I'm gonna build. I got I have no idea.
SPEAKER_04Vapor locking on right, but that's the thing though. So does the but again, so this is the question, then leaning onto that, because I think it's important, and I want Tooch to jump in on this. It's like, at what point does a stash become like this a museum of kits that you're just collecting? Right, right, or like are people really excited to buy kits or are they just buying them because they don't want to miss out on owning that new kit that everybody's buying, like the chaffe, for instance, for Tamiya that everybody buys the chaffe, right? Um, I mean, is buying kits separate than like being a kit collector separate than being a model builder? Tooch, this goes to you and it's gonna piggyback off of the stair stuff with with Frankie.
SPEAKER_07So anthropologically talking about I think it's a hunter-gatherer uh mentality that you hunt, you're hunting for the kit, you're gonna gather it, and at some point you're gonna use it. So I think in a primitive anthropological way, that's that's where we're at. I mean, I think when until I got back into the hobby, I had maybe 50 kits going from when I stopped uh doing the hobby, which was 1996. I might have had 50 kits. Now I've got I think 200, but most of them are in a very specific area because then that's another part too, is the niche why people have stashes. If there's a niche like World War One, look, we know that the World War One stuff is dried up again with Tacum because they re-released. There's some kits out there that are harder to find. So I know if I have one kit, I build it and that's it. I want to build more World War One stuff and do more with it. So some people may be accumulating their stashes for that reason, or it's just that primitive hunter-gatherer attitude that hunter, you know, you're going in. Also, too. Some people, if they see other people buying it, they want to be part of that social connection. It's like, hey, if Rob Rivs building it, I want to, I should have that in my stash because it's got to be a good kit. If Dave Grummit's putting it in the magazine, it's got to be a good kit. So there's that. There's also trying to keep up with the Jones's perspective with that.
SPEAKER_04That's a good point, Tooch. I didn't think of it like that too, but that is a good point. I look at my stash and I got so many models that I know I'm never ever gonna build. I bought them at some point with the expectation of possibly building it. Now, there's certain, like you said, for you, Tooch, with the World War One, that that's your interest in the hobby. Um, you love World War One stuff. Like you said, it there's not an infinite amount of kits available for World War One. Like you said, they release one, they might not, you know, if they're done with their stock of releases, are they gonna re-release it or not? So you might buy more of them. I have a lot of like Panzer 3 variants that I love that I hopefully will build in the future, God willing. But I also have a lot of other models that I bought with the intention of buying it when it was released because it was cool, and I know I'm never gonna do it. So a lot of those kids are either gonna be donated or I'm probably just gonna get rid of them at some point. People like, oh, I got a thousand models in my stash. I'm like, wow, you're ever gonna build a thing. You need to have a garage sale, man. Right, and you're gonna keep buying kids after that.
SPEAKER_21Are you really ever thinking you're gonna build all those models to whatever respectable level that you I even look at my stash behind me and I'm like disappointed because the things that you want, you're like, Oh, I just build a helicopter, I want to build uh helicopters now, right? So you buy a bunch of helicopters and then you're not fucking into it anymore. But now you got a bunch of helicopters. That's how the stash gets out of hand.
SPEAKER_04But do people have competing stashes? Are people trying to increase their stashes for photographs to show? Hey, look at my stash! Like, like, look at sometimes I see Mr. Hans come over there when he does his live care on the build rooms or whatever, and he's got like all these models, like even like Mikey uh Outlaw, like all these models stacked behind. Is it just for aesthetics? Is it wallpaper, or is it models that you actually intend on building? Because the way I build models, there's no way I'm building the entire stash that I have, considering the models I get that replaces the models that I'm building, so it's always never it's never gonna deplete. I agree with part of that.
SPEAKER_16I think that when people see I hate to do it, I'm sorry, BG, but I'm gonna use it as an example. When he's on the live or he's doing a video, his whole background is his stash, right? And I know for a fact that he has a small room, so he doesn't have a lot of space to do it, but I think people see that and they think it's the thing to do is just buy a bunch of models and like then yeah, well, you might have 1500 kits, but I've got 2,000 kits that somehow boosts them up, right? Dude, I get 600 kits, and I'm never gonna build all of them. Never, never. I do think that people purposely build their stash just to build their stash at this point.
SPEAKER_04That's the question. That's what I and I think that that's that's kind of what's going on. Mr. Grummet over there doesn't have that big of a stash, right? The Mr. Grummet?
SPEAKER_22I don't, I don't, but my stash has been it kind of comes and goes because like like you, I kind of uh I'm interested in certain things at certain times. So I went for a stage of Churchill tanks and I built maybe I don't know, three or four Churchill tanks, and I must have bought 15 Churchill kits. I I wrote a book in when 2019-2020 about modeling abrams, yeah. And I must have built four or five abrams. I built an M1, I built an M1A2, I bought you know, I built an M1A1. I bought every fucking Abrams kit I manufactured, and I bought the PhotoEch, I bought the the Voyager model sets, I bought this, you know, and they just sit there. The one I kind of come back to is I I like modern armor now, so I kind of like you know, I bought striker kit, so you saw those 170 seconds scales I built for the magazine. I bought you on a striker kit right now, that's for sure. Yeah, I bought a Zimi model, I'm doing a Zimmy model striker dragoon now. But my stash, I would have thought, is probably fewer than 50 kits in my stash. Well, okay, that's not a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_21Fewer than 50.
SPEAKER_22It's fewer than 50 kits, fewer than 50 kits.
SPEAKER_21So it's that's still a lot, you know, when you think about it. I'm not saying I'm I'm I'm guilty, I got 200. Not really, that's not even a stash.
SPEAKER_0450 is not a lot. 50 is 50 is not a stash, is it?
SPEAKER_22It's a rookie one, you're gonna build those letters up. Quite a bit, you know, they're all in one place within my little workshop. You know, they don't have to no, they're not in my loft, they're not in like my secret lock up in Faversham. You didn't have to get a C can out in your backyard.
SPEAKER_04I gotta throw the cut-in of um Matthew McConaughey from Wolf of Wall Street when he's telling DiCaprio guys to bump those numbers up. It's gonna happen right now. Three, four, three, four times, maybe.
SPEAKER_21Bump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers in this racket.
SPEAKER_22But what I was gonna say about buying stuff, so what I used to do, and and something I've always been interested in is Warhammer and Games Workshop stuff. Yeah, so when I left university, I I was offered a job as a games designer at Games Workshop, and it was the biggest, some ways the biggest mistake in my life. I never took that because I'd have got share options on Games Workshop, and I'd have been a wealthy man now. But anyway, that you know it didn't happen, but there we go. But I used to buy like their new releases just for the buzz of buying things.
SPEAKER_21That's what I was talking about in the one episode. Is it collecting or is it a hobby? But that's what this question is. Exactly. That's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_22But the hobby comes in all sorts of different ways. I mean, you know, you know, if if I I mean, if I play I I don't know, cycling. Cycling's a really good example. So my wife's a cyclist and she has four bikes. Okay, her four bikes together cost a lot more money than I've ever spent on on uh on on model kids. But she hasn't got a lot of bikes. Other people I think what do you need four bikes for though? Well, but other people have got fourteen bikes. You know, because they're not gonna be a lot of people. Well, they do different things, do they look different? But that's part of the hobby too, isn't it? Researching the bike. Yes. Thinking, why am I going to buy that? What might I do with that? And that's just the same that we do when we read a reference book and we think, oh my god, that's a really cool story about a Panzer 4. You know what? I'm gonna go and buy a Panzer IV kit. Which is the best Panzer 4 kit? And I do my research. And that I have spent my free time, I've spent my hobby time thinking about it. That is as much part of the hobby as sticking pieces of plastic together. That's perfect.
SPEAKER_16I love it. Model building and model collecting, two sides of the same coin, if you ask me. 100%, 100%.
SPEAKER_04This is another question I want to ask, and this is always something that I've thought about. We talked about the Royfield's models, the JS2 kit before earlier on in my rant. But that kind of brings the question about are kits today, and we talked about it on the live cast, Frankie, if you remember when we were talking to Paul, who was building, you know, got just got into the hobby, who's building some of the older to me kits what I appreciate. Are the manufacturers today releasing kits that are too good? Meaning, are they containing a lot of other things like lots of different parts, photo etch, metal barrels, interiors, workable suspensions, workable tracks? I'm focusing on armor, but obviously Jason's here for the cars and also, you know, aircraft stuff or whatever. But when you buy a kit today, for instance, a Rifuel kit, it's got so many things in the box that a lot of people maybe could either be overwhelmed by what's in the box, or maybe don't appreciate how great the kits are today because they never experience some of the older kits back in the day. Like I always say to people, well, when people get mad at me, they go, Oh, you always say that the hobby was better back in like the 90s or whatever. And I go, Well, because it was different. Because back then you had to do a lot of things on your own to make kits better, to improve things. Like, yeah, did the kits fit? Did the kits, you know, go together fine? Sure. But what did you have to do to bring them up to your level of standard? Everybody has a different level. And for me, it was always like, well, you had to buy, you know, this upgrade set, or you had to find this resin conversion or these resin pieces. Are you gonna buy model casting tracks or full tracks or get this or that? And before you know it, you know, you're spending all this money and doing all the scratch building to make models better. Now, is the hobby now with these new kits are people becoming spoiled in a lot of ways on how well kits are? Now, granted, some cards kits come out and they're not to the standard of what they should be, like other kit manufacturers.
SPEAKER_21You can fuck that shit up, doesn't matter, just because it comes with all the good shit.
SPEAKER_04What do you mean when you're building it can screw it up? Yeah, yeah, of course they are. But what I'm saying to you is is our kits becoming too comprehensive today, or are are kits that are being manufactured today not allowing modelers the ability to be more creative in their builds? That's the question. Is that a good question? It's a good question. I think it's a choice.
SPEAKER_06It's a choice, though. So you can have a choice, right? We give recommendations, people come talk to us, but I think it's really it's a choice. What do you want to do? Right? I'm not scared of model kits. I if I have a panda kit, I'll build it, I'll give it a shot. Fred, you give everything a shot. But that's because and I I've said for two reasons. One, some of these old kits are super interesting and you're making shit nobody else. And two, I'm a better modeler for having taken the time to pull out an RPM tank at with multi-millimeter treads that have multiple punch marks in them and make it look like where people actually go, holy shit, that looks awesome. It looks like a new IBG kit. Yeah, that's right. I'm a better modeler for working on the older shitty kits. Right. My choice. And I like showing that there's a lot of love. And I'm frugal, so you can get a lot of good kits for a lot less money if you go buy the shitty kits and put some effort in, right? Because some of this new stuff is it's not cheap, let's be honest. And you're gonna pay for what you get for dragon models. Remember how they got jacked up in price early on. Dragon model kits were really complicated. I'm not talking about the old Imperial series.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, those first, those Panzer Fours with like 3,000 parts, 600 parts for suspension. It was great.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you know, and that's that can break you in a hobby. Whereas then you go with the Tamiya Bulldog, like Paul did. I mean, right it's a great shitty kit to break your teeth in because it brings you along. You and I always recommend trumpeter KVs to people.
SPEAKER_04Basic as basic can be, but the best KVs on the market. Absolutely. I love them. So $19. You can buy a trumpeter KV in 31st can. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_06And and I still have some, and I'll keep building them because they're I got every one that they've made still on my stash.
SPEAKER_04I bought extra ones. So this is great.
SPEAKER_06There's that to be said about that. And and as far as complicated, I think the big thing is is it's it's your choice. Remember, we were talking about Zimi because of poor Adriano when he realized right.
SPEAKER_04I'm glad that Dave is on here to hear this because of the issues with Zimmy right now.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so the Zimmy kit, right? Well, well, Adriano didn't realize it's a combination of RPM and Panda, right? And we know like panda makes some weird shit, but their kits are like brutal. And then we found out that that striker kit, like uh um Nick's working on it, and Dave, you're working on it. So the first thing I did was, oh, let me see if that striker is a rebox of a panda, because Nick's gonna have a stroke if he has to build this thing. Sure enough, it's a new tool. You're gonna, okay, well, these guys are safe, right? So there's that aspect of it, right? I mentioned earlier with the hobby with with car kits, right? I love the fact that Aoshima has got a line of reasonably priced snap-together kits with a massive variety to engage people and get them rolling into this hobby and enjoying it and building it for whatever reason they want. Some people are gonna be into detail, some are gonna be into weathering. Some people, like a lot of people, just want to slap something together and stick on a show.
SPEAKER_22Good point, Frank. Can I just come in on that? Because I think Rob's question is and I and I've sometimes thought this actually, Rob, when I've been listening to the podcast, is une question mal posée, as they were saying, France.
