25 replies to this topic

[Rotorranch]

Back to the future: Why slot cars might be making a comeback

[Alchemist]

Thanks for sharing that article, Jeff!

 

Ernie

[Mark Wampler]

Slot racing is probably at its best in small club type settings where everyone are good friends before they get on the track.

[MattD]

We’ve already started to see uplift in sales of model railway equipment, model boats and model cars. We sell Scalextric sets and there hasn’t been an uplift yet, but that’s not to say there could be an increase in the future,” Dan Meek, a director of Hobbies Ltd in the UK told The Telegraph.

 

Slot cars are a little different than a solitary hobby like trains, or building a model kit.  Maybe it will help some growth.

[Mark Wampler]

Chemistry among racers would make slot racing return to the 60's.   The difference is old people loose the chemistry of youth which was a good ingredient in the 60's.

[NSwanberg]

Slot racing is probably at its best in small club type settings where everyone are good friends before they get on the track.

 

How about after they leave?

 

One of the guys in our HO club has a track he has christened, "Nerfer's Paradise". Ought to be fun with gravity cars.

[strummer]

That is an interesting article...wonder how it "plays" here in the US...?

 

Mark (still) in Oregon

[Mark Wampler]

For slot racing to come back, youth has to provide the energy and drive, while seniors provide guidance and direction. 

[gatormark]

Not happening. Ya need to face the fact that when you guys are gone, the hobby is gone

[MattD]

Enjoy what we have today and forget the rest.  Be honest with yourself about the future of our old hobbies.

[MSwiss]

Not happening. Ya need to face the fact that when you guys are gone, the hobby is gone

The drag guys seem to be a younger bunch.

 

Around here, anyway.

[Michael Jr.]

Not happening. Ya need to face the fact that when you guys are gone, the hobby is gone

I respectfully disagree. I had a young man come help today. Had a “younger than me” helping as well. In fact I was the oldest of four of us.

Young kids love slot racing when they see it. If it dies then it’s on us for killing it. Slot racing can carry its own weight if we just show it off.

Careful not to create a self fulfilling prophecy.


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[Phil Smith]

The drag guys seem to be a younger bunch.

 

Around here, anyway.

 

I took my 9, 8 and 6 year old grand kids Dallas Slot cars. They were much more interested in the drag strip than the road course. I know you're not talking about that young, but they really thought the drag racing was cool.

[Phil Smith]

This would at least delay the demise of commercial slots.

 

It better work. If not, no way I'm able to get back out of that hole!

 

[Michael Jr.]

I guess I'm getting repetitive so I won't do this again after this post.  We all have social and family circles that change as we get older. We have places we like to go that go away. Sometimes we feel like those changes represent the end of the things we did or liked and that those go away with the passage of time because we don't see them any more. We drive to old locations and they seem haunted by memories of past good times and sometimes the buildings are empty or gone. My local church where my dad was baptized, my grandmother attended, where I grew up and was pinched on the leg every Sunday for breathing to loud decided to tear down the sanctuary and build a youth center. That was a sad day, so many memories and very important events were held in that sanctuary. Every VBS opening ceremony, weddings and on and on. All gone. But worship continues on in a different place and frankly, in a much different way that I don't particularly like or am comfortable with. Yet the church is thriving still. I just go somewhere else now.

 

When your slot car buddies retire or sometimes move on from this life, it's sad. Some of your memories might even include a day when you or they were top dogs in the Slot Car world and every post might have been about you or the cars you ran. You don't sense there is a replacement and you don't even feel you can find your place so  you assume the industry is on it's last leg because all the important people and places are gone. It has changed. But it's not gone. It goes through growth and retraction but every time it goes through retraction, we shouldn't start playing taps as if we are celebrating that it has died. If it is dying then why are we seeing excitement when a new track opens? Why are the guys in Chicagoland or Mid America or RM working to get their manufacturing arms up and running and building even more parts? Why are new tracks still being built? 

