Anyone remember these shops?

Underock1 said:
Thanks, Pappy. I built that kit, and just about all the others throughout WWII. My very first model was a P39 Airocobra. The last one was a B29, with a wingspan so wide that I had to angle it in order to "fly" it through the doorway. By the end of the war we had a whole cardboard closet filled with these things.
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Remember cutting out each part with a razor or Exacto knife and then using safety pins to hold the parts together so you could glue them? Many hours involved to build a complete model.
 

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Right. I love the detail and accuracy of plastic when doing a historic model, but there is no beating the satisfaction of making your own parts with the balsa kits. I built a few of the Guillow WWl models. They looked great, at least for the first two flights. Lol!
 
I've always enjoyed modelling since my early days. From plastic Airfix model aircraft to balsa cut-out gliders and powered aircraft. A couple of years back I started again with a modern compressed styrofoam powered glider with RC. The aircraft is designed to be flown under power to a reasonable height and when the engine is cut, the props fold back and it operates as a normal glider. Modern high powered electric motors combined with high capacity Lithium-polymer batteries have made the old 'glow plug' engines virtually redundant now.

As a teenager I had a 'Mammod' miniature static steam engine, which I had great fun connecting to various Meccano built Heath Robinson type constructions of extreme complexity that rattled and whirred to great effect without actually doing anything useful.

SifuPhil said:
They also carried chemistry set supplies, and being a certified junior mad scientist I spent a lot of money on those.
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I don't talk about my exploits with chemistry sets, Phil. You could buy the most noxious chemicals imaginable from a decent chemist's shop back then.

Flowers of sulphur, nitrate of potash and Darco-G activated carbon spring to mind. And as for weedkiller and castor sugar ... as I said, I don't talk about it.
 
When I was a boy, we lived across the street from the old Thomas A Edison studio in the Bronx. At that time, it was a film studio.
My older brother had a job there. He used to bring home copious amounts of powdered magnesium. I leave the rest to your imagination.
 
Haven't heard of Hobbycraft, but we do have Hobby Lobby, but I don't think it would count. Has fabrics, framing shop, home décor, holiday décor, some furniture, and I know craft stuff like beads, yarns, popsicle sticks, etc.
 
Underock1 said:
When I was a boy, we lived across the street from the old Thomas A Edison studio in the Bronx. At that time, it was a film studio.
My older brother had a job there. He used to bring home copious amounts of powdered magnesium. I leave the rest to your imagination.
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Rock, that wasn't the "Black Mariah", was it? I think that was his studio in Jersey ...
 
No SifuPhil. This was in the Bronx. They made "Soundies" there for a while. A jukebox with a movie in it of the performers. We had a number of the popular artists. You can find some of them on YouTube. I had a baton that my brother got from Cab Calloway once. They also filmed a TV series toward the end. Ralph Bellamy in "Man Against Crime". There were times when we had to wait to go shopping because they were "murdering" someone in the court yard. One of the big laughs was the day we had a half dozen fire engines scream up, only to watch them bring out a burning doll house that had set off the alarm. It was interesting.






After we moved out the neighborhood went downhill badly. The studio was vacant and was totally vandalized for its plumbing and everything else. It was torn down and a new apartment house stands in its place.
 
Kathy G in MI said:
Haven't heard of Hobbycraft, but we do have Hobby Lobby, but I don't think it would count. Has fabrics, framing shop, home décor, holiday décor, some furniture, and I know craft stuff like beads, yarns, popsicle sticks, etc.
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Hobby Lobby has models.. I have also bought doll house kits from them..
 
Underock1 said:
I have about ten plastic WWI planes built, but I learned my lesson. They are 1/72nd scale with 2" wing spans.
I have another dozen, plus a couple of galleons to be built "some day". Lol!
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Are any of them Revell models? One of my boyfriends and I used to build plastic WWI model planes about that size. I had a wonderful Albatros D.III and he had a Fokker Triplane. At the time I drove an Opel, so when I was out on the roads I was really flying that Albatros. He drove a "P51."
 