SPEAKER_21That's good, right?
SPEAKER_22Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_21Right, sure. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, but and this is something that we that that we kind of appreciated quite early on, I think, in the magazine, that there are lots of modellers out there, and again, it's absolutely fine who are just happy doing what they do. They're not interested in particularly in being on a journey and improving themselves.
SPEAKER_21It's like build Lego, man. Just buy a set and fucking put it together, right?
SPEAKER_22Well, but but you know, but but if you look at Lego, so so so Lego has gone, you know, you can now buy 18 plus Lego, which is like 30,000 pieces and all the rest of it.
SPEAKER_21Sure, sure. But what I'm saying is people just like to uh you know put things together.
SPEAKER_22People like to put things together and they follow the kind of the box art and the instructions and they and and they paint it, they paint it green and they put the stickers on. And you know, and that's absolutely fine. That's absolutely fine. That's as valid a way of pursuing the hobby as you know as as the way we do it.
SPEAKER_21I think 99% of the people actually do it that way.
SPEAKER_22A lot more than you than you get hurt. So, Rob, I think the majority of our readers and our subscribers in the magazine do that. Tell the story of a childhood friend of mine who used to make models as a as a as a kid, and and I was talking to him, uh, he's oh, you know, he he's like kids are a bit older now, he's probably mid-40s. Um, you know, I'm gonna get back into modeling. And he was buying the magazine, really enjoying the magazine. And he says, What shall I make? And we looked on eBay and and he basically bought one of the old Tamir Tiger tanks. Great kit, great kit, and and he really enjoyed it, and he was really pleased with the result. Now, I mean, you know, it wasn't a great model, as you know, um, you know, he brush brush painted and all the rest of it, but that is the hobby, isn't it? You know, that is the hobby. What you get out of it, it's what you're gonna get out of it. And and one of the things I I mean, so straying a little bit off topic here, but one of the things that always sort of puzzles me or or kind of worries me in a way is when I see people who oh, I'm gonna give up the hobby because I'm not in I'm I'm I'm not improving, or uh you know, I'm I'm I've lost my mojo and all the rest of it. And you think, well, okay, if you've lost your mo if you don't really do it anymore, fucking don't do it. Nobody cares. You know, don't you know, just don't do it. Or if you're not getting any better at it, that's okay. Are you still enjoying it? Oh, yes, I still enjoy it. I'm just not getting any better. Well, we'll carry on then.
SPEAKER_21Well, and and if you want to get better at it, it behooves you just look into how to get better at it, right?
SPEAKER_22Rob got his behooves in there, and then try it out if that's what you do, which also can put you under a lot of pressure and actually suck the joy out of it.
SPEAKER_21You know, I honestly, I think that if you like, I just want to get better at like weathering or whatever, just watch a few videos on YouTube and you'll get it.
SPEAKER_22But I've I've always I always thought this uh an analogy is kind of like football or soccer, you know, you don't stop playing soccer because you're because you're not as good as Ronaldo or or Messi, right?
SPEAKER_04So why would you stop making models because you're not as good as Rob Riv? Right. Well, Frankie should quit. You'll never be as good as me.
SPEAKER_21But sure. Yeah, Riv should quit, actually.
SPEAKER_04But but those are great points, Dave. That those are really good points because the hobby, and we've talked about this on other podcasts, that the hobby means something different to everybody. Yep, and everybody has different levels of ability, and certain people can only be as good as their abilities will take them. You just spoke French, quick to Frank. Frankie can speak for France. His wife is French Canadian, and Frankie lived, you know, this guy's lived in every country in Europe, right? You know, we there comes a point in your life where you're not gonna be able to speak fucking fluent French, no how many long how no matter how hard you try to study the language. Like the thing is with the hobbies, like you're gonna be as good as your abilities will take you, and I think that you can improve when you put the effort in there. But there's a lot of people out there, like you said, that just want to build a model. They sit at the table on a Sunday with their kids, they buy a model at the store, they don't care what the the subject matter is, they don't care if it's accurate or not when they paint it, they just want to build it and paint it and have fun.
SPEAKER_21That's the majority of the hobby, and that's the way it's like buying a paint by number or something like that. It's a project, right?
SPEAKER_06Right, it's like those dots, right? Everyone, you've all seen them, everyone's buying those dot paintings now, right? Yeah, easy, simple, fun. Enjoy it.
SPEAKER_04But again, when the question that I asked was about like these newer kits that are jam-packed with product inside of them or like have a lot of things in them, parts count, it's other things that you would normally like have to do after market wise are in the box. Now, all those all these weekend model builders going to be intimidated when they open up a box that has you know workable tracks, it has photo etch, and it has a lot of things that you need a lot of prerequisite skills to do.
SPEAKER_06But that's where something like MMI or us on our pages show up and say, I built this 1500-piece kit and I had no problems. This went well, this went well, this went well, maybe that. And that perhaps will empower one of these weekend builders to say, Oh, you know what? I'm gonna give it a shot.
SPEAKER_04But that's if they read those magazines or on social media, they might not be.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, the problem is a lot of people will get into it and go, wow, that thing looks amazing, right? And box art is one of them. And then you look on the side, and you are a detail-oriented guy, let's just say, right? That's that's what's attracting you to, and all of a sudden you open up that Ryefield box and you're like, Motherfucker, I am in trouble right now, right? So that's the thing, like it's people want to be more advanced than they actually are at the beginning.
SPEAKER_10I want to bring some uh um automotive perspective on this, not so much the collision repair side, just the general automotive. If you were ever into customizing cars or anything like that in the early 2000s, back then, the biggest wheel tire combinations that you could get on a car from the factory was like a 17-inch wheel. But uh, the street truck scene, people were buying custom wheels, 20-inch, 22-inch, stuff like that, and putting them on their trucks. Manufacturers saw what people wanted and started offering it to them. You could still get those 17-inch wheels, but they were now offering 21-inch wheels, 20-inch wheels, 22-inch wheels. And now getting a 17-inch wheel only comes on the basic, basic, basic model of the vehicles. So I don't think it's so much the manufacturers creating kits that are too far beyond many of the starting builders. I think that they are catering to what they see as selling to go with the kits from before. So they're adding that now so that they can corner that market. Rather than you going out and buying billet specialties wheels, they're offering a wheel comparative to billet specialties that you can get right from the dealer, right from the factory. So you can still build that Ryefield model without using all that extra stuff, but they want to make sure it's there in case you are one of those modelers that does want to use that, that does know how to use that, has seen what Rob does with his naked models and says, I want me a negative model too. So and I I honestly I think that's what it is. It's not so much forget the newbies, it's more of a I see this is what's happening in the industry. So let's corner that part of the market and offer it to our customers right in the box. It also increases the cost of the kits to box out the the new kids that just mowed a bunch of lawns, but that's kind of, I think, what their perspective is on that.
SPEAKER_21When's the last time you seen a kid knock on your door and ask to mow your lawn?
SPEAKER_10I had a teenage son, so I didn't have to have anybody knock.
SPEAKER_21I have never ever in my life had a knock on my door for somebody to fucking shovel my driveway or mow my lawn. None of it.
SPEAKER_10You know what? Because people don't knock anymore. Now there's parents are making posts in local groups for that.
SPEAKER_16Yeah. So from my perspective, coming from my side of being an automotive modeler, to get back to the original question. No, I do not believe that kits that people are going to be overwhelmed by kits because from my perspective, I haven't found a kit yet that has had everything I've wanted. If there's a kit out there that had everything you would want, then there would be no need for an aftermarket, correct? Right. The other side of that is you have companies, which this will come later on. You have companies that are flooding the market with subpar kits. Basic, just bottom of the barrel, no detail, easy to assemble kits. So I think there's gonna be something for the average guy that wants to just go to Hobby Lobby and spend, I don't know, 28 bucks on a 40% off every day, all day type of deal. Bring the thing home and just put it together. There's this always gonna be a kit for that guy because of the companies that are just hammering us with subpar basic kits. Isn't enough automotive kits on the market that come with the type of stuff that someone from I hate to say this, my level would like to see.
SPEAKER_21So why is nobody fucking jumping on that bandwagon? I don't understand.
SPEAKER_16There are people, you just don't see them.
SPEAKER_21Well, there's the the 3D printers, yes. But why are the kit manufacturers themselves jumping on that?
SPEAKER_16Well, there are kit manufacturers. You got alpha models. Alpha models is putting out stuff, it's not available at the 7-Eleven or the right aid or the Hobby Lobby. You've got to look for it. But Alpha Models puts out a beautiful, beautifully detailed kit. Here's the problem: money. It costs money to give us those things that everybody wants. That falls back onto the there's always gonna be somebody out there that just wants to go spend 25 bucks on a kit that they can build over the weekend. So from the automotive side, you've got too many of those guys. Well, I shouldn't say too many, you do your hobby the way you want to do it, enjoy it however. I I could care less. There's more of those guys than there is of the type of person like me who wants more detail in a crisper, nicer kit at this point.
SPEAKER_22Jason's absolutely right because for us it's a hobby, but for the guys who make the kits, it's a business. Okay, so so so they're gonna make the kits that that you know, they're gonna make the kits that uh enable them to make more kits and to make a profit. And what's really interesting, Rob, from the armor point of view, of course, is that if you look at kits like MiniArt, you know, they sell out all their kits to retailers, you know, every one of those kits is sold.
SPEAKER_21All I'm saying is that a car kit could be more advanced for the same price, they're just repopping old shit over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, but presumably because there's not a market for the more advanced kits, whereas in armor for some reason there is. There is, yes, and an aircraft, I I guess, are somewhere in between. But I'll say it now. I mean, you know, many are or gecko are great kits, but I would not like to build one. You make me build them in 16 scale. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I I mean last gecko's hard.
SPEAKER_21Gecko is hard.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, they're really hard, they're really hard. And and and a friend of mine, you know, Mark Day, who's who's a great modeler. I mean, you know, he the guy Mark Day Sovereign 2000. So Mark's a pro lily is a professional model maker, and he has had to give up on gecko kits because they're you know, they've you know, he couldn't I will not be defeated.
SPEAKER_21No, they're hard, they're hard.
SPEAKER_22There are a couple of gecko kits which I think rob this is a challenge for another day, but you know, no, I know, I know, I know. But they're building those kits of that complexity because armor modelers, there are enough armor modelers there to make that profitable.
SPEAKER_21This is where I struggle with the car thing, is because they seem to be like 80% of the fucking actual hobby car people.
SPEAKER_16They do let me throw this out to you guys. You've got an age group of guys that are soaking up 75% of the automotive modeling. That's what they're buying. The age group is ha, is they're old guys, is what I'm trying to say here. Old. And as they cycle out, right? And as these guys cycle out of the hobby, and the new people, like your market, which is you know, middle-aged men who are their kids are now off at college or they've moved out on their own. You've got these middle-aged men and women. I don't want to single anybody out, but they're coming into the hobby. As you see these old guys cycling out, you're gonna see, I think, these companies ramp up and start producing what the new modelers want. Sure, yeah, is what I think because I I am the new modeler. It's been years since I bought an AMT kit.
SPEAKER_21I've only been doing this seriously for like 10 years. Yeah, you're a newbie. I'm a new modeler.
SPEAKER_16As more of us come into the hobby, I think I'm gonna predict you're gonna see a shift to more detailed kits. Granted, just like everything else in this world, the prices are gonna go up, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.
SPEAKER_22I mean, actually, the cost is a good thing because what I was what I was gonna say is we have to remember that the hobby is truly an international hobby now. You know, I don't begin to understand the business model of someone like Gecko or Ryefield, but I don't know how many of their kits they sell in China, how many kits they sell in North America, how many kits they sell in Europe, and what proportion of their businesses in those countries. And the demographic of modellers I suspect in Asia is probably younger than North America and the UK. I know the demographic of modellers in Italy, Central, Eastern Europe is younger than the UK, I would have thought. From my well, from from you know, so some some sort of you know quantitative data. If we look at who who buys our magazines, you know, we we look at how they consume our magazines. So in the US and in the UK, people are consuming the magazines in print. In Europe, they're consuming them digitally. Now, does that mean that actually they you know the simply the costs of postage are pro are prohibitive? Or are we looking at a different demographic? Are we looking at a different group of modellers? Now, none of us, I don't think, have a handle on what's going on in the hobby in in the Far East. But if I talk to some of my friends out there and look at the guy uh look at the the shows that are happening in places like Singapore or Taiwan, it's a very different scene. And also just then on the cost, we always have this conversation about you know putting the prices up on the magazine because you know, printing's expensive, shipping's expensive. But we know there are lots of people out there who think nothing of spending 60-70 pounds on a kit. They're not gonna worry whether their magazine is five pounds a month or six pounds a month, right? Our Toy Soldier magazine that we do is predominantly a North American. We have a North American editor and we have a North American readership on the whole. Now, those guys are spending hundreds and hundreds. Of dollars on things. So if you're a businessman, you kind of know your market and you and you pitch your market. So at the moment, and you know, and I think this is you know coming back to what Jason said, and Jason, you're absolutely right. I'm hearing that the model car hobby in the US at the moment is older, perhaps, than the armor modeling hobby in the US, maybe less disposable income, or rather less willingness to dispose their income in that way. That will change. And we look at it as hobbyists, but these guys are looking at it as business, aren't they? And they're you know ultimately they're there to make money, and that's that's the big difference, I guess.
