Hard to narrow it to 2 subjects. Build a little of everything so would have selected more.
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I am also unsurprised by the poll results. Case in point: The IPMS recently started sending out “IPMS Chapter Newsletter Blast” messages every week. These feature links to articles on subjects that are presumably supposed be of broad interest to the IPMS community. The first newsletter blast had links only to aircraft articles. 2nd newsletter had links only to aircraft articles. 3rd newsletter had links only to aircraft articles. 4th newsletter had links only to aircraft articles. The message is loud and clear: “Hi, we’re the IPMS. We build airplanes!”
I mean, I enjoy building aircraft. But I also enjoy building cars, armor, ships, occasional sci-fi and figures. I see these IPMS newsletters and I think to myself, “Do I really want to get more involved in an organization that seems so myopically focused on aircraft?”
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I must be the outlier. I mostly build Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Real Space, Figures and Dinosaurs..
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Yeah and I had no idea that my aircraft models were so popular. Every show I been to latey has about double the tanks as any aircraft.
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An interesting observation. The general open category contests I have attended usually have more aircraft than any other type. The hobby shop shelves used to be mostly aircraft and cars where I live. But armor has crept upwards over the years. In Japan, armor is definitely gaining parity with aircraft on the shelves, but the anime kits dominate more and more, to the cost of other types.
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To be fair, I’ve only been to 4 shows in the last year. And you are right, the Gundam kits are on the rise but area still only maybe 10% of the contest floorspace in my area.
I went to a contest in Denver that was probably 70% armor and to my admittedly biased eyes so many of them looked exactly the same, I have no idea how the judges would decide.
I mean, there must have been 100 Shermans there. I guess it is the equivalent of BF109s or F-4s but wow, the differences in armor are subtle between subtypes.
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Even here on FSM the Aircraft forum feels at least twice as active as the armor forum.
It does feel like that doesn’t track with the broader community though. Most of the podcasts I listen to are mostly armor-focused. My local shows seem split roughly into fourths between aircraft/armor/autos/sci-fi. Maybe a slight edge toward aircraft.
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I’m not surprised by the results of the poll. Aircraft and armor will always be the top two catagories on forums, contests, modeling magazines, etc.
And if you had to dig deeper, WW2 models will always take precedent over modern or any other era of stuff.
To those who like to build and show off WW2 models, more power to ya. It’s just not my cup of tea so to speak. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like/appreciate them or not like the history behind them and so forth. It’s just that I grew up in the 70’s/80’s/etc. and was fascinated more by all the modern and high-tech military equipment. So that’s what I built as far as modeling goes.
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I grew up in the same era, but my dad had a fascination with WW II, so I initially built aircraft from that time frame. But the Viet Nam war got me into jets. I got into armor in middle school, but Tamiya tanks were pricey compared to Revell and Monogram aircraft kits. My downfall came in college when I stumbled across Gundam and Macross. They continue to dominate my model purchases to this day.
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[quote=“WhatIfRebel, post:28, topic:379823”] It’s just that I grew up in the 70’s/80’s/etc. and was fascinated more by all the modern and high-tech military equipment.
[/quote]
Exactly the same for me. I wanted to be a pilot, so jets were my favorite.
I have a few others in my stash these days, mostly USMC prop and rotary wing.
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