RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession

Post by z303 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:11 PM UTC

louthy wrote: post #25

In the 80s I had the Tamiya Grasshopper [1], which was the greatest remote control car ever (opinion). I remember attaching three battery packs (instead of the standard one)—to make it drive at roughly 8 billion miles per hour, in the process ripping the tyres to shreds and pretty much ruining the car—because it couldn’t turn without flipping several thousand times. Still, for those initial few seconds, it was glorio…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 8:06 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #72

7thaccount wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the kind of plastic model kits like building muscle cars and ships has died down, but Warhammer and Gundam are both extremely popular. Battletech and Star Wars are also popular in my area. There are a lot of Warhammer models and the parent company "Games Workshop" is doing extremely well and expanding despite it all being built in Britain. One neat thing about Warhammer is that there are a LOT of books and vi…

That's a good point. I painted D&D miniatures in the day, but didn't think of it as "modeling". Perhaps because you are not assembling anything (or very little). I never got into Warhammer but have seen the displays, storefronts to know it's a big deal. When I thought to design and 3D print a model, I was not sure people actually painted their prints — it seemed mostly about just the printing. I've seen enough 3D pri…