 

The Slot Car world is different than it was in the 60s. But so is most everything else. Just ask ATT or Southern Bell. Call them on your cell phone. Or ask Memorex whether stock is available for their cassette tapes anymore. Music is still being played on mobile devices, but not with 8 track or cassette tapes.  So if you feel that the loss of the 8 track means the loss of music then I suppose you won't see it any other way. If you feel the end of Parma is the end of slot car racing then I guess I won't be able to convince you otherwise. If you think that you not going to the NATS means the NATS are dying out then I'm not sure you'll believe they are still going strong.  But I can assure you that I am certain my track will have heavy traffic. I am certain the track in Concord will continue to have more racers than lanes. I am positive that all those tracks up around Ohio and Illinois will continue to be packed and growing. So Slot Car racing isn't dead nor is it dying. It is changing and the future, while different, is very promising. No need for fountains of youth to go back to a golden age. Tomorrow is just around the corner and Slot Car racing will still be there. We have survivied the worst of the change to the electronic age of entertainment. That's not new anymore. And with people getting off the grid and appreciating things other than a slavish addiction to cell phones, I think we are on the cusp of a new era of opportunities with Slot Cars. 

 

I won't post another rainy cloud on the pity party again. I think I'm probably annoying those who really like to talk about the death of Slot Car racing. But please don't assume that as you enter a time of life where you might not enjoy it as much as you did, or some of you peers are no longer racing, that it is over for everybody.  There's a lot of guys racing every single week when we aren't in some quarantine. You will preserve your own legacy by encouraging them to continue on instead of burying the hobby with those that have passed. Pass the torch, don't try to turn out the lights when you leave.

 

OK. I'm going to ban myself from this thread now. 

[gatormark]

We grow our church one way, thru youth,period. I think one track in fla has judscraces on saturday. Im sure its the same ones too.the other tracks are a bunch of old guys who race,period. Its down the tubes when these old guysvare gone.

[MattD]

Michael we all wish you luck and I know you are going to give 110% to have a nice facility.   Luckily it doesn't have to be your income.   That's a big plus, there's not many enterprises that have the option of not worrying about how much money they lose. 

 

If you think that the general opinion is that we are presiding over a funeral, you are wrong.   We are presiding over a  transition from commercial tracks to basement tracks. 

 

Just like your church  was torn down and all that history was gone,  but it changed into another type of church that is still functioning.   That looks to be the same for the slot car hobby.     I follow 1/32 pretty close and really think the 1/32  guys may outnumber 1/24 commercial racers by at least 5 to 1.

 

More power to you and best of luck with your business, Swiss is right about the age difference with drag racers.  Locally there may be 20-30 of the same old guys that race at the commercial track road course.  Might be 30-50 that routinely drag race and they are mostly younger guys

 

It's all slot racing and if nobody cares in the future. it is their loss or not!

[MattD]

Did I just say Swiss is right?

[jimht]

Michael, saw this, quite relevant to success... KISS... which is something we haven't focused on enough IMO, especially regarding the equipment we use on our "simple" slot car tracks.

 

From The New York Times:

 

By  Shira Ovide

Facebook  has Zoom envy. A zillion companies are trying to eat Netflix’s lunch. Amazon isn’t the best place to shop, but it’s the king.

People — and I’m including myself — tend to overthink why some companies and products last and others wither. Being the first or even the best at something may not matter.

Simplicity is the overlooked secret to success. “It just works” are magic words.

In two months, Zoom went from an online video-calling service used by a relatively small number of businesses to a  staple of pandemic life. My dad knows what Zoom is. “Zoombombing” and “Zumping” — being  dumped by video chat  — are verbs.

Why Zoom? Because it nails the basics.

While I was reporting an article last year, a business owner in Kenya said he mostly used Zoom for calls out of the country. The voice quality was far clearer than unreliable international telephone lines, he said. And technology executives, who usually aren’t impressed by anything short of unmanned spaceflight, regularly gush about the ease of hosting Zoom meetings.

Video meetings don’t seem like rocket science, but it’s hard to make something seem easy. (Products that are  simple to use can also be easily abused.)

Now, as my colleagues Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel reported, Facebook is putting its weight behind  its own video-calling feature. You might call it … Zoombook?

