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Juhunio

So..what's the one thing you LOVE most about Tamiya?

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Back in 1993 when I got a Grasshopper 2 Super