Postcard from Hobby Lobby International c1972. Do you know who's
name that is in the signature?
Nowadays if you want to know whether a supplier of model items (or anything else for
that matter) has something in stock for shipment, all you need to do is log onto the
company's website and search. Or, you might prefer to call since long distance calls
are no big deal like they were back in the times when everyone paid by the minute to
talk outside of his local calling area.
Not so in 1972, when evidently I wrote to Hobby Lobby International to find out whether
they still sold any single-channel radio control (R/C) systems. At the time I was just
a few weeks shy of 14 years old (based on the cancellation date) and my sole income was
from a newspaper delivery route (when papers were delivered on bicycles by teenagers
rather than by adults in gas-guzzling cars).
I found this postcard mixed in with some old photographs, a day or so after reading
in the November 2018 issue of Model Aviation magazine (the Academy of Model Aviation's monthly
publication) about musician Roy Orbison's visit to the Hobby Lobby store in Brentwood,
Tennessee ("Roy Orbison's Last Visit to the Hobby Shop," by Jim T. Graham). He told the
story of how Roy visited the store in an old broken down pickup truck and bought a large
quantity of R/C supplies, then died that night in bed.
Hobby Lobby International, the model hobby shop and distributor, changed its name
in 2013 to Hobby Express. Here
is an interesting news item from a 2014 issue of The New York Times titled,
"How Hobby Lobby International Resolved Its Trademark Dispute." In
a nut shell, Hobby Lobby International sold its name rights (probably for a nice sum
of $$$) to Hobby Lobby Stores and then changed its own name to Hobby Express.
See also the
Hobby Lobby Advertisement in
the July 1978 issue of R/C Modeler magazine.
Posted December 7, 2018
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