 

Facebook has billions of people using its apps and bank vaults stuffed with money. That makes it a formidable competitor, but it may not be enough to overtake Zoom, just as video-calling options for Google and Microsoft haven’t been the stars of this crisis.

I don’t want to give too much credit to simplicity. Sometimes companies get lucky, are smart about enlisting allies, or make a better mousetrap. Money and ruthlessness doesn’t hurt, either. But often, easy wins.

Right now there are scores of  companies  trying  to  break  Netflix’s lock on our home entertainment. They’re writing big checks to Hollywood stars in the belief that we care most about having the best movies and TV shows. Meh.

What’s overlooked is Netflix’s extreme competence at making it easy to buy and while away a lazy afternoon.

 

There’s just one version of Netflix — no add-on “tiers,” bundles and different prices  with or without advertisements. It’s easy to quit, too, and Netflix has mastered the tricky task of making “The Avengers” stream without stress. It just works.

Disney’s streaming service is a counterpoint here: It just works, too, but also  had early success  because parents, especially, need the movies and shows. Disney is also a marketing genius.

When products don’t overtax our neurons, habits become ingrained. You could shop somewhere other than Amazon, but why bother? It works. The iPhone doesn’t give people reasons to ditch it. Google’s Chromebook computers  took over schools  in the United States largely because they were simple for children, and easy (and cheap) for schools.  

 

Make it easy. Make it just work. It’s the deceptively difficult ticket to riches.

[Michael Jr.]

Thanks for the reminder Jim. The KISS method can never be overstated.

I have spent hours wondering about the mindset we read so often on the Blog that is so unwaveringly convinced that not only are the best days of Slot racing in the past but that there is virtually no future for slot racing in a commercial venue. There are a host of testimonies on Slot Blog about how convinced everyone is of that. I can't possible answer each one. And each one points to anecdotal evidence. Not as many tracks. Less attendance at the NATS. No real coverage. Racers are older than in the 60s. Parma is gone. American Tracks is gone. Video games took over the world. And on and on it goes.

 

Then I look around and see a lot of tracks. Not 10 in a town. But a good number. And I look at the pictures and see kids, guys in their 40s and 50s and a few older.  So I scratch my head and wonder. The convictions on the Blog don't match the winner circle pictures online. What does this mean? The arguments are solid. Less tracks..... and all the rest. Yet, there are younger people in the pictures and at my own track than the Blog would lead you to believe.

 

We don't have as many tracks. But there were probably more tracks than the Slot Car economy could support anyway. Kinda like the .com boom. To much of a good thing. So it self corrected. There was a new technology that entered into the field of play....video games. That can't be discounted. Kids quit making models and quit dreaming of seeing them actually run. But video games have also cycled. The new ones are to hard for some of us to play and the play has moved online and requires to much commitment for some of us. And if you have priced any of the consoles and games lately....it's cost prohibitive for many. A PS4 is 4x as much as a RTR slot car. So I believe we see video suffering from a lack of growth like they once enjoyed. 

 

Now lets look at what people are doing instead.  Drag racing has picked up a bunch of new folks. Those are slot cars and they race at slot car tracks. We don't have the adds we used to have. The newspaper adds for example. But, we have web pages and facebooks. My Track page has over 800 likes.  That's a lot of folks that at least thought to look at a slot car track. 

 

It seems to me.....that the standard of success is based on what is believed to have happened in the 60s which included a Slot Car bubble that burst. Along with that was an over abundance of suppliers and adds. The inevitable bursting of the bubble left many longing for those days but that can't ever happen. Instead we have things that look different. We have different and better technology and we are spread out more. There are hobbyist in basements but I believe that is a testimony of the love for the hobby. When you give up a full room permanently for a very expensive track, that's commitment. Much more than 20 pieces of Tyco snap together.

 

So I am left believing that the ideal of what I see as a bubble of success is a false idea of what Slot Car racing in the US can be. What we have instead is a pretty successful and refined slot car racing hobby. Parts are beginning to shift from all Chinese to some American manufacturing. There are good signs IF....... if we don't long for a bubble that was a once in history bubble and won't happen again. We can't fake it. We can't recreate it. And trying to handicaps us. 