SPEAKER_16Yeah.
SPEAKER_10Well, I do think, and this is mainly pointed towards Rob Adams. The um the reason why car kits will not see what the armor modeling worlds see without a major, major increase, and why I think that the model manufacturers just keep repoping the old molds and and all the same old cars, it all comes down to licensing. They probably have contracts where they can keep making that same model kit because it's in their contract, that they can do that same thing. They paid for it, boom, they can keep doing it. But if they want to repop that, if they want to retool that, they would have to go back to the manufacturers and renegotiate the contract to do that, which will cost them more money. And that's what's stopping the automotive modelers, automotive model manufacturers from coming out with a new tool Hemi CUDA or a new tool whatever, because they would have to go and renegotiate the contract, and it would cost it would be prohibitive.
SPEAKER_16It would, and for and so I want you to think about this, Justin. Why would the company do that? Why would they spend millions of dollars to retool something or tool something new when you've got Joe Average who goes to the hobby shop and buys exactly 15 of the 1977 mon uh Monza Mirages that were the same old kit since '78? If they're making their profit, hand over making their money.
SPEAKER_21They might not understand that it's the same kit, obviously. Until you get into the hobby, you don't understand the history of fucking.
SPEAKER_10Well, no, Jason's Jason is referring to the old guys.
SPEAKER_21Yes.
SPEAKER_10That will go to Hobby Lobby and post that they bought the same six kits they bought every two weeks when 40% off because those are the people that he's referring to.
SPEAKER_04Every time I walk into Hobby Lobby, now it's 40% of the city.
SPEAKER_10No, it's all day pricing.
SPEAKER_16All day every day, 40% off.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, it's no longer every two weeks.
SPEAKER_04There are a couple armor kits there, but they're all like to me old to meas stuff. But yeah, yeah. Obviously, like Dave was saying about what's the reasoning behind the car modeling in the States. Is it are they an older age group? Is it a financial thing? It's a combination of both. The fact I think car model is. I'm sorry, you guys are a bunch of cheap bastards.
SPEAKER_21No, well, or Justin was saying this it's licensing, and that does that is a problem, right? But 100%.
SPEAKER_10So all those companies would just have to like go back to Ford and say I mean in our world, Andy's hobby headquarters, they released the Jeep, right? But they can't call it a Jeep because they have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees. Well, that's so they call it anything.
SPEAKER_04That was that was like more truck. That was the Opal Blitz for Tamiya. That happens all the time. But this is what I want to do. I want to carry this conversation over because we talked about, like, I believe why the car hobby or car sort of the hobbies the way it is. We're gonna get into that after our next ad spot because we're going long here, and this is gonna even go further because we're having a good time. But I want to go to our next ad spot. So let's go to our next ad spot for Demon Barber Designs.
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SPEAKER_04So we're back, and I want to get into what we were talking about with this car situation because I think that the social media aspect when it comes to the car modeling fucking hurts that hobby on that end. All right. All right, because this is one part that we've talked about before about the social media aspect of the hobby and at this state of the hobby right now. Is it hurting or it helping? And I think that it's hurting in a lot of ways. It helps some, but also hurts it in a lot of others, right? A lot of Facebook drama, it's a lot of drama on those pages. Yep. I think there's a lot of people out there that think they're experts that like try to indoctrinate people with the way they believe things are or how they should be. Not just car-wise, but that happens on the armor side. I talked about that with the JS2 build, how everybody's a fucking expert, not just about the actual vehicle. Right. Well, with aircraft. Unfortunately, we don't have like our aircraft guru here on our this show, but but I also believe that social media and sharing posts on social media, and sometimes people see a lot of good work. Is it inspiring people to be better or is it hurting people? Frankie, what's up?
SPEAKER_06I just want to tie back into with Jason's conversation. I posted at one point, I was doing a couple of mini art trucks, right? Rocket launchers and stuff. So I actually posted on an automotive site. I go, how do you automotive guys deal with this? How do you feel? I'm an armor modeler and I've got kits of vehicles that are infinitely better builds, more interesting, more complicated, full engine, suspension. And I don't even want to build a car, but I'm I'm building a fighting vehicle. You guys are getting shafted. How do you feel? I don't remember that, Jason. We had talked about it. I do, yeah. The social media response was utter bullshit. We had guys posting what the fuck do you know? Like, dude, it was a legit question. I felt you guys deserve an amazing car kit build like I'm getting, and I don't even want to have this. And the social media aspect of it, I ended up just ignoring that post because a lot of these guys were just like, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. It's not I'm not talking about anything. I'm asking you a question. How do you feel? Don't you want to call AMT and say, dude, make it a bit more? And so the social media in that respect, it hurt me. I was a little put out by that post because I tried to ask a legit question.
SPEAKER_04That's what I'm talking about. It's it's is it hurting or helping? Obviously, on a whole, the hobby on a whole, but also individual. Like, what's the individual experiences with it? So, Jason, you were gonna say something about that, right? Because you did agree with me that I believe like it's probably more like the like we talked about that Lucas C page with the scum, like I always called it most icy back in the day. And then uh then Matt just kind of like rebranded it like you know, most icely, you know, scum scum and villainy because everybody on that page is a bunch of jerks sometimes.
SPEAKER_16There is it's un I agree with you. I don't think I don't think social media as a whole is helping the hobby at all because there's so much negativity. I think it's uh honestly, I think it's hurting, especially when it comes to Facebook. Facebook seems to be like if you're on Facebook, you automatically get a a permit to be a dick. I just know it's like I don't understand it. I really don't. But what other way are you gonna get your work out there to people? There is no other way. Well, there's interesting.
SPEAKER_04The web based forums are not they're just they're like they're dead now.
SPEAKER_16Exactly. So you gotta deal with it as much as it sucks, you gotta deal with it. Trust me, I run a Facebook page. There's a lot of garbage out there that you have to weed through. Some some Facebook pages they they feed into it, but what are you gonna do? Tell tell me another way, and I will gladly shift to that.
SPEAKER_04It's those questions when people like okay, there's one thing about when someone posts their work and so on and so forth. Like, we just talked about our friend. Here we go. We're gonna bring him up here. And Jet was a you know, hasn't been around in a while, and we'll talk about that. Jet scale models. Jet's a great guy, he's a good modeler, he promotes the hobby really well. I think he's crazy, but he's a good modeler. And he posted a legitimate, honest question.
SPEAKER_06He didn't even post a question, he posted on his page, right? He did the new chaffy, ooh, and he said, I put one deckle down to me a deckle, I put one down on a gloss coat, and I put the other decal down without a gloss coat, and he felt there was a difference between the two. He's I can see a difference. So his post was those people, and he he he made it blind. He said, There are some engineering types in modeling who take a big stance on this gloss no gloss. We could say it here. We're open book, it's the scale models critique group. That's what Jet posted. He goes, For him, he felt there was a significant difference, and he liked having the gloss under the deckle, and he actually put in his post do what you want to do. It wasn't a this is better or not better, it's this is what I saw, this is what I like, here you go, take a look. And of course, the scale model critique group, somebody took that post and re-posted it there for commentary.
SPEAKER_04Well, they took his post from his own personal page and put it on their page.
SPEAKER_06Yes, and then that's the original poster wanted to discuss this, and then of course the usual shenanigans started. And Jet has not chosen yeah, but he hasn't chosen to answer on that page. But on his own page, he put another post saying, Hey, they took my post, they're making comments about it. He goes, It's it's this stupidity about gloss no like that's gotta stop.
SPEAKER_04There's a bunch of pretentious idiots on that page, and they love to bad mouth people and act like they're better than people and shit.
SPEAKER_21And you know what happens? You can actually follow some people throughout different pages, right? And they all react a little differently than they do on that page. That's where they're allowed to fucking be a dick, you know. And I'm sorry, Robbie, if you heard this, I'm talking about you.
SPEAKER_04There's people who feel emboldened enough to act like a bunch of arrogant pricks on that page. And you know what? Come at me. I don't give a shit. I can I can I'm a big boy, I can defend myself. You want to go toe-to-toe? We'll do it. And this is the thing they take these people's posts, they put it on that page, and they want to ridicule or or belittle people or whatever, because it makes them feel better because they got little dicks, tiny dicks you guys have. And it's not my fault that you got a small dick, that you got to worry about fucking complaining about other people because your life sucks. And trust me, I've seen some of your people's pages in your personal life, and I can understand why you're so miserable when you go on those pages to talk about other people's stuff. And I will say that honestly, and I'm not doing that to be a funny guy. You know what? You want to get personal? Get personal. A lot of those guys who post on those pages, I've seen their personal Facebook pages, and I can understand why they go on that page and are miserable. And if I was them and had that Facebook page, I would be miserable too. Yeah, sorry, I went there, it's the 50th fucking episode. We're causing drugs.
SPEAKER_06All right, getting back to that though, at least Jet responded on his own page saying I wasn't saying what's good or bad. That's his problem. The facts are this is what I saw, this is what I did. And he actually told me, he goes, I want to stick with my momentum when I build. He goes, I'm skipping the gloss code, he goes, because it's interrupting my momentum on a build. I want to keep going. His response was I didn't tell anyone what to do. I just said, Here's what happened with me. And it becomes blown out of proportion. And a lot of people, it's it happens so much. This is why I only post where I choose to post because I don't have enough time or space in my head to deal with these knuckleheads that that are just I'm just I'm done.
SPEAKER_04I like Jed a lot, and I I know I've had me and Jed's gonna add it a couple of times. He's a great ambassador for hobby, he's a good modeler, and he had had a legitimate he posted a legitimate question on his own personal page, and you saw what happened with it, where people just feel emboldened to just attack people and and and just act the fool. It's like you're acting a fool for no reason.
SPEAKER_06And it wasn't even a question, it was a statement that I did this, period. And it becomes a fucking thing. It's like people like I mean, William Shatner said it best, right? People get a life, it's a TV show, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly. That was the part of this one question, and we're gonna try to pick up the pace here because now Toots wants to go, like, you know, live his life right now. He's just miserable right now. He feels like he's like locked into vacancy right now. This guy wants to get the hell out. But social media, that's one of the reasons why I believe in this current state right now, today. We're recording what uh July 26th of 2026, that the social media aspect of the hobby, Facebook in particular, Instagram is Instagram, but Facebook in particular is in a lot of ways, it helps the hobby in some, but also hurts in others, and the the negative effects that it can have totally outweigh the positive. Dave, do you agree, Dave?
SPEAKER_22I've guessed here. No, because in my other Facebook persona, as like hit with all my history shit, I absolutely get it. So I get stuff that I'm I comments I've made, posts I make, get so I'm told, posted onto like private groups where I'm kind of ridiculed and and called names and and all the rest of it. But I I yeah, I don't give a fuck, whatever. But in terms of modeling and the hobby, it has been hugely positive and continues to be hugely positive because for one, I would not be here talking to you guys. That's true. I take that. Okay, I've never met any of you guys before. We are friends through social media, our entire relationship is mediated through through social media.
SPEAKER_02I agree with that, yes.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, and and I remember one of one one of the so wonderful things about social media is that when I went to SMC a few years ago and I walked into the hotel lobby, and there was Asgar Gunner, the German model I was talking about.
SPEAKER_04Yes, great guy.
SPEAKER_22Who you know, I'd never met the guy before. I like, hey, how you doing? You know what, and I give you this, you're right. This and it this is definitely true. And actually, for me, that positive outweighs the negativity. I'll take that. Yeah, so I'm still of the opinion that Facebook and social media is a huge thing because look, us modelers are on the whole pretty solitary guys. If if we wanted to hang out with lots of people and be really sociable, we'd join a fucking football team, wouldn't we? We wouldn't sit on our bench building fucking models, right?
SPEAKER_21Facebook is the only reason that I've met all of the people that are on the screen except for you.
