Caporegime
- Joined
- 22 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 28,279
- Location
- Boston, Lincolnshire
Seems a lot had Tyco RC cars when they were kids. I had a Bandit and absolutely loved it.
RC cars
- Thread starter agnes
- Start date
My boy's got this one. Tried it at the park earlier. Was great for the price. He's well pleased with it
I had the fast traxx car, great little machine but the battery cover was prone to falling off left and right. They released a newer version of it a couple of years back, imaginatively named "Super fast traxx".
Pretty sure i still have it somewhere, though unsure if i have the aerial for the controller.
Pretty sure i still have it somewhere, though unsure if i have the aerial for the controller.
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'Lunch box', vibrant 'Vannie', hmmm i'm seeing a theme hereHaha I still have my original 80's tamiya lunch box
I had one called "sidewinder" in the mid 90s. Used to be quite rough with it, and if it flipped over that was fine as it had identical top/bottom. Pic of a sidewinder snake on it and the adverts had such. Used to love that cheap little car 
I had one of the Tandy ones with decent suspensionThis exact model/livery:
I had the same but in white
Lated for ages (several years)
My youngest nephew had two RC toys for Christmas.
One was a robot that was very complicated and had loads of functions but was broken before mid-day.
The second is a RC car but it was very cheap plastic and won't last long.
Really disappointed with the quality of both. The designs are pretty good but the materials used are so cheap nothing is strong enough even if you are gentle.
We bought a Lego Technics RC car for £50 for my partner's older nephew and that was much better although more expensive.
Thread and time of year brings back memories - when I was a kid one of my friends had an expensive one as a Christmas present (£200 which was quite a bit of money then) and several of us taking turns with it - one of his friends drove it into the road and under a passing car totally destroying it and it was barely an hour old.
Wow, the memories coming back from this thread!
I'm just gonna take a trip down memory lane here, if you're not interested in this then don't waste your time reading it
When I was a wee lad in Saffrica I developed a bit of an obsession for RC cars. These were available back then, but Saffrica being Saffrica, they were very, very expensive. I used to buy a magazine called RC Car Action which was a foreign magazine which could only be bought at specialist magazine shops (very normal in Saffrica, a whole economy over there dedicated to foreign publications). This meant that whereas a local magazine was about R5-R10, these magazines would often cost R150-R200, so it was a real treat and was read cover to cover, even the small print in the ads. Keep in mind that my first job was aged 11, and at one point I was living in a caravan in my uncle's back yard. Money was tight then so getting these magazines a few times a year was a real treat. Occasionally they'd have little bits and bobs in them too, like a servo mount or some tie-rod ends. I used to save all these in a fishing tackle box just like the pros and was keeping them for the day I got an RC car.
The car I initially fell in love with was the Tamiya Stadium Blitzer. This was the car I told myself I was going to buy, sadly it was never to be.
I still remember seeing it at a local hobby shop, right there on the top shelf, but I would never come to own my RC unicorn. Instead a year or two later, having been scouring the local classifieds every week for RC cars, I found a used Tamiya Madcap. It was old, used, battered, had no electronics in it, but after flicking through my magazines until I found a review and determined that this was in fact a good car and not a cheapo box-ticker jobbie, I bought it. Sadly this car was also never to run again as I simply couldn't afford the radio, servos, battery packs and charger to go with it. I've no idea where it is now.
Then at 15 I moved to Holland and got a paper round. My mum and I were living in my gran's attic at the time and money was scarce but I managed to save up enough to buy a Fighter Buggy. This was the cheapest "proper" RC car at the time, I bought it together with a Futaba 2 channel system and built it by myself, eventually bashing with it around my gran's place. I loved that thing, and would go on to buy a few more batteries so I could play with it for longer.
Eventually girls came on to the scene and then scooters, so the hobby fell by the way side. Until someone opened an RC car shop literally opposite my house and reignited that flame. I'd since lost my beloved fighter buggy in a house move and had no more RC stuff left, and blew all my money on scooters. The guy who opened the shop was an official CEN dealer so had all the lovely stuff in there, including the Cen Genesis, later renamed to the CEN GST. This was a 1/8th nitro truck with a 3 speed box and iirc 4ws. It was an absolute beast. He also sold loads of other cool stuff like a Hotbodies twin engine beast, conversion kits for the HPI Savage (Truckzilla, massive engine or twin engines). I could spend hours and hours in the shop.
Anyway, I moved to London eventually and I now own a CEN MG16 and a CEN Mini Madness with a 13t motor in it. It's a bit of a beast, and the MG16 is great fun too. I bought these two because they're 1/16th so quite small and I loved small stuff, one electric and one nitro for obvious reasons. They also share quite a few components which is what I wanted. Love them, still have them in boxes under the bed.
