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mobias

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Everything posted by mobias

  1. I'd have a got at painting it yourself. You can get a cheap modellers airbrush on Ebay for less than a tenner these days. Doing a camo colour scheme is actually way easier than you think and you can have fun practising on an old car body or just a scrap bit of cardboard or paper. Even if your finished result is only halfway decent it'll still look better than stickers I think.
  2. I actually never minded the moondish wheels and I always liked the unique little details the Bigwig has like the little metal dashboard, engine and exhaust details and rubber steering boots. It all tried to look quite scale but at the same time when you actually have it in your hands its one of the most toy-ish looking of Tamiya's 80's buggies. I don't think the box art colour scheme helps it any but I've seen some really nice custom jobs out there. I seriously drooled over it in the catalogues and shop displays in the 80's as a kid but it was a seriously expensive car back then, especially when you threw in an 8.4v battery. I would definitely get one if Tamiya re-re'd it. It would be fun to build and run it from NIB. When I had one few years ago I didn't dare run it as it was a really nice shelf queen and I sold it on as such.
  3. The Bigwig really hasn't aged well. It's the only one of the Hotshot based cars that really screams 1980's!!! I loved it's looks as a kid and dreamed of owning one so it was the first vintage car I bought to restore when I got back into the hobby a few years back. Having owned one now I'm much less keen on them. If Tamiya were to release another vintage 4WD racer it would have to be the Supershot.
  4. I reckon the Fox is much more likely than the Bruiser or Mountaineer. I'd love them to re-re the Monster Beetle above all else but it would need to be as faithful to the original as possible for me to buy it. The original was really all about its great looks, those would be utterly lost on the BF Extreme chassis. Much as I personally love the Bigwig I agree its highly unlikely we'll ever see it again. I'd be floored if they re-re'd the Supershot. I don't see why they won't re-re it.
  5. I'm waiting for a re-re-release Top Force. I love that car and didn't get a chance to buy it first or second time around.
  6. Looks like some sort of weird off road dodgem. With the HB2010 the rear didn't look so bad but the front looked rubbish with this the front end doesn't look too bad but the rear looks rubbish.
  7. I followed Twinset's home made link method to the letter for extending my TXT's wheelbase and confirm they're extremely strong. My TXT is big a heavy and I've jumped it numerous times with no signs of breaking or bending them. http://www.tamiyaclub.com/pictureframe.asp...011193901_3.jpg]http://www.tamiyaclub.com/pictureframe.asp...011193901_3.jpg
  8. Looks great. I've never really liked the militaristic looks of the FAV but I've thought of getting the re-re and doing a scale off road buggy make over to make it more Wild One-ish. Could of course just wait for the Wild One to be re-re'd which I guess will now definitely happen.
  9. Where none of that applies though is Tamiya's attempt at getting into the crawler market. The CR-01 was over priced, over engineered rubbish and yet Tamiya have done nothing to build on it. They did nothing to build upon the TXT chassis either or the F-350 three speed chassis, another chassis that could easily be improved upon. Certainly in the off road truck market ( a reasonably big market in the EU and the US) they do seem completely bankrupt of ideas. As has been said a zillion times here - the scale truck/crawler market is an area you'd think Tamiya would dominate given their history and area they'd be really inventive in, as other manufacturers are, yet its an area they've kind of lightly dabbled in and seem to have given up on. Seems odd.
  10. I think it looks beedin awful. Who exactly is this release aimed at? Is there a huge market for an over priced and ugly looking truck based on a vintage chassis that's prone to breaking that I'm not aware of? Or are Tamiya about to try and create one?
  11. Blitzer Beetle???!!!! I want a Monster Beetle!!!!!!
  12. Has the Egress actually ever been 100% confirmed? I just thought the release was based on a mass of assumptions and rumour dressed as fact.
  13. You do wonder in the long run just how strict Tamiya will be policing ebay. Having made this move and doing their bit to frighten everyone I wonder if lots of repro stuff slowly drips its way back into auctions. It'll be a lot of hassle for them to police continuously.
  14. Do you mean the decals are total rubbish made in the far East but being sold here in the UK by UK sellers?
  15. What's the deal with Tamiya stopping eBay sellers anyway? eBay is currently awash with repro decals at very cheap prices. It doesn't look like sellers are going to be bullied by Tamiya into stopping selling them.
