[HN Gopher] RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model ...
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RIP Shunsaku Tamiya, the man who made plastic model kits a global
obsession
Author : fidotron
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-07-29 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (japanesenostalgiccar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (japanesenostalgiccar.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Tamiya chairman Shunsaku Tamiya dies at 90_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44655946 - July 2025
| esafak wrote:
| I had a load of these. This and painting Warhammer 40,000
| miniatures kept my kept my fine motor skills in tune.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| When 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?
| mbrd wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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
| kawsper wrote:
| It even leaked into other hobbies, airsoft and drones are full of
| tamiya connectors.
| guidedlight wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2025-07-29 23:00 UTC)