I certainly do remember the old Hobby Shops and i loved them . Model airplanes meh i had a few , but for me it was all race cars and monster models. My little brother was scared of my room , the Frankenstein model got him everytime. I had them all too.
 
Among the long-ago stores I miss are the ten-cent stores (five-and-dime), and the drugstores with soda fountains and pharmacists who knew your and your family, where kids could go safely alone and have an ice cream treat but the store staff would look out for you, not let you overindulge (on comic books as well as food treats!).
 
SifuPhil said:
I was born more into the plastic age, so I remember primarily those kits. Our local hobby shops carried the balsa plane kits, model rockets (Estes), HO trains and HO slot cars. They also carried chemistry set supplies, and being a certified junior mad scientist I spent a lot of money on those.

Primarily I was a plastic car and monster-maker (there was an entire line of Hollywood monsters you could build), with the rockets and slot cars as the more expensive pursuits when I could afford them.
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One of my forays into the wonderful world of chemistry almost burned the garage down, whereupon my dad (no sense of humor there) chucked all my brilliant experiments and experimental supplies into the garbage and threatened me with serious bodily harm if I ever brought any more into the house ever again. I knew I was in VERY serious trouble because during the ensuing lecture he called me YOUNG LADY a lot, a term that was usually reserved for capital offenses.

Not wanting to become maimed and/or homeless at the age of about 11, I gave up chemistry forever and took up raising white rate, which my mother didn't like even a little bit. Sometimes you just can't win.

I entered my rats into the science fair at school (it was an enthralling study about whether rats with scraggly tails spawned other rats with scraggly tails). Unfortunately, some of the rats got loose at the science fair, which caused a lot of screeching and mothers jumping on chairs and whatnot, and cleared the gym in record time. I got in trouble about that, too, and thereafter ended my scientific pursuits for good.
 
Falcon said:
Have you seen those German layouts on the internet?

One is an airport with planes taking off and landing etc. The other is a train layout with trains running every which way.

I don't have the urls but you might find them on U-tube.
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I have seen them on YouTube. The place is called "Miniature Wunderland" and is located in Hamburg, Germany. The airport set-up with the planes taking off and landing is an amazement of its own.

 
Great thread I always like hobby shops haven't been in one for years made a couple of airplane models as a kid don't remember what happened to them now. Cool mini airport oldman.
 
Pappy said:
As a young boy, one of my favorite places to go was a Hobby Shop. There was one on King St., in my hometown, that was a part of ones home and if they were home, they were open. I would finish my paper route and quite often visit their shop before I went home. I was in to building balsa wood airplane models. The shop I visited looked almost like the one I've posted.
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I remember those from my childhood days also. I have family in Turkey, so we used to fly over multiple time every year. Our hometown village was rather small, but still well-known, since it's one of the locations where the famous battle of Gallipoli was fought.

Anyways, it had those kind of stores all over town with various hobby-related merchandise. My favorites where always the little miniature soldiers made of plastic. Those stores weren't really organized well. I guess the turkish ones just threw any- and everything in there they could find. I must have had thousands of many different eras and spent days trying to set them up in my room just to have someone open the door and ravage a whole battalion :D

Loved hobby stores!
 
slot car track.jpgWe had a fantastic slot car race track at our hobby shop back in the 60's. They even had a track that resembled Indianapolis Speedway that ran elevated above everything else for the unlimited hobbyist.
 
The town I grew up in, Batavia NY had Adam Miller Toys and Bikes. I should say HAS, they are still there. The closest we had to a hobby shop.
Here in Rochester we have Dan's Crafts and things witch is the ultimate hobby shop. The attached pictures are from Adam Millers


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The photo in the original post looks just like the little hobby shop in my home town when I was a kid. It was conveniently located right outside the gate of the school. I'd love to walk in there again. An old guy ran it. Most of the kits were wood then, and I built a bunch. I got an Xacto knife set for Christmas when I was 12, and the first thing I did was slice open the base of my hand. I still have the scar.

I still build plastic kits. Here are a few.

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I like doing the fiddly bits.

Don
 

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