 

That's where I am so far. I'm sure I will discover more. Thankful this is a blog and not my thesis. 

[MattD]

Michael, as we've talked, you know I appreciate your energy and plan.    i hope the best for your store and hope you have a great success.    The ball is in your court, you just need to get your shop open and see how it turns out.    No one here that hopes you fail, we all wish every track that opened is successful and you included

 

Can't hurt  to have an ongoing discussion about commercial racing and centers.  Maybe there is one little thing pointed out that will help you or create a new way of  doing something that helps you.

[Michael Jr.]

Michael, as we've talked, you know I appreciate your energy and plan.    i hope the best for your store and hope you have a great success.    The ball is in your court, you just need to get your shop open and see how it turns out.    No one here that hopes you fail, we all wish every track that opened is successful and you included

 

Can't hurt  to have an ongoing discussion about commercial racing and centers.  Maybe there is one little thing pointed out that will help you or create a new way of  doing something that helps you.

 

Matt, 

I've not gotten the feeling that anyone here wishes any track anything but success. This hasn't been a defense of my plans or track. This is just a philosophical discussion on where we are and where we are going.  Frankly, if I was opening the first and only track in the US I would go ahead and do it. I'm good with it. I just like to discuss, debate, and share ideas.

 

Especially when I know I'm right of course. 

[MattD]

I think all discussion is good,   we all like slot cars, tracks and history.    You know you're right, huh?   I have a solid reputation as thinking I know everything!

[tazman]

I am beginning to see an uptick in inquires about slot cars especially among some kids and teenagers. Many have said that they have a set or two in storage and know friends who have slot cars. I think as long as we are hunkering down, kids are finding "new" things do from trains, models, and slot cars. This might be a good thing because it's getting them to use different skills from playing with their computers and video games. My neighbor was complaining about running out of things to do with the kids and talk about hobbies other than computer related stuff. She ran through a few of her children's interest and showed me her garage and I saw a HO slot car set. I asked about it and she said it was given to the family - it has been sitting there for at least 5 yrs. Husband got pumped up and opened the box - goes through the contents. Everything is there to set the track up and cars don't run because they need an overhaul. So I bring my HO car stash and we put them on the track - jaws drop. These kids have not been exposed to slot cars and they're surprise that their "older" neighbor has slot cars that he still plays with. I am so happy to hear laughter, screaming and yelling coming from their garage because they're racing slot cars. The kids have been telling their friends and they getting them excited - some of their friends "found" HO sets in their storage or attics. Hopefully, the kids can put together a neighborhood race group when restrictions are lowered.

[Michael Jr.]

I am beginning to see an uptick in inquires about slot cars especially among some kids and teenagers. Many have said that they have a set or two in storage and know friends who have slot cars. I think as long as we are hunkering down, kids are finding "new" things do from trains, models, and slot cars. This might be a good thing because it's getting them to use different skills from playing with their computers and video games. My neighbor was complaining about running out of things to do with the kids and talk about hobbies other than computer related stuff. She ran through a few of her children's interest and showed me her garage and I saw a HO slot car set. I asked about it and she said it was given to the family - it has been sitting there for at least 5 yrs. Husband got pumped up and opened the box - goes through the contents. Everything is there to set the track up and cars don't run because they need an overhaul. So I bring my HO car stash and we put them on the track - jaws drop. These kids have not been exposed to slot cars and they're surprise that their "older" neighbor has slot cars that he still plays with. I am so happy to hear laughter, screaming and yelling coming from their garage because they're racing slot cars. The kids have been telling their friends and they getting them excited - some of their friends "found" HO sets in their storage or attics. Hopefully, the kids can put together a neighborhood race group when restrictions are lowered.

 

Without writing another tome, this is what I am trying to convey. There are seeds waiting to be watered everywhere. Opportunity exists. If Slot Cars die it's because we killed it. Slot Cars did not kill themselves, it is we....the ones that hold it in our hands that did the work. Nostalgia shouldn't be the terms of surrender. There is no failure except in no longer trying. Not my quote but one I remember.

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