SPEAKER_04That's what Dave just said. Um you're drunk, would have you didn't realize Dave said that already.
SPEAKER_22Exactly. And and and actually, you know, for people introverted people like most modelers are, Facebook and meeting people on social media is great because I can do the whole kind of like extrovert hanging out with people, but but it's a but it's it's hard work for me, you know what I mean? Whereas I think social media has has widened my circle, has introduced me to people I would never know before, and some of those people I really think of as genuine friends. So for me, the positive side of it outweighs the negative.
SPEAKER_04You know what? You're changing my mind here. You're right, you're definitely right about that. That's an aspect that I didn't because I'm so like I'm with these guys all the time I'm like with my Frankie and all tooch is I see tooch in my personal life, but Justin and Rob and Frankie and Jason and a lot of other guys. I take that for granted because I see them every night that I don't see it as social media, but you're right. Definitely that I I do agree with that part.
SPEAKER_21Well, it's kind of an everyday thing, right?
SPEAKER_04I'm a pretty positive person, even in my own personal life in a lot of ways, at least try to be. And I just don't like seeing negativity by people, and I don't like bullies.
SPEAKER_22I'm not I don't like bullies, and you're right the way in which it emboldens people, so people who you know, not many people come up to me and and uh you know abuse me to my face, but people will come and abuse me online. Now, it's also interesting. I mean, again, in my historian kind of guise on Facebook, I have a colleague who I write with, and he gets like, yeah, he gets not death threats, but he gets all sorts of abuse on social media. Now, I don't get any of it because I mean I think people would know what would happen, you know. I give as good as I got.
SPEAKER_21I would hope that you're not getting death threats on a fucking being a modeler.
SPEAKER_04You like the get-go kit? I'm gonna come to your house.
SPEAKER_22But people's negativity, it gives social media. You're right, Rob, it gives people, you know, emboldens people, it gives them a right, embolds them to be they feel they they they can say things to you know, uh without consequence.
SPEAKER_04They they can say things without consequence. If you were in the same room with somebody, you probably wouldn't say things the way you're saying it or feel emboldened enough to say the language that we're gonna get. You know, what do you think, Tooch?
SPEAKER_07What it does is it's it's like in any kind of social level. It's it you know, it helps introverts, it definitely empowers extroverts, but in the end of the day, people are now more emboldened and we see it in every aspect of every social uh aspect of life from politics to sports. Everybody's an expert. Why? Because they could sit behind a screen in in a level of anonymity and write whatever they want without consequence, without academic consequence, without logic, without reason, without anything. And they feel emboldened. So it's the same thing in the hobby, it's just amplified because social media is the main form of communication today, as opposed to when you had your boards, your your listservs your boards, and then you had then you had emails, and then before that, you wrote into a magazine or had a club meeting. You gotta learn how to dial it out, you gotta learn how to just swipe, man. Just swipe. I don't know how many times a day I sit there and go, yeah, I'm not gonna comment on us. I don't, I just don't have the energy of the time, nor am I gonna educate the ignorance that I have to deal with every day anyway.
SPEAKER_06But then we get to see pictures of Tooch in 200 year old clothes in a big boat that's half sunk with a big ass smile on his face, and light, like, like, like, like with Jack, with Jack Osborne.
SPEAKER_07I can't wait for that too.
SPEAKER_04With the try, with a try-hat on, try, try-pointed hat on, whatever. With a raccoon's penis.
SPEAKER_07You know, people post on social media because they want to be they're they're they're that kid in the back of the room, like me, me, pick me, pick me. At some point, you gotta realize I don't give a fuck. I put stuff up and I got I put up my latest figure and I got a comment back, and it was from someone we know who says, Go back to the eyes. It was Greg DeFranco. He goes, fix those eyes. And I'm like, Yeah, I know, Greg. I gotta go back to the case.
SPEAKER_04That is great constructive criticism by a great figure painter.
SPEAKER_07Oh, absolutely, and that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go back and work on those eyes a little more. But but most people are out there because they want to have the sense that they are they're self-important.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, a lot of people they put stuff up, not because they want it, like Frank's message to you was said, you know, go back to the eyes. You can handle that. 90% of the people on social media right now aren't looking for that, they're looking for the pat on the back. Hey, that's fantastic. Good job. That's all they that's all they want.
SPEAKER_07Give them a shout out because you know exactly. Yeah, it's social influencing. It's you know, I I said like I'm getting an anthropology degree in archaeology, and I was sitting on a couple days ago with a friend of mine who's an anthropologist, he's an archaeologist, he's well respected in the Mid-Atlantic, he's known nationally and a little bit of international, or at least North American. But he did a project where he was diving into reenacting, the Rev War reenacting. He's revisiting it, and we were talking, and I said, you know, it's a weird hobby. Doing reenacting of wars is a weird hobby. Think about what we do is a kind of a weird hobby. We're building miniature replicas of things we could actually own outright.
SPEAKER_04Well, you have a lot of weird hobbies, and we talked about that on a couple of our shows. But you do embrace it, dude. Listen, Tweach, I love you. I mean, you you embrace it, and you're listening. I'm glad you jumped in on this because you're spot on. I think you said it the best when it comes to the way this is. And and Dave, you also my eyes up about a lot of things, and you're right. Oh, you wouldn't we wouldn't have met a lot of people in the hobby and in life in a lot of ways to become friends with if it wasn't for social media, and that is true. Um, I think I I sometimes the negativity really uh overpowers me sometimes that I see, and I don't like that because I don't like bullies. I don't like bullies. I'm not a I I I'm always the person to stand up for the person being bullied, and I don't like people ever being a bully, and I and I don't like that even online, especially in the modeling hobby.
SPEAKER_07Wait, did you do that with a step stool though when you stood up to bully?
SPEAKER_04I'll be on a step stool.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04All right, so this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna do a couple more little topics, and we're gonna do a like a like a lightning round, and then we're gonna do our little social media shout-outs to end this. But we're gonna talk about a couple more things after we do our next ad spot for squadron.com.
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SPEAKER_04All right, we're back and we're going to just do maybe one or two more little things to talk about about the state of the hobby. This is a great episode. I'm hope everybody who's listening is having a good time and is either agreeing or disagreeing what we're saying. And if you all you do disagree with stuff, just let us know. Either on our Facebook page or you can email us at uh what's the email again there, Justin? Modeling Insanity Podcast at gmail.com. There you go. There's a couple more things. There's we have I have a bunch of stuff written down, but we're gonna pass over a few things. But I do want to talk about what's something that we we've been I know SMC is gonna be coming in October. We got a IPMS nationals happening in just two weeks, right? Frankie, you're gonna be at the IPMS Nationals. Frankie will be our modeling insanity podcast representative at the show. Make sure to look for Frankie, right, Frank?
SPEAKER_06Ambassador at large.
SPEAKER_04Ambassador at large. Make sure you go to Frankie and break his chops a little bit. He's gonna be attending the podcast roundtable there to talk about podcasting. And I have a lot of faith in Frankie. Frankie's gonna do well. He's gonna represent the podcast well. He's gonna be hanging out with those guys from Squadron and Jeff Hearn. You know, this guy's a royalty now. I Frankie Denati is like modeling royalty, Dave, on this side of the pond. Like he's president of IPMS Canada. Everybody knows Frank Denati. He was listening once you're president, you're always president. Do you is is he not president Obama anymore? You say still say president Obama, right?
SPEAKER_21No, that's the way it works down there, not up here.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, has the scale modeling secret service around the president. Why do you have to post trouble?
SPEAKER_06You saw my daughter show up, she delivered my coffee.
SPEAKER_04I see very good, right? And we have a lot of things coming up of talking about model contests, and I know SMC, like we talk about, is coming up. We just had the Marcin show. Great coverage, by the way, by uh managing editor in chief, Mr. Dave Grummet did an amazing spread on the Marson show, right? That happened just a few months back. So just go back. I think that was like the April and May issue. I think he was it. No, no, no. Yeah, maybe April and May, right? Was one of those issues?
SPEAKER_22It would be um May and June because the show was in April, yeah. April.
SPEAKER_04So it'll be the May, the May issue. You did the Martian recap, which was really good. Lots of great work. Dave Greece's like, Rob, there's a lot of great work here. I'll just put it that way. There's a lot of good work over at the show, and you know what those European shows blow you away? But that brings me to this question: contests. Do we believe that contests how we see them or how they were, are they still relevant to the hobby? Do these contests motivate people to build more or do you think different things? Do people feel intimidated to go or do they feel intimidated when they leave those shows? Do winning awards at those shows matter anymore? Does it really matter to people? Um, is it really such a big deal now to win awards at shows? Is the judging at some of these shows, and we talked about this before, and I wanted to touch base on this episode, is it becoming a little too subjective? Right? Is people's subjectivity and their own personal opinions impacting the way things are being judged? Just on a whole, how how do we feel how the contests are? So, Tooch, we're going to you first. We're going to you. Do you feel that the questions that I pose regarding the contests of being relevant? Do we still feel like contests are still relevant?
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean, people want to be able to say they're number one in something, right? They want to say, look, I want an award because part of it is they want the applause, the accolades for their work, right? They want peers to s to look up to them for whatever reason. I don't personally do that. I don't go for that. I don't. I think personally, I think shows are irrelevant for the contest part because you cannot compare what I do and what you do and say that they're equal in measurement. They're not. You can't do what Adams does and what Jason does and say they're equal. Everybody has different skill sets, everything comes with a point of view. You can't. And as much as like amps and other organizations who are trying to do like open contests are trying to create, you know, some kind of rubric, someone who's come from education, you know when it's good. You just do. You know when it's good. And it's still going to be a matter of opinion. No matter how hard you try to take it out, it's always a matter of opinion. There's always going to be that eye appeal that draws you in, or something that there am a detail that wows you that's going to draw you in. I think if you had people, you know, the whole thing with the poker chips that we did we've been doing and everybody's been doing, if you had a show where you just gave out as part of uh, you know, where people would, you know, you give them out poker chips and let the people decide. And you say, you know, you, you know, you have a hundred attendees come in and let's say, you know, you got a you're two, you know, a hundred models and you got 200 attendees, you know, you can rank them by how pop pop public popularity, but even then there's gonna be people who are gonna be ass hurt over that, you know? Yep.
SPEAKER_04We've talked about this before, and we'll say it again. It's a natural human emotion that needs to be accepted or that need to be recognized for the hard work that you put in, regardless of what that hard work is. Yeah, desire. Desire for acceptance. Like I said, you could be outside planting flowers on a hot sunny day in front of your house, and that couple's walking their dog down the sidewalk. You want them to say, Wow, your flowers look great, because you want to know that all the time and effort you did something is going to be recognized, and it happens in the modeling world. Two, I truly believe just to interject, and then we'll, you know, you know, everybody knows how I feel about the modeling shows. I just feel like, you know, a lot of these past shows, the experiences there are not positive. I just feel like the subjectivity, at least at the American shows, I haven't been to the European shows, Dave, and I'll hope you touch base on this because you have an opportunity to be at some see some amazing models and modelers and mod and dioramas and stuff at those shows. But on the American side, there's so many people who do such amazing work that for some reason are not being recognized for whatever external reason there is, or biases that some of these judges have, or lack thereof of knowledge that they don't have of subjects that they're looking at. I just feel like there's a lot of people involved in the judging parts of these shows that don't have the prerequisite knowledge to be able to properly judge that model. Now, granted, you know, everybody has a taste, right? People, a pretty girl can walk down the street, and one person might think they're the best-looking girl in the world, and the next person might not think they are. So everybody's tastes are different, but you've got to be able to recognize good work, especially in this hobby. And I truly believe that there's a lot of good models, especially on the American side, the US soil. And I'm not gonna say their names, but you probably if you watch some of our live casts or other or heard some other shows, you might hear me say those modelers' names that for some reason are getting screwed at some of these shows for whatever reason, is that their work is just not being recognized because there's a subjectivity aspect of it. So, Dave, overseas, how do you feel it is over there?
