RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
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RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
1–10 of 94 posts
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#2Related:
Tamiya chairman Shunsaku Tamiya dies at 90 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655946 - July 2025
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#3I had a load of these. This and painting Warhammer 40,000 miniatures kept my kept my fine motor skills in tune.
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#4When I grew up I would spend hours looking through all the plastic model kits at the local hobby store. I just loved building plastic models.
I never mastered painting them. The most advanced I got was rattle-can style spray paints — maybe masking a bit for a camouflage or what-have-you. Only when I got older and got back into plastic model building did I make the leap to air-brushing and really finishing models correctly.
So many YouTubers (Aztec Dummy comes to mind) have since showed me that assembling the model is more or less nothing. Painting, lighting the model is everything.
I can't complain though. There was a joy putting together the models when I was young. The smell of the glue of course — the spatial reasoning it fostered... It was like sculpture to my young mind — forms, shapes in three-dimensions. I grew to love the lines of certain cars, planes, spacecraft…
I think too it fueled a kind of designer mindset in me. I would soon draw cars, spaceships, etc. of my own design.
What a great hobby.
I'm saddened that it kind of seems like another hobby, like R/C planes or model rocketry, that has fallen by the wayside. I mean I feel like most boys when I was growing up had a model or two hanging from their bedroom ceiling. Right?
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#5When I grew up I would spend hours looking through all the plastic model kits at the local hobby store. I just loved building plastic models. I never mastered painting them. The most advanced I got was rattle-can style spray paints — maybe masking a bit for a camouflage or what-have-you. Only when I got older and got back into plastic model building did I make the leap to air-brushing and really finishing models corr…
It's definitely not the hobby of choice for young boys any more, but it feels like it is having a golden age of kit quality aiming at an older audience with disposal income. Manufacturers like Tamiya, and also Eduard or Meng (those are my favs anyway) are producing extremely high quality kits.
There is always consternation amongst modelers about where the next generation will come from, but the Gundam/Gunpla scene is supposedly very large in Japan and growing in the West.
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#6It even leaked into other hobbies, airsoft and drones are full of tamiya connectors.
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#7When I grew up I would spend hours looking through all the plastic model kits at the local hobby store. I just loved building plastic models. I never mastered painting them. The most advanced I got was rattle-can style spray paints — maybe masking a bit for a camouflage or what-have-you. Only when I got older and got back into plastic model building did I make the leap to air-brushing and really finishing models corr…
It's definitely not the hobby of choice for young boys any more, but it feels like it is having a golden age of kit quality aiming at an older audience with disposal income. Manufacturers like Tamiya, and also Eduard or Meng (those are my favs anyway) are producing extremely high quality kits. There is always consternation amongst modelers about where the next generation will come from, but the Gundam/Gunpla scene is…
That's true — there are certainly a lot of variety now, especially with 3D printing and garage kits. The "long tail" has definitely been kind to the esoteric modeler.
Adult-me recently took to designing a kit for a NASA "Space Tug" that never existed (only proposed "artist's renderings" from the 1970;s) [1]. It is so esoteric that no one made a kit for it — I had to learn to use Blender, ha ha.
I just wish more kids were into modeling.
[1] free to download: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Space-Tug_3DModel
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#8It even leaked into other hobbies, airsoft and drones are full of tamiya connectors.
Unfortunately Tamiya connectors are known to melt when paired with modern RC electronics (Brushless motors and LiPo batteries). Most hobbyists use Deans or XT connectors.
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#9I spent a lot of time on RC cars as a teen (Tamiya, Kyosho). I've not kept up. Recently on a trip to Japan I visited some stores, and was surprised to see that the tech doesn't seem to have changed all that much. I would have expected, for example, that it would now be possible to mount a camera etc. Can someone who's kept up with the hobby let me know if this is a reasonable reaction? Maybe there are new brands I don't know about? Mind you, I really liked building RC cars from kits as it was hours of fun and learning some basic mechanical engineering, and it seems this is still part of the experience. But that alone probably won't appeal to this generation of kids.
Re: RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global obsession
#10When I grew up I would spend hours looking through all the plastic model kits at the local hobby store. I just loved building plastic models. I never mastered painting them. The most advanced I got was rattle-can style spray paints — maybe masking a bit for a camouflage or what-have-you. Only when I got older and got back into plastic model building did I make the leap to air-brushing and really finishing models corr…
> I never mastered painting them.
It was really hard to paint with these old oil based paints if you are as old as me or older. I struggled with that too. The water based one sold by e.g. Games Workshop I bought years later was way easier to work with.