At first glance, it’s hard to tell why all the things at Family Fun Hobbies are under the same roof.
In the store, there are model rockets, model trains, model planes, model tanks and model spacecraft. There are remote-controlled cars and airplanes. There are pinewood derby supplies and jigsaw puzzles. And there are games. Lots of games. Board games, role-playing games, card games and miniatures games.
The common thread that ties together the seemingly unrelated collection of goods that make up the stock of Family Fun Hobbies is that practically everything on their shelves is an obsession for someone. The items at this store can suck you in, and maybe just get you to enjoy life a little bit more, owner Robert Placer hopes.
“Do you have fun with it? Then it’s a hobby.” Placer said.
If it’s a fun way for someone to pass the time, chances are you can find it at Placer’s newly opened hobby shop at 781 Route 33 in Hamilton. Family Fun Hobbies held its grand opening Nov. 20.
“If we’re just working 40, 45, 50 hours a week just to earn money, and come home to your family, and the kids are playing video games, and you’re watching TV, and the mom is reading a book, I look at that and go, ‘that’s a shame.’ What’s the point?”
The things in Placer’s store aren’t just ways of escaping boredom — they’re things that can become a new intellectual challenge, or a way to spend time with your family. Thus the store’s name, Placer said.
Many of the hobbies in the store are the kind that get passed on through generations.
“We do what I consider the classic hobbies. The ones that have been around a long time and that we’ve all grown up with. They don’t go anywhere, and they’re timeless. Lionel trains go from grandfather to father to grandson.”
In his 25 years of experience in the hobby business, Placer has seen new hobbies get passed down through generations too.
Dungeons and Dragons, once an underground game for geeks in the 1970s, has become a household name. Placer has seen more than one old-time D&D player take up the game with their children. Wildly popular German board game Settlers of Catan, first imported in the 1990s, is also becoming a family favorite taken up by parents and their kids.
Placer, 42, grew up in the hobby business. His parents opened Hobby Town USA in Red Bank in 1975, so he grew up surrounded by the trade. He’s also taken up almost every hobby in his store at one point in his life or another, from D&D to model rockets.
Even as Placer has seen some pastimes become cherished classics, others have died out. Security paranoia after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks pretty much killed chemistry sets, he said. Years ago, hobby shops like Placer’s would have also carried molds and lead for casting lead soldiers, but laws aimed at protecting children from lead poisoning killed the lead miniature business and, for all intents and purposes, ended the hobby of casting toy soldiers. Then there was the hobby of gas-powered airplanes, controlled by a wire, which has been surpassed in popularity by radio-controlled planes with electric motors.
New hobbies emerge to fill the place of old ones all the time.
So far, the most popular item sold at the store is a card game called Fluxx, which has rules that change as you play.
The rest of the game section is fairly popular too, Placer said. Family Fun tends to stock games in the vein of Settlers of Catan that are more complicated than older board games with outcomes determined almost completely by dice rolling, which were too simplistic to really be much of a hobby.
“The games we carry tend to be the things that you don’t find in Wal-Mart or Target that tend to be more strategically and tactically challenging,” Placer said.
There is a board game club every other Tuesday night at the store that uses table space set up in the back. Placer plans to use that space to hold events and tournaments for Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Warhammer 40,000 and other competitive games as well as hobby sessions for building pinewood derby cars.
“The name says it all,” Placer said. “It’s about finding ways to have fun with your family. Our slogan is, ‘Hobbies, games and crafts and fun for everyone.’ That’s really what it’s all about. Most people can find something here that’s going to keep you entertained.”
Robert Placer, owner of Family Fun Hobbies, and a die-cast model M-1A1 Abrams Tank sold at his store. (Staff photo by Diccon Hyatt.),