SPEAKER_22You're right, in that that subjectivity is always there with model shows, isn't it? I mean, um, and there's always the unconscious or otherwise desire to recognise your friends' models. Yeah, I've seen that at all at UK model shows, I've seen that at European model shows. The show I don't know what kind of goes on behind the scenes is Mosson actually. And Mosson has so many really great models that I really don't know how the judges make a decision. It's it's not a show that I hear a lot of uh you know, you hear some controversy over, but but maybe not as much as as as other shows. SMC, I think, is similar. I mean, Mike Rinaldi made that very controversial comment, didn't he, a couple of years ago at SMC. And I could kind of see where he was getting from two now, I do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have phrased it in that way, but I could see what he was saying. And what he was saying is look, everything is so great now that there is so much talent on display that was different to when I first started going to Euro Militaire, for example, 20 years ago. I mean, when you saw Mirko Bale's 250 or his King Tiger, you had never seen a model like that before. We talked about that too, me and you of the yeah. I mean, if you saw Mario N's dioramas, you had never seen a model like that. If you saw Phil Stachinskis' Panzer 4, where he first did the hairspray model, you had never seen show that year. That was like the last year, I think it was. It was still, you know, and you look at it now, and it is still it was at uh I I last saw that model a couple of years ago at Telford, and every time you see it, it just blows you away. It's such a great model. But those pieces are few and far between now, you know, because the standard has come up. I I don't enter model competitions anymore, and I don't really get involved in judging. I mean, we have our own model show and our guideline show, but it's a it but it's a a small affair, and you know, it is what it is, it's fun for the people who who enter and fun to judge and and all the rest of it, but it's not a big model show. One of the model shows in the UK, which I think is really kind of I think you know, blazing a trail, if you like, about how we can do model shows differently, is a figure painting show. It was actually this weekend, it was it's just happened uh in Ely in the UK. It's called the Fenn Model Show, and it's by a group of uh figure modellers, and but it always comes with a bad weekend because it's like the weekend when the schools have just broke up and like we're off on a holiday on Tuesday, it's really difficult to go over to it. But I managed to go over there one year and I was struck by how many people were entering their figures and pieces into the competition. Is it like Warhammer or yeah, it's mainly Warhammer, but it's also that there's also there are some there are models, there's some military models, and there's some historical figures, but it's a figure show more than anything, and it's the models on display were predominantly Warhammer, but everybody was bringing their models in, and they weren't putting them on club tables or or they were putting them into the competition. So the competition tables were absolutely the centerpiece of the show because that's where almost everybody who came through the door bought a model with them to put on the table, and I thought that was great. I mean, I thought that was absolutely great, and there was a wide, you know, there were some brilliantly executed pieces, and there were some pieces which were you know weren't very good, but actually the centerpiece of the show was the competition table, so everybody was looking around and and oh, is is you know, is is that yours? Yes, oh okay. Well, you know, and there and there was some genuine kind of advice and and kind of help given to people.
SPEAKER_21They're using pretty much like a four by eight sheet of fucking plywood, right? That's their base.
SPEAKER_22Yeah, I mean, or or they're literally just uh you know, on on the plastic base that comes with a kit and they just put it on the table.
SPEAKER_21No, I'm talking about the size of the table.
SPEAKER_22Oh well, I mean, gosh, I mean the the tables are like four by eight, like it's like a sheet of plywood, right?
SPEAKER_21I ended up having to judge a show one time, and it was hard because you just look at these huge armies that are everywhere, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta judge like if they've modified it. Well, I don't know if they modified it. I'm not a four-hammer guy.
SPEAKER_22But that's what Rob's talking about, in terms of kind of like if you're judging it, you know, you have to have a degree of expertise to judge.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_22And if you haven't got that, you know, that's fine, but you can just say, Well, I like that piece because right. Um yeah, but because of the choice of colours. I like the piece, I like that piece because of the way it's presented. I like that piece because it's different to that one. We get back to this whole point about you know, you enjoy the hobby however you want to enjoy it, and you should be able to find things to say that are positive about a piece on the table. If somebody has has put their model there on the table, you know, for scrutiny, you should be able to say something positive, or if you can't say anything positive, don't say anything at all.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. And that that's the big thing. And you know, I I just feel like I want to know if I was to enter a show, and it's been a long time since I did, that when you're entering your model, that you want it to be judged fairly, and you also want it to be judged by people who kind of know what you did. You know, I you don't want people to try to decipher or try to figure out what you did. They should you should know when you look like it's gonna sound arrogant, and I'm gonna sound arrogant when I say it, but like when I look at someone's model on a table, especially subjects that I'm very, very familiar with, I know exactly what they did and what changes they made to it by just looking at the model. Now, there's gonna be other models that I might not necessarily know exactly what they did, and if they're able to discuss it on a brag book or something, or discuss it in the description, you're capable of noticing it, but you should have some sort of knowledge of what you're looking at. I wouldn't expect me, and this is where I want to go to Jason, where I'm gonna go to a show, let's say, and and have to judge you know someone's car model. I'm not versed on car models, I don't know what the person did. I mean, yeah, does it look good? Sure, it looks great. This car this model looks great. What the next to the model next to it looks great. You're not judging on how great it looks to you. You want to judge it by the merit of what they did and how what they did in that model to make it the way it is. So, Jason, the question is this what do you what you're the car guy? So, like these NL shows and all those car shows, you were at the infamous PatCon show that got picked up over people's heads, should we say? We were visiting that back from the us going crazy about the touching of the models. What do you think when it comes to the car modeling?
SPEAKER_16It's a tough question to answer because you've got so many variables. But from my standpoint, yes, people should absolutely go to shows. I think they're still relevant for the simple fact again, sedentary hobby, right? We're by ourselves. It's the only way you're gonna get out there and actually see a built model of from your peers. So for me to say don't go to shows, they're not relevant, that would be silly. Go to shows, hang out with your friends, see what they've built, talk to them about that stuff. Other side of the coin, judged shows. I've gotten to the point where I don't think those are very important. An NL show is different, an NNL show is uh people's choice. Uh, you go there and you you know fool the purpose of hanging out with your friends and checking out what they've built. These judges that are judging car models sometimes they don't know what's going on, and it's not a it's not a slight against them. I've been at an IPMS show and had somebody say, Hey, do me a favor, judge the summer class real quick. It's like, uh what? Right. Exactly. So some of these guys are like thrown into it. So, short answer: yes, they're still relevant for hanging out with your friends and checking out what your peers are doing, but if you're going there for awards, then maybe not so much.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Frankie. Our club, IPMS London, we have a big show in South Terri, and uh it went to a vote to the club members last week. The decision was do you want a contest or do you want to do a swap meet with display? And the membership overwhelmingly chose to do a contest, they wanted a contest. So are they relevant? Yes, I think a lot of modelers still want to go, they still like to compete and see how they do. Are they intimidating? Yeah. If you're new to the hobby, I've talked to lots of people who are like, dude, it's this is scary. My first model show I ever went to, I actually want to go with one of my kits. But I was hedging, I didn't know whether I was gonna put something in or not. So I think they're still relevant. Like for me, it's less the contest. It is like Jason, for me, as you know, it's it's the social and shopping aspects of it. That's one and two. What I love is getting stuff like increasing my stash and seeing my friends. The judging, I judge, I'll be honest. Uh I try to judge to the best of my ability. If I'm looking at something and I'm not sure, I'm gonna use AI. Show me this in real life because when it comes to building, that I can figure out what they've done, their technique, paint, stuff like that. The the mechanics, the physical. If I'm not sure about the subject, I can look at the subject real quick and make a decision. I judged at one show and I told my fellow judge who was a friend of mine, I said, There are eight models in this category. I wouldn't give first place to a single one of these. And he said, Well, we have to do a one, two, three. I said, Well, then you know what? You pick whatever you want, because to me, everything in this.
SPEAKER_04Not about one, two, three, about what was there, and it was similar.
SPEAKER_06I said, This one category, and I'm trying to remember it was aircraft, but I said like it was like civilian aircraft in a certain scale. I was like, there is not a single model in here that is well built. Every one of them is just it's they're not that good. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't give any of these a pat on the back. They're mediocre. Now, that being said, I realized afterwards, yeah, you know what, these could be new people in the hobby and stuff like that. So I did engage and I did say, well, you know, I picked the best of the course built, so to speak, prizes and stuff like that. But but I mean, the judging, you know, it is subjective. I had a kit and I listened to a judge look at my kit and argue that my dust and dirt placement was not accurate. Because I work in academia. I was gonna ask for his geological PhD so that he could demonstrate to me the knowledge and skill set that you were an expert on dust and dirt placement. Right. But next time I'll just show you a picture of the damn thing, and you can see that I built basically the picture. Um, so there's that subjectivity and and not always a big fan of the.
SPEAKER_04Well, that was another question that we're not gonna get to, but that's funny kind of just to take you back just two seconds, Frank, um, about like you talk about the dust placement. And then when we were gonna talk about weathering as an art and as opposed to whatever, and like one of the things was like, do we forget what real vehicles look like in references? Just look at reference photos of real vehicles and you see like how models is like how they look really not the way that we think they should look with all this dust and mud and chipping the size of like paper plates on their freaking on these tanks. It's it's interesting, but it's funny you say that, Frank, because that is a problem. Um, but I want to go to Justin. Justin, what do you think?
SPEAKER_10Frankly, I'm tired of the discussion of winning awards and fucking judging and all of this fucking nonsense.
SPEAKER_04Tell me how you really feel. Sit down, lay down and talk to me.
SPEAKER_09Put your feet up, put your head on the pillar. I'm just so tired of the the constant the judges did this and the judges did that, and I should have run, and blah blah blah, blah, blah. Like, shut the fuck up. It's not a competition. It shouldn't be a fucking competition for fat guys that sit at our benches most because themselves fat and you plastic together and put paint on shit.
SPEAKER_10What the fuck competition is that? It's not gold silver bronze. I get that. I get juried exhibitions.
SPEAKER_04We also don't want people to get awards just to get awards. Sometimes that you know people like shooting.
SPEAKER_10But a gold silver bronze at least has the ability to show you how you've improved. Right. That is a first, second, third where it's broken down to oh, well, both of these are gold medal winners, but now we have to find something that disqualifies one so one can be first place and one can be second place. Like, that's fucking ridiculous. People love competition though.
SPEAKER_04Some people love it.
SPEAKER_21Well, there has to be a way to make it happen, right? There has to be a line that's drawn in the same.
SPEAKER_10It's it is slowly changing, but in all honesty, like, and I haven't even been doing quote unquote the show circuit that long. I'm already tired of fucking bringing home awards. Like, I don't care. I've got a fucking tote full of fucking medals and shit. I don't care when my kids find me dead in my apartment in 30 years or whatever, they're gonna go, What do we do with this shit? Oh, I know we're gonna go use the waste management dumpsters. You know what I mean? Like that it doesn't mean anything to anybody except in the moment that your name is called, or you go back to your table and go, Oh, look, I only got a silver, or oh look, I got third place. Like it doesn't mean shit.
SPEAKER_21But hold on, you travel a long way, like I do, for a show, and you go down to the IPMS nationals and you win the silver. That fucking thing means something, baby. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_10You traveled a long way to go to Amps Nats and Phil in in Harrisburg in Pennsylvania.
SPEAKER_21No, I IPMS nationals.
SPEAKER_10I'm talking about, but you traveled a long way to get to Amps Nats in when it was in PA, right?
SPEAKER_21Both, yeah, both times.
SPEAKER_10I traveled a long way to get everywhere, and you had a genuine top-notch cheesesteak. Oh, you're right. There's your win right there.
SPEAKER_04Oh, you're right. That was a tasty stomach turning cheesesteak that looked like so.
SPEAKER_07Rob, what you're saying is going to the competition and winning medals was more important than meeting Rob, me. No.
SPEAKER_21What I'm saying is that the the fact that I was able to pull a fucking win out of that was exciting for me.
SPEAKER_04You do like competition, though, Rob. You are a competition, you enjoy it. And I can appreciate that, though. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with. Enjoying competition. And I know there's a lot of people in the hobby that really do enjoy it. And I can appreciate that. Is contests as relevant as they once were? You know, there was a time years ago where we talked about this, but you know, we talked about social media and all how everything is. There was a time when you can only talk the hobby or share your work unless you went to your model club. You maybe met somebody at your hobby shop or you were at a model show. You didn't have this like instant gratification with social media, right, Dave, where we can talk and hey Dave, want to get on the we're gonna meet up, whatever. Or us in our build rooms every night talking, modeling and showing our work and posting it on our Discord and posting it on Facebook, but it's instant gratification today. And I oh and I think that's maybe taking over the shows a little bit. I mean, shows I still do believe are they are relevant in some ways and they should be, but um, I just feel like I just hope that that's not what overtakes people's hobby. The show should be a gathering, gathering and talking about shows, the Norese con for region one for my show, and I know I spoke to Jason about this, is on Long Island region one for IPMS, and I want to have the podcast there. And believe it or not, we're able to finagle at the region one, it's IPMS, but the armor category and figures is all gonna be gold, silver, and bronze. It's not gonna be one, two, three, so it's gonna be a little change at that IPMS show, which is gonna be cool.
