Just looked at a 72 and thought it was priced high - are my expectations off?

[imjeff]

Originally Posted by skorpioskorpio

There isn't that many younger folks who even know what a hobby is. Most males that turned drinking age this year have never built a model, very few have rode a motorised 2 wheel vehicle scaled smaller than adult sized, many have not ever fixed a bicycle and some have never owned a bicycle, or mowed a lawn other than their own. Even Lego sales are declining, consumer tool sales are way down, there simply isn't the mentality to carry on the hobby at the same scale. It has little to do with Priuses and Leafs it has to do with skill development. For quite a while now American youth has chose to be electronically entertained as opposed to creating anything.

How many hobby stores do you remember that are now gone? Were they replaced with some giant Hobby Depot? No, they are just gone, the concept is gone. How many kids do you know that have built a tree house in the last 10, hell 20 years, by themselves, not as a father son project. Do you know many kids that have changed a bicyle tire tube? Do you even know where you would puchase such a thing now, not online?

Point is that, yes some kids do such things, in my youth most kids did such things. Those born after the '80s have a very different view of the world, you can say I'm wrong but there is a lot of companies that used to be that will tell you different, and they didn't all die because Walmart moved to town.

I guess I don't see it like you do. There's a hobby shop on the other end of town (Hobby Lobby) and a little train store with models not far from my house. When I trained recruit firefighters, the ones without any mechanical aptitude all had parents that either allowed them to spend all their time playing video games and/or told them that you just can't work on cars any more. Both were a disservice to those kids and untrue. If you allow that attitude to continue there will eventually be nothing mechanical left. We can either take the opportunity to pass these things down or not, but complaining about them does nothing. My kids know how cars work, how houses are built, how to plumb a house, how to weld, how to shoot, how to survive and a host of other things that will ensure they are working when others are waiting for a return call from India. It's our duty to teach the next generation....leave it better than we found it.