This will likely stir emotions in almost anyone on this site. (Esp, some weirdly injected unrelated charts and pics were puzzling.)

As I was getting emotional and reminiscing my model assembling days while prepping this post, I happened to look up, and said, "THE SEAVIEW!!!"

And, the Andrew Jackson Polaris sub... As a young teen, I bought the George Washington.

I, too, had bought from various model companies but definitely preferred the Japan-made models. In recent years, thanks to a 2012 trip to Korea and to Japan, I found 7 naval warship models (5 from Model Shop at People's Square in Shanghai and 2 from Joy Hobby Sindorim at Sindorim TechnoMart in Seoul. I never assembled them. Only bought for the sheer detail. Just to hold them. Snd, to reference them to make sure my ship designs were not volumetrically out of touch. I used painters tape to hold the hulls and top decks and sonar heads in place, but the rest is mostly still boxed.

In 2016, in Kwacheon Government Central Complex, I wandered around to familiarize my self with the area before meeting a friend.

USS ENTERPRISE CVAN-65 version model at over SIX FEET in length. It was eye wateringly-cool the level of detail. That model DEFINITELY better had had massive insurance on it.

Sadly, by Feb or March of 2017, the shop shuttered. But, even at the TechnoMart in Sindorim, the 2012 models that cost $50 were already over $100 by 2016 and 2017. But, the density and variety of models is astonishing. San Antonio Hobby Shop in Mountain View, CA in the 90s was one thing. In Korea and China, things were a whole new level. Some models were so expensive they were in display cases, given hero lighting and surrounding themstics in the Korean shop I visited.

Now, I'm wondering if AI or agentic stuff will kill off even labor-of-love CAD modeling. CAD designing is my therapy, and I will keep modeling however tedious.



"Tamiya: Why American Kids Abandoned U.S. Model Kits for Japanese Perfect..."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iAOeeN7HP54&

54m 59s