SPEAKER_10I do think going way back to the beginning of our conversation where Jason mentioned the old guys, as they all die and filter out, we're going to see a lot more of the younger guys that do feel that it shouldn't be something that's a competitive sport of I painted my tank better than you did. You know what I mean? Like it's that is going to be the change that we see. Will be the people that don't do this because competition, competition. It's going to be, I enjoy making this my own little piece of artwork here. How have I improved since last time?
SPEAKER_16Absolutely. NL style shows for the automotive side, I think are way bigger and way more accepted than a one, two, three show or an awarded show or anything like that. You get guys that are popping up with these cars and coffee type deals, right? We there's not even a category, it's just a room full of tables. Put your model down wherever you want and talk about it. It's a car show. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_04So for Dave, these NL shows, these car shows, the NL show, what's NL stand for again, Jason? Uh national something luminaries. I it's an old term like that, yeah. So they have these car shows, Dave, where like there's like a thousand people who come to these things, even the local ones. All the shows are just display only, and they do one people's choice, right?
SPEAKER_16Uh, yeah. Then they have a couple of specialty awards, but yeah, it's it's people's for the most part, it's just display only the entire show, which is amazing.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_10Pretty cool. Well, that's only because they only have the people's choice and a couple of specialties. So for the most part, it's display only.
SPEAKER_04All right, so this is what we're gonna do by default. We're gonna go to a quick little speed round, really quick, before we go on to announcing one new upcoming show because someone submitted something, right? Frankie, which we want to talk about. We're not gonna go through a whole upcoming show is and then we're gonna do social media shout-outs, and we're gonna end it because we're this is gonna be a pretty long show. All right, so here we go. This most of you guys don't even know what I'm gonna ask, and I'm gonna do it. So, Justin, what's the worst trend in modeling today? What's the worst trend?
SPEAKER_10Oh, god, I would have to point it towards the the automotive experience that I've had, but using quote unquote inexpensive products to after spending all this time and all this work putting your thing together, inexpensive products to finish it off. All right, there you go.
SPEAKER_04Well, Dave Grummit, worst trend right now.
SPEAKER_22So I think the worst trend for me is people who have moved on to complaining about AI. Uh that's gonna be a question tonight. So they had that little you know, little thing where you could animate your models, and everybody was doing it, and they it was that little app, wasn't there? And people were getting really aerated. And it was like, well, you know, it's kind of fun, and then it and then like everything else like that. It just it just goes. But but actually, the kind of the arguments you see, or the kind of you know, the calling people out who are using AI to like you know design a figure or design a th a 3D, and it's kind of like, well, for some people, that is you know, they're doing that because that's helping them achieve something that they want to achieve. If anybody's is trying to pass it off for something else, that's quite different. Oh, this is you know you know, look at this great new figure I've skilled. Hang on, that's AI, you know, but in itself, it's not a bad thing, okay. AI, I've really enjoyed seeing the creativity that some people have done in putting AI backgrounds on their models. I think that's you know, just sharing them on Facebook. And again, I think it's just one of those things that's just adds, you know, you can like it or not like it, you can kind of do it or you could not do it, but the actual kind of the vitriol or the kind of like the moaning about it is just an ex another example, Rob, of that negativity that you were talking about. So anything that brings negativity into the hobby, which is you know, dissing some people's abilities or belittling somebody's enjoyment of the hobby, I think is something which I I'm always against.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_10I I I like that. I just want to quick add to that is the perspective of old school photo retouchers that would actually do airbrushing on photos when Photoshop was invented. That's right. So now everybody, oh, you know, that's photoshopped. Well, what about these old guys that would actually airbrush a portrait? It's the same fucking thing.
SPEAKER_22Well, similar, similar, it's just a different technology, a different method. But the concept behind it is exactly the same as you say.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so I'm gonna ask some more questions. We're gonna move on to other one. I'm not gonna ask the same question, everybody. Rob Adams, what most overrated paint brand?
SPEAKER_07Fucking Vallejo.
SPEAKER_04Oof, Santucci, most overrated paint brand.
SPEAKER_07Uh, I'm gonna hate myself because I have so much of it, Vallejo.
SPEAKER_04All right, wow, vallejo wins. All right, Jason, most overrated paint brand. Rust Oleum.
SPEAKER_15I wanted to say that.
SPEAKER_07I wanted to say that, but I didn't want it. I wanted to leave it for the guitar guy.
SPEAKER_06That I can go with. I've never used it, but he's absolutely right. I would back up Jason uh to the wall. Rust Oleum.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, if it was me, I would say Mig ammo. Mig ammo thing.
SPEAKER_21So you're gonna say mission models.
SPEAKER_04I don't use it, so I can't. That'd be bad if I said it. I don't paint with it. So then uh how would I? I don't really I only painted like you painted, but you've never used it. I've used it and I hated it, but I haven't used it. But and then painted I do use occasionally is MIG ammo, and I think it's I think it's uh it's overrated. Not the Adam paints. I'm talking about the regular Meg ammo. All right, one modeling myth that needs to die, Jason Hanscom. What's a modeling myth that needs to finally die? Oh gosh, that's not good.
SPEAKER_16Uh me the fact that you have to paint everything with an airbrush to get a good paint job.
SPEAKER_04That's a good one. That's awesome. Dave Grummet, one myth that needs to die. Rob Riv never paints models. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_21See, this is oh my god, fucking just stroke him a little more. Jesus, easy, easy. This is a family show.
SPEAKER_04Steve Santucci, a myth that needs to die.
SPEAKER_07I don't know. I mean, handsome's got a great one because I agree. Because I radical you got the skill set, does it have to die if it works for you? So I think maybe the idea of the myth dying because other people don't agree with it should die.
SPEAKER_04So Rob Adams, a tool you cannot live without.
SPEAKER_21A nice set of sanding sticks.
SPEAKER_04I like that. I'm I might be on board with that. Frankie Denati, tool you can't live without, Frankie.
SPEAKER_06My single-edge nippers. Now that I've got a set, fucking love. Justin.
SPEAKER_04It'd have to be hobby related. Yeah, it's gotta be hobby related. I would just say my magnifiers. You know what? I would be with you. I can't live without my Optavo. I just bought a brand new number seven eye plate for me because it was my old number seven was all broken. All right, a company that you'd love to see make a comeback, Mr. Grummit.
SPEAKER_22I tell you who I used to really enjoy. I don't think they need to make a comeback, but a company that is no longer with us, which would bring back really good memories for me because they were my that's a comeback. That would be coming back. That's a that's a comeback. Then it would be part the photo.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, part of part photoetch, yeah. Part photo edge, you know. That's yeah, I got I got a I got a bin full of part stuff. So if you need anything, let me know. Oh, Justin, go ahead.
SPEAKER_10Justin, go ahead. I would like to see Testers Model Master come back so people will shut the fuck up.
SPEAKER_04Testers model masters. All right, Frankie Denati. Monogram. Monogram.
SPEAKER_06Yep, that's a good one. Because think about what monogram would be like today in this competitive market, what they built to what they would potentially be capable of building now. Subject matter, ease of build. Well, that's revell. I wouldn't have to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04I was gonna say, yeah, that's revell.
SPEAKER_21That's revell. Same.
SPEAKER_04Good. All right. So here we go. So Tooch, name one company that you believe has improved the most.
SPEAKER_07Oof. Goffers. Well, no, because they've been on the city. They've been good the whole time. I mean, I still the whole time. I'll go, I'll take this one.
SPEAKER_04Royfield models has improved immensely. From the first Royfields kid to now, it's insane. It's like worlds of difference. As if they took everything to make themselves better and took people said they should do and did it. Their molding is as good as Tomia, the fit is as good as Tomia, the details as good as you know. The yeah, the best model. It's they're the best on the market. They've improved the most, in my opinion, over.
SPEAKER_07I would say, since uh thinking about this, because of what they've been doing with their figures, is to me, Tamia. Tamiya the scanned figures, too. Their figures are not blobs of plastic anymore, which you know we thought were great back in the 70s, but today what they're doing with their figures, they're improving. And I think because they're using 3D imaging to create better forms to create better uh outcomes in the injection mold process. So I think if there's one part of Tamiya that has done very well, it's that they finally improved their figures.
SPEAKER_04That's true. Mr. Grummet, one company you think that's improved?
SPEAKER_22ICM. Yeah, so those those kind of early kind of ICM talking about the military kits, those early ICM soft skins were some of those were a bit rough. But the new kits, if you like the Humvee and the flat multia that uh Raymond built for the magazine, they are really, really nice kits. So ICM, I agree.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and we're gonna go the other end of the spectrum. Jason Hanscom, one company that needs to step it up. Round two, which is AMT and MPC. Okay, yeah. Tooch, can you name one? Probably like Tac them. Oh, I like that. They've been slacking too. Uh Frankie Donati, who needs to step it up? You know what? They don't need to step it up, they need to step it back.
SPEAKER_06Mini art. Um, I was gonna say they need to step it up. I think mini art's detail is excellent. It's the over-engineered complication that's unnecessary, but that's what I mean.
SPEAKER_04So take that right now as a as a kip, uh, just gonna just full disclosure to Mr. Grumman. I know there's a lot of other models that I'm supposed to that I need to get done with, but I had to start building something that I wanted to build for myself, and I'm building the IBG Panzer 2A2, the older what suspension was. I wanted to do one for a long time, but I'm redoing the whole thing, changing the world beads and everything. IBG is just like mini art but better.
SPEAKER_19Yep.
SPEAKER_04I'm telling you, man, IBG is mini art but better. It's very reminiscent of uh of mini art, it's not as complex, and the engineering is just better. Yeah, I'm I don't care. It's my opinion.
SPEAKER_10IBG quote Amadeus they're good, too many notes.
SPEAKER_04There you go.
SPEAKER_06If I BG just would do more 35th than 72nd, that's what I'd like to see. Because I'm I'm the same way. Mini art stop it, man. We don't need 48 pieces per friggin' wheelhouse.
SPEAKER_21So, Rob, who needs to step it up? Bandai. Really? It's a hard one. Why? Because they do not need to supply stickers. Give us both.
SPEAKER_04You are outspoken about that all the time about stickers thing.
SPEAKER_21Yeah. So that's that's my stance on that one.
SPEAKER_04All right. So quick predictions. We're gonna do 50th episode prediction. We'll see maybe in the after the next 50 if we're still around and everything's going good. We'll piggyback. So we'll we're just gonna ask. I'm gonna randomly pick people different qu answers. So, Dave, you talked about this AI and modeling. Is it gonna is it around to stay? Yes or no? Yes, yes, okay. Home resin printers in every hobby room. Will it happen, Frankie Donati?
SPEAKER_06Not in every, but I think we're going to see as costs come down.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so this is for you, Tooch, because this is a big part of your hobby because you do a lot of them. 3D printed kits, will they in place for injection molding kits?
SPEAKER_07Ooh, no, not entirely, but I think I think, yeah, not entirely. But they'll give the injection molds a run for their money.
SPEAKER_04Jason Hanscom, more women and younger builders coming into the hobby over the next couple of years? I say yes. Yes, okay. Justin Ryan, with the advent of the VMX and and models without borders, you think we'll see more virtual contests?
SPEAKER_15Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
SPEAKER_04Okay, Rob, will we see more QR-coded instructions in the future?
SPEAKER_21I hope so.
SPEAKER_04Will instructions be eliminated from kits so people can scan them?
SPEAKER_21I kind of hope so because I think Dave is shaking his head.
SPEAKER_04No, I don't think so either.
SPEAKER_21All right, you don't think so? Well, A, it saves paper, it's a big thing, right? And you could probably get a lot more information from it if the people that are putting it together put it together, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04So I'm gonna piggyback on that one question because this is what I wanted to ask too. Mr. Gromit, you disagreed with him, but if the QR codes do happen with the addition of also having the paper copy, will we see like augmented reality type of instructions or like computer rendering as opposed to seeing how parts go together and where they go?
SPEAKER_21Like being able to look at it three-dimensionally, meaning right, be able to spin it to see where the parts go.
SPEAKER_04Do you think companies might do that?
SPEAKER_22Yeah, I think some companies might because again, if you can get AI to generate that for you cheaply, then that is a possibility, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04I think it's a possibility, and I think that's what something should go. All right, that's the end of the speed round questions. I wanted to do something fun for episode 50. I think people listening to the show might have been saying, wow, these guys sound different. They're asking questions and things. I wanted it to be the state of the hobby. There's a lot of things that I wrote down that I wanted to talk about that we didn't because we're going a long time. So we're gonna save some of these questions for future episodes. Hopefully, when the hundredth episode happens, we're gonna do all this. Full disclosure: a lot of these questions and things that I talked about was meant for the round table for the podcast that we were supposed to do that we didn't, that I wanted to ask for that round table, but we're using it for our show. We might use it for that round table as well. I know Brownie's cursing me right now because we were supposed to do the round table, and I know he was looking forward to doing it, but we will, and we're gonna get to that for the podcast. Um, this was fun, right? Was this not fun doing this? It was I think it was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_21The speed round was kind of that was totally fun. I love it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that was fun. We'll do we'll we'll do more of that in the future. So before we move on to Mr. Frankie Donati to do some upcoming shows, we want to give a quick shout out because this episode is gonna drop on Wednesday, July 29th. And the significance to that date, it is Chef Payne's birthday, and we're trying to make that the International Plastic Modelers Day.
SPEAKER_07This organically began about 2018, 2019. It was me, Chris Green, I think, George Ironman, and our late good friend Jimmy Navera. We were talking, it was actually his birthday party. We were talking, and we said, you know, there's no international, there's no plastic modelers day of any type. And so I did research, and you gotta pay these third parties, and they put it out there. So I said, we gotta do this or organically. And I think this is the we've been I've been putting this out every year on different platforms, and it's that time year to get excited on on July 29th because Chapayin was a tremendous influence on so many of us in the 1970s and 80s, especially if you bought monogram kits of any level. So the idea was to make the day significant associated to our hobby. It took a little while for me to find his birthday, his actual date, because he actually was in Germany for a while as a little kid. But July 29th is his birthday. And because of his amazing influence on so many of us, what a better way to celebrate what we do in plastic and all kinds of plastic, uh, is to declare July 29th of every year International Plastic Modelers Day, and no better way than to put it on Chef Payne's birthday.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome. I love it. Hopefully, more people pick it up. I know we you guys start putting up the meme showing it, and uh, you will see it on Facebook and social media over the next few days. So, again, this episode is gonna drop on July 29th on Wednesday, and it will be on Chef Payne's birthday, which has been coined the International Plastic Modelers Day. All right, so Frankie, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do social media shout outs, then we're gonna sign off. But before we do that, we do want to do an upcoming show. Frankie, someone submitted an upcoming show. We all know that the IPMS Nationals is coming at Fort Wayne in two weeks.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_04So everybody knows about that. Some other random shows. We'll get to that on our next show. But what's the one show, Frankie, that was uh submitted? Actually, I'm gonna make two.
SPEAKER_06One show is uh we got from Scott Watico because of the same day. So no matter where you are in the middle of this nation or in North America, you got the Gateway Chapter IPMS 51st annual invitational on the 19th of September. So that's located at the uh Madison County Fairgrounds, 2025 Park Hill Drive, Island, Illinois, 62249. Special category is red, white, and blue. Five dollars to get in, ten dollars unlimited entries. And they got people who want interest in vendor tables and stuff. They got an email on the website. Just uh take a look for the gateway chapter, IPMS 51st annual invitational on the 19th. And the other one is the next big show up here in Canada is uh Tour Cannes, uh which is up in uh Scarborough. Anyway, it's in Toronto. I'll get more info later, but that's also on the 19th of September 2026. That's one of the last of the big shows north of 49. There you go, Robbie.
SPEAKER_04Excellent, fantastic. All right, we're gonna wrap this sucker up before we get into our pleasantries. So we're gonna go to our guest guest, which is not you, Jason, because you're part of a group, my boss, Mr. Dave Grummit. Who is your social media shout-out for this show, for this 50th show?
SPEAKER_22Is it an individual or a or a company?
SPEAKER_04It could be anything, any social media shout-out hobby-wise that you want to give out. You get special dispensation, you get a man tonight. Okay, all right.
SPEAKER_22So, my social media shout-out is Roger Herckman's. Roger is actually one of my favorite uh modellers. Well, Roger. I I think he is so talented, and his pieces are always so enthused with history. So he's done this uh FAMO. Uh lots of his subjects of sort of you know, late war German, Hungarian theatre. He works very closely with Mirko Bell to sort of inform his builds, and the FAMO that he's just done is just superb. The atmospheric, it's historical, and it's just a great piece of modelling. But of course, he always sculpts his figures, and it's the sort of interaction of the figures, the groundwork, and the vehicle that just makes it just a superb piece of modeling.
SPEAKER_04Well, Roger's amazing, Roger's amazing, and his work is outstanding. Like you said with him at Merco, and that collaboration and the stuff that he does is their museum pieces, everything he does. And I was talking to um a good friend Sean Picard, who's Sean who's done is a contributor to MMI, does great work. He's doing the two uh Mach 4s, Mark Fours, yeah, one's one is like taking the engine out of another. Yeah, yeah, and he wants to bring it to SMC, not this year, but next year, they're not gonna make it this year. And I says, I go, we're talking about like where to enter and what I go, listen, you gotta you go into masters, you might be putting your diorama next to Roger Herkman, right? So, you know, you gotta remember that you know, you the type of quality work. No, I'm not this is not okay. You you're misconstrued what I'm saying. I'm not speaking about Sean, I'm speaking about Roger Herkman. Uh Herkman's, and I'm trying to say what an amazing modeler that he is. He's probably one of the best in the world when it comes to composition, the way he does all his the his painting, his building, his composition is just spot on, I think unmatched in a lot of ways. It's great. Great man, great man. He needs a haircut though. I tell Rog, it's really curly, got the bushy hair, you know.
SPEAKER_22He's gonna cut it, right, Dave? Absolutely, yeah. I'll pass that on when I say him in uh no Rog is a great guy.
SPEAKER_04So, Mr. Hanscom, and our other guest for today, our car guru. You know, I needed a car guy on this show. Sorry, Justin. That's amazing. How every snow works. I've only kidded Mr. Hanscom.
SPEAKER_16Who's your social media shout-out? Okay, so my social media shout-out comes from my own Facebook page, the Blue Arts Model Shop, and it is a Mobius 1953 Hudson Hornet built by Gary Westfall. If you go on this, he's got probably 15 or 16 photos of this thing, and it is stunning. Features a custom paint job that has integrated like snakeskin in uh certain aspects of it. Full Viper drivetrain. In my opinion, Gary is one of the top builders as far as cars go on the East Coast. So he gets my very special social media shout out.
SPEAKER_10What do you mean by snakeskin? That Hudson Hornet is absolutely fabulous.
SPEAKER_06Uh yes. Let's go look at it, Rob.
SPEAKER_21It is amazing what I did there. I didn't even go find it because I'm just I'm just trying to understand what you're doing.
SPEAKER_16It's a it's impossible. You have to go look at it.
SPEAKER_21All right.
SPEAKER_04Now you always got you got you got a lot of great activity on your page, Jason. So you'll Dave, if you want to see the Blue Ox Model Shop, you have you want to see some amazing car models, go on his page. There's always some great contributions down there. Definitely. Rob Adams, who is your social media shout out?
SPEAKER_21Mine's Brett Wheeler for doing the 130 fifth scale Dora. That guy. He always gets bigger and bigger and bigger. He's been a part of our page, I guess, for a long time. And he does great work all the time. And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So now he's finally gotten to the Dora. So good luck, man. I wish you the best of luck.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, that's a big kit. Definitely. Huge, huge, huge.
SPEAKER_06Frankie Donati, who's your social media shout-out? My shout out is to uh a friend of the podcast. He's been on the show, and that's Stuart Malone, the Stuart model. So Mr. Malone completed a monogram 148 scale A7 Corsair 2. Stuart's had a busy year with not a lot of mojo, a lot of challenges, and uh hadn't built a lot, and he's traditionally a world-born aircraft guy. And he decided to get a part of a group build, and he actually built this kit. The first time he built it was 50 years ago. The first airplane was a 148-scale monogram Corsair. 50 years later, built it again. Great story. I love it. And he's a great, he's really great at what he does. And so he's made it. I mean, he's complained, he's bitched, he's moaned, he's had a lot to do. And it still looks fucking fantastic. Stuart, kudos, man. I love your co-excellent.
SPEAKER_04We love you, Stu. Mr. Brian, who is your social media shout out?
SPEAKER_10Mine actually uh inspired by real life events. My son recently enlisted, and uh he joined the army. He casts, uh he he was accepted into combat medicine, for those of you that get the MOS lingo, but he also qualified to select Ranger School if he'd like. So my shout out is for David Bridges, DB Scale Model Studio.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, David Bridges.
SPEAKER_10Rangers Lead the Way, amazing little figure figure vignette.
SPEAKER_04Dave has contributed to MMI, some work for MMI. Great. He's been on the cover.
SPEAKER_21He does he does nice work.
SPEAKER_04And he's a great guy. Really good guy, too. Really good work he does. Excellent. I'm glad you picked Dave. Really good, he's a really good uh modeler, good stuff. And uh Mr. Santucci, who is your social media shout-out?
SPEAKER_07Uh ours can be found on our Facebook page. It's Ethan Heidenmill. He finished the Trumpeter 1700 HMS War Spite 1916. He did a fantastic job on it. So that's my social media shout-out.
SPEAKER_04Fantastic. It's on our page, you said?
SPEAKER_07Yep. It was posted July 21 if people want to look for it. What made it stand out, dude? World War I, but it looks great. I just, you know, people who do ship models are of different air breeding all alone.
SPEAKER_04All right. So my social media shout-out goes to it's from our page and it goes to Ivan Momsilovic. I guess Ivan Momcha. He did a JS1. And if you go on the page, man, wow, Dave, if you go on our page and you see this guy's JS1, the painting is outstanding, outstanding paintwork. I love it. He's got the turret backwards and with all the tops on top of it, different colors. Excellent job. So, Ivan, this is your my social media shout out for your JS1. You did an amazing job. You did a lot of work on this thing. And I just got to give you the shout-out for this 50th show for me. So, on that note, we're gonna kind of wrap it up. This was a long show. We went about this, it's gonna be about maybe between two, two and a half to three hours long, which is a long show for us. I think we had a great time talking about different things. Mr. Grummet, did how was your time here? Did you have a good time? I was pleased that you finally asked me on. I'm glad that we finally had you on. I will make sure you get on for the episode 100.
SPEAKER_22Thank you. No, it was it was great fun, Robin. And and uh yeah, I know I I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04This was great, and this was good talking about the state of the hobby. I think it's important. I think that there's a lot of things that are going on in the hobby that's really, really good. I think that the hobby's healthy as it's ever been. I'm really excited to be a part of it. I'm also happy to say that our group, the Insanity, has been doing great too. Um, I want to thank and I do got to throw a couple of thank yous while we go here. Like I did it at the beginning a little bit, but I want to thank everybody who's listened to us over the last 50 episodes. Again, we've we've done more than 50 episodes, but our numerical number of our episodes is 50. So after 53 years and 50 episodes now, I do appreciate everybody who listens to the show, gives feedback to us about the shows. It's allowed us to do a lot of things. The modeling insanity YouTube channel, which has been doing really well. We got the Model Car Mania podcast here with Justin and Jason, and obviously BG and Mike Outlaw and Jody Doyle. You also got the Quarter Scale Manners podcast that I do. We just released an episode uh with Black Ops models. If you listen to it, Matt Waterman, it's a really fun show. I released it one by the time this dropped, it was about a few days ago, and uh episode nine. So we're we're kind of slow and slagging when it comes to episode drops, but it's sometimes hard to get together with Mr. Luke Pitt and Mr. Stan Spooner. So that's always a lot of fun, too. I want to thank my uh Mr. Grummet for allowing me to be a part of Military Modelcraft International and Guidelines because it's a great publication and I'm honored to be a part of it. You know, I I'm proudly post to be a part of that. Steve Santucci, right? Toots is a big contributor to the magazine as well. Toots, you want to say anything to Dave?
SPEAKER_07Oh, I just appreciate the opportunity, uh, despite Rob putting good words. I mean, Rob did put a good word or two in, I I would have assumed. But it's it's one of the things I do enjoy. And it's allowed me to connect with other small mom and pop manufacturers, and they get really the small ones really get excited when they see their stuff being profiled in the magazine. Right.
SPEAKER_04And Frankie Donati, too. Recently had a little article for CRS Tankworks and Cody Wersmer that go, those guys are doing a great job over there. They're actually a lot of people talk about using. I guess who was on the live cast was talking. Oh, uh Matt. Matt was using it. Yeah, yeah, Matt. Using all CRS Tank Works stuff. Very easy to use, very, really great casting. CRS Tank Works. We got to do an ad spot for them.
SPEAKER_06Good price for them.