  16. Don't get me wrong I'm not siding with Tamiya over this, although I think people were on very, very thin ice over both the issue of the reproducing the decals (in fact especially that) and reproducing the manuals for profitable gain. But I do think there's a fair degree of over reaction going on. Having downloaded and used manuals from here to restore cars I can definitely vouch for how useful they were. But TC was in danger of treading on the toes of a huge corporate giant with, as it turns out, quite a ruthless copyright legal department. This sort of thing happens I'm afraid and none of it surprises me. Its annoying but boycotting the company is going to achieve exactly nothing other than bring you self satisfaction which is achieved in turn at the cost of you enjoying the hobby. Methinks its better to write to Tamiya and try and sort out a compromise. Try and get them to put up all the manuals on one of their own websites.
  17. Are people here seriously not going to buy a Tamiya product ever again over this mountain out of a molehill issue? Sounds good to me, prices on ebay might start coming down
  18. Yeah I was thinking the same even after just seeing photos of it out of the box. Does look like there's a fair bit of potential for modding it though if you wanted to throw more money at it and I do applaud Axial for at least including an interior set, even if it does look a bit toy-ish. On the subject of a crawler sub-category here. I've often thought a scale and crawler sub-category might be quite a good idea, but not I guess if there's not so much interest in it these days. I certainly think Lunch Box owners should be given a sub-category all to themselves I think its odd that Tamiya haven't embraced the scale and crawler market more than they have. I'd really like to know the reason why? They did after all pretty much set the ball rolling in this field. I realise its still a niche market but other companies like Axial, Junfac etc seem to be doing quite nicely out of it and given Tamiya's history in scale static modelling you'd think the scale crawler market is an area of the hobby they could really clean up in. The CR-01 chassis has never been built upon and neither has the F-350 chassis. There's so much they could improve upon with each. Rock racing and FOFF is really were its at for me now. A lot of fun. Got my first FOFF rig on the build at the moment, using the bare bones of my CR-01 chassis. I'll post a build thread here soon.
  19. I can! Knowing how Tamiya like to cash in on things, and in the past they've scraped the bottom of the barrel cashing in on things, I wouldn't put it past them to do anything. Them giving a truck an Avante colour scheme and livery and calling it an 'Avante Truck' struck me as entirely possible. Maybe they were/are going to make a trailer for it so people can tow their Avante's? Anything is possible these days with Tamiya. Its academic now since whatever it was they were going to do they obviously thought better of....
  20. For some reason I think that's highly unlikely...
  21. But Tamiya brought the Avante 2 and it didn't have much to do with the original Avante so presumably they could bring out an Avante Truck that also didn't have much to do with the original Avante? I was kind of imagining a truck with a similar box art colour scheme as the Avante with yellow wheels. I've never owned an Avante but going by what I've read it seems like its an incredible looking chassis but is actually pretty dreadful when it comes to performance. It's appeal, like all the re-re's is entirely down to vintage nostalgia and great looks. To take that fragile vintage buggy chassis and use it to make a modern truck chassis would strike me as pretty bonkers but I guess I could be proved wrong. Tamiya are capable of doing anything I guess.... ps. Isn't the Avante supposed to have dreadful and highly delicate suspension that bottoms out on the slightest little jump? Why would that be any good for a short course truck?
  22. For a little while it was being referred to as the 'Avante Truck' but I don't think anyone thought for a second Tamiya would try and turn the Avante chassis into a truck chassis did they? I thought they were yet again cashing in on the Avante in name only. Anyway all we know is that its now called the Vajra and its expensive so its obviously quite a bit of kit.
  23. The Vajra is the only thing that interests me. Hoping its some sort of new scale looking rock buggy to compete with the Wraith.
  24. The problem, as far as Tamiya's lawyers probably see it, is that there wasn't 'free access' to these manuals. Tamiya club were technically profiting from distributing them. From my experience company's will turn a blind eye to things if money isn't involved, when it comes to copyright issues. As soon as it's seen as any kind of profit is being made by the person infringing on the copyright then a company will act. If the high res scans were available to everyone for free out with TC subscribers then it's possible Tamiya wouldn't have made their move. I do think Tamiya are biting the hand that feeds them to a certain extent over the manuals situation and it's unfortunate but big company's do this sort of thing and I'm not surprised it's happened here. The question is why they allowed it do go on for so long if they weren't happy with it? Maybe they're prepping their own website aimed at collectors.
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