I'll probably buy something fast and electric in the next couple of years, I quite fancy an E-Maxx or a Savage Flux at some point.
I'm just gonna take a trip down memory lane here, if you're not interested in this then don't waste your time reading it
When I was a wee lad in Saffrica I developed a bit of an obsession for RC cars. These were available back then, but Saffrica being Saffrica, they were very, very expensive. I used to buy a magazine called RC Car Action which was a foreign magazine which could only be bought at specialist magazine shops (very normal in Saffrica, a whole economy over there dedicated to foreign publications). This meant that whereas a local magazine was about R5-R10, these magazines would often cost R150-R200, so it was a real treat and was read cover to cover, even the small print in the ads. Keep in mind that my first job was aged 11, and at one point I was living in a caravan in my uncle's back yard. Money was tight then so getting these magazines a few times a year was a real treat. Occasionally they'd have little bits and bobs in them too, like a servo mount or some tie-rod ends. I used to save all these in a fishing tackle box just like the pros and was keeping them for the day I got an RC car.
The car I initially fell in love with was the Tamiya Stadium Blitzer. This was the car I told myself I was going to buy, sadly it was never to be.
I still remember seeing it at a local hobby shop, right there on the top shelf, but I would never come to own my RC unicorn. Instead a year or two later, having been scouring the local classifieds every week for RC cars, I found a used Tamiya Madcap. It was old, used, battered, had no electronics in it, but after flicking through my magazines until I found a review and determined that this was in fact a good car and not a cheapo box-ticker jobbie, I bought it. Sadly this car was also never to run again as I simply couldn't afford the radio, servos, battery packs and charger to go with it. I've no idea where it is now.
Then at 15 I moved to Holland and got a paper round. My mum and I were living in my gran's attic at the time and money was scarce but I managed to save up enough to buy a Fighter Buggy. This was the cheapest "proper" RC car at the time, I bought it together with a Futaba 2 channel system and built it by myself, eventually bashing with it around my gran's place. I loved that thing, and would go on to buy a few more batteries so I could play with it for longer.
Eventually girls came on to the scene and then scooters, so the hobby fell by the way side. Until someone opened an RC car shop literally opposite my house and reignited that flame. I'd since lost my beloved fighter buggy in a house move and had no more RC stuff left, and blew all my money on scooters. The guy who opened the shop was an official CEN dealer so had all the lovely stuff in there, including the Cen Genesis, later renamed to the CEN GST. This was a 1/8th nitro truck with a 3 speed box and iirc 4ws. It was an absolute beast. He also sold loads of other cool stuff like a Hotbodies twin engine beast, conversion kits for the HPI Savage (Truckzilla, massive engine or twin engines). I could spend hours and hours in the shop.
Anyway, I moved to London eventually and I now own a CEN MG16 and a CEN Mini Madness with a 13t motor in it. It's a bit of a beast, and the MG16 is great fun too. I bought these two because they're 1/16th so quite small and I loved small stuff, one electric and one nitro for obvious reasons. They also share quite a few components which is what I wanted. Love them, still have them in boxes under the bed.
I'll probably buy something fast and electric in the next couple of years, I quite fancy an E-Maxx or a Savage Flux at some point.
Yeah mine got Broken by jumps made of whatvever at hand.
Oh yeah mine had one! It got worn to a nub before I wrote my car off. I remember I broke a front suspension once and a steering rod once. My dad must have hated me for the repair costs
there was some heatsink part too that would quite often get pulverised, I got through a few of them too.
Oh yeah mine had one! It got worn to a nub before I wrote my car off. I remember I broke a front suspension once and a steering rod once. My dad must have hated me for the repair costs
there was some heatsink part too that would quite often get pulverised, I got through a few of them too.
It is, tbh I wouldn’t want it any faster for a four year old and it’s very capable on non flat surfaces. Even worked fine on deep gravel.
The car I initially fell in love with was the Tamiya Stadium Blitzer.
I have one of these in my collection.
These are old pics now. Have a fair few more and lots of built ones in my dining room
I have one of these in my collection.
These are old pics now. Have a fair few more and lots of built ones in my dining room
Your collection is basically my childhood dream, apart from the fact that you mainly have Tamiya. I also love a bit of Traxxas, HPI, Cen, Mugen and others. I've often pored over your collection, post up some high res photos pls!
Similar happened to me. My Mum and Nan bought me Nikko Bison F10 one Christmas and it was a beast compared to anything I had before. My brother had a go and promptly wrecked going full speed into a high kerb. Not a happy Christmas for me but my Nan had got it insured.
They couldn't get it replaced with anything like it and paid back the value and I ended up in Currys getting a Speccy 128+ and dooming my young self to years of bedroom gaming instead
.