SPEAKER_04I gotta throw a shout out to Christopher Nielsen over at Demon Barber Designs. Me and Dave have been talking about the conversion for the BT5. Christopher Nielsen is a very good friend of mine. I talk to him often, and and not just because he's a friend, his work is impeccable when it comes to his company, and he's been doing a lot more. And I urge a lot of people to check his site out. He does custom things. If you need things made in different scales, he will do it. Um, his work is outstanding. And this BT5, which we're gonna have in our next issue of the magazine, is amazing. And when you see the pictures of the build, like I shared some pictures, but when you do actually see pictures of the build and this print, you will you will be amazed at how well and amazing his stuff is. So definitely give out Christopher Nielsen at Demon Barber Designs stuff. You know, give it a look, okay? I also want to thank a lot of other podcasts like the Model Geeks, Whitey, Frildo, D-Ran, Samo, and El Prez. They've been very good friends to me and to this podcast. Very supportive. I love those guys, and they've been nothing but supportive from day one, and I appreciate that. Same thing when it comes to On the Bench podcast, Mr. Dave Goldfinch and the guys over there. Dave's also a great friend. We're also going to be doing that collaboration with the movies. Um, and I do appreciate Dave Goldfinch and those guys over at the On the Bench podcast. They're great guys and been big supporters um since day one. Beyond the Box Art podcast, Brownie, Dan Brazil, and the guys over there become very good friends, and I appreciate their support as well. And they know we support them too. Um, Barry Biediger, Mr. D Rigatis over there, right? Justin over at the School Subjects. Great guys there. Obviously, Dave Basquette and Mr. Dave Knight uh Esquire over at the Mojo and the Plastic Policy Scott Gentry, John Banani, and TJ and Jensen and Grant over there, great guys too. They've always been very supportive, even though we've butted heads a few times, but it's always in good fun, right? Rob Adams?
SPEAKER_21Yeah, you bet. Right.
SPEAKER_04Um the built sideways guys, you know, good friends, Brian Denclau, and those guys, they're also great friends. And then we do appreciate them as well. Stuart Clark over there in the scale model podcast. I know Stuart's been the wife's been having some issues and he hasn't really recorded, and that's where the Beyond the Box Art guys helped out and started recording some shows with them. Also, I want to give a big shout-out to Calm over there at the Mac and Machines podcast. We do appreciate everybody over there as well. Just making conversation. We got obviously the guys, James Skiffens over there, Malcolm Childs over there. Great guys. Yeah, they have a great show and they've also been supportive. And a non-existent show now, the Sprue Cutters Union with Chris Mettings. Once we started this, always was always willing to help out. Chris is a good friend as well. He's never hesitated to message me and complain about stuff. Tracy Hancock, you know, great guys, and I appreciate them too. So, all right. So, before we sign off, I want to have Justin do his spiel. So, Justin, you haven't done it in a little bit, but can you do it off the top of your head? Let's see, let's go. This is off the top of your head.
SPEAKER_10Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, podcast listeners of all ages. If you've enjoyed this show, please find your way over to uh modelpodcast.com, the consortium website where you can find all your favorite podcasts. I think there's even one in Swedish. And if you do know how to read, uh, there are also long form and short form blogs that you can listen to, read to, and all of that jazz. So modelpodcast.com.
SPEAKER_04All right, excellent. Also, to make sure to find us over at the modeling and sanity TV YouTube channel. You can also see Mr. Dave Grummet over on the you know Military Modocryff International Magazine as well as Fantasy Figure International Magazine, right, Mr. Grummet? Jason Hanscom with Justin again over at the Model CarMania Podcast. Did I give you a guy? I'd have to give you guys that a shout out on the podcast because you're part of us. Yeah, you're us. We're one and the same. So you didn't need a thank you. All right, and I appreciate all these guys Frankie Donati, Rob Adams, Justin, and of course Steve Santuzzi for putting up with my bullshit, taking over shows and never shutting up. But I guess that's it. And thank you beyond the boxwat Brownie for the nice email that you sent to Justin. That was fun. I was not expecting it. And thank you, Justin, for reading it. Uh, but on that note, we are gonna sign off because Debbie's saying dinner's ready and are you dying?
SPEAKER_07It felt like you were giving like your last rights. Like you're are you dying? I might be.
SPEAKER_04You never know, man. You know, is this your you googly? Is this your you googly?
SPEAKER_21Yeah, but you never know. You never know, man. You never know.
SPEAKER_04We know we're going too long now that Rob Adams is actually sobering up towards the end of the show. He's sobering as the day's been going on. Um, but Dave gotta go to bed. It's getting late over there in England. He's got a big busy day tomorrow.
SPEAKER_21Dave, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you.
SPEAKER_22It was it was an absolute pleasure to meet you all on the site. Let's um I hope we get to do it again before the 100th head.
SPEAKER_04No, you'll be back on, Dave. We're gonna get you back on. You see how easy this is. We're gonna we're gonna get you back on. That's that's we should we should do a fourth podcast. We should do a podcast just for the magazine. Want to do it, Dave? Oh my god, look at him cringe. He's like, No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. We got this movie one coming out, that's enough. Um, all right, so we're all gonna sign off because everybody's probably turning it off right now. All right, so for the modeling insanity podcast, I'm your host, Rob Rev. And with my co-host, Mr. Justin Ryan.
SPEAKER_10All right, everyone. We'll see you next time. Have a great one, Mr.
SPEAKER_04Frankie Donati. Thanks for spending some time with us, Rob Adams. Have a good night, everyone. Steve Santucci. Build what you love, build what you like, to Jason Hanscom. Thanks for listening, everybody. And our very special, special guest, no offense, Jason, Mr. Dave Grumble.
SPEAKER_22Always a pleasure, thank you.
SPEAKER_04All right, guys, thanks for listening. We appreciate it, and we will catch you on the flip side. So we're gonna do a little something different. I think everybody's sitting here waiting for some outtakes. The outtakes were inside the show. We didn't really remove any of the outtakes. We haven't been really doing much of that lately. We all thought it would be fun to maybe play some of the older AI outros, intros, cold openings, and play them at the end, some of the funny ones. So if you haven't heard them, you might hear them for the first time. So for this 50th special episode, we're going to play some of the funny AI intros and outros to end the show. So take a listen and hopefully you'll enjoy it.
SPEAKER_18Welcome to the Modeling Insanity Podcast. I sincerely hope that for the next two hours, you have nothing better to do with your lives than to sit here and listen to this irreverent attempt at comedy. And uh in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have taken this job, but Rivieto promised that he'd share his Lovey Howell video collection with me if I did this bit. I'm still trying to sort out precisely why these guys are doing this nonsense in the first place. But nevertheless, for the next few hours, please sit back and struggle through this feeble attempt at what others have coined as entertainment. Here are your hosts Rob Riviezzo, Steve Santucci, Rob Adams, Justin Ryan, and Frank Donati. Now, someone get my agent on the phone and get me the hell out of Riv's basement.
SPEAKER_12Hello, boys and girls. Are you excited to be here as I am? Today we have a special show. It's called an anniversary show. Can you say anniversary? Anniversaries are sometimes happy occasions and sometimes they're sad. Sometimes they're both. Today is grandma's second anniversary of being clean and sober. It's also the anniversary of her passing. Way to go, Grandma. Sometimes anniversaries are sad. Did you know that today is my 33rd wedding anniversary? To be honest, I'd rather be beaten with a stick by an angry Vietnamese hooker I shortchanged. Can you say booku Dinky Tao? I knew you could. Anyway, boys and girls, today is the one-year anniversary of the Modeling Insanity podcast. Can you say clusterfuck? I knew you could. I'm always happy to meet new neighbors, but holy shit, look at these meat sacks. I don't know what would be worse. Living next to that angry dwarf Rivieso or that Stoner Adams. If Justin was your neighbor, you couldn't keep any small farm animals or pets. Don't even get me started on that dinati guy. And Santucci, forget about it. You don't want him as your neighbor. I'd like to think I know something about these guys. I did make a model of my town. You can see it every time you watch my show. I got mad modeling skills that these bitches can only hope to emulate. Can you say posers? I knew you could. So kids, here are your hosts. Rob Rivieso, Steve Santucci, Justin Ryan, Rob Adams, Frank Donati, and tonight's special friends Andrew Measy and Jeff Hearn. Hearn is that neighbor you need when you have to hide a body. Otherwise it's best to just leave him the fuck alone. Now which one of you assholes stole my sweater? And where are my damn shoes? I swear to god, Adams, if you touch my freaking train layout one more time, I'm going to bitch slap you back to your own neighborhood.
SPEAKER_17The night of the donut. The air was thick with the smell of skunk. Adams was hammered, shit-faced, and drunk. His eyes were mere slit. He was unable to see. He'd nod off for a moment, and we'd just let him be. Monzel announced he's hungry. For food we must be going. Fuck, it's late. There's nothing that's open. On an adventure we'll go, for snacks and for dew. There's a quickie mark downtown announces a due. Off they go with much excitement and clatter. While Adams falls down, emptying his bladder. They return with snacks. And after a few moments, Monzel gives Adams a box of jelly donuts. Like a kid at Christmas, his eyes are now wide as he opens the box for the donuts inside. As he grabs a donut, his mouth is in motion, causing much laughter and lots of commotion. He's chewing already. But the donut's not there. A slow motion approach, he's eating nothing but air. When the donut arrives, it just doesn't stop. It mashes his face as it crumbles and drops. With powered sugar on his face, clothes and beard. He powers through that donut while the rest of us cheered. Adam says, Fuck, that donut was grand. Then mumbles incoherently while trying to stand. He staggers upstairs, I'm heading to bed. When suddenly we hear a clonk, oh fuck my head. At the top of the stairs, his face took a dive. Donati heads up to ensure he's alive. He's passed out but breathing, so I know he's not dead. Then with a Canadian flair, another, oh fuck my head.
SPEAKER_01At the edge of the river, the modelers gather in a rare and often unseen social gathering, the podcast. Here, they assemble amidst much ruckus to see who will be the alpha male of the herd. Join me on this grand adventure of nonsense, pre-pubescent humour, and incessant banter. Who in this group determined that Rivieso was the leader of the pack? He prances around like a bower bird, puffing out his chest and making aggressive squawking noises, causing all sorts of mayhem but accomplishing nothing. Here are the hosts of the Modelling Insanity Podcast: Rob Riviezzo, Steve Santucci, Rob Adams, Justin Ryan, and Frank Donati. I take pride in my work. Decades with the BBC, and here I am dealing with this shit. What in the fuck has my life come to?
SPEAKER_08Alright, all right, settle down. What is this? A support group for glue sniffers? I thought I'd see real models, you know, the kind that smile back. Instead, I walk in and it's plastic tanks, tiny airplanes, and five grown men arguing about paint decals and how to judge a plastic model. I didn't take a wrong turn, I crashed straight into a midlife crisis convention. And who do we got hosting this self-proclaimed masterpiece? Wow! First we have Rob Riv here. Look at this guy, and he's the ringleader. He's got more ideas than a guy who's never finished one. I'm trying to understand him. Do I need subtitles or a translator? And he's speaking English, allegedly. Rob, I've seen your models. Even the glue is asking for paint. Justin Ryan, so you're bad standard. How the hell are you doing? Will you take a look at this poor guy? Do yourself a favor and trim the damn beard. Because you look like you lost a bet at a lumberjack convention. It's really not helping. This is a guy who says, quick weekend bill, and then vanishes for six months like the FBI's looking for him. You're free now. It's okay. Steve Santucci, the Tooch. It's really nice to finally meet you. Who am I kidding? It's really not. So what hobby is it this week, huh? Ancient pottery restoration? This guy nods the whole time. Quiet, calm. Then boom, best line of the night. I don't trust him with those shifty eyes and dressing up in all the Rev War costumes like he does. I'm telling you, he's dangerous. This is how Bond villains start. Frank Dunani. Oh, Frankie, my boy. What are we building this week? A model of the eighth wonder of the world. This guy paints so many tiny details, and it's gonna squint to see him. Relax, it's a model, not the Sistine Chapel. I asked Frankie for directions once. He gave me a weathering tutorial. Rumaban Adams? Rum! Hey, rum up! Wake up! Over here, sweetheart! Chinese, not again! Every group's got that one guy you can't leave alone too long. This is that guy. Turn your back for five minutes, and he's drinking, leveling, thinner, and calling it a tasting note. And together these five geniuses bring you a podcast about tiny plastic things that somehow takes three hours to explain. Hell, I've seen shorter friggin' wars. But I'll tell you something. They got passion, they got talent, and they got absolutely no friggin' idea when to stop talking. Hell, I'm Don Rickles, so I know all about that. So buckle up, you maniacs, because this isn't just a podcast. It's a full blown modeling insanity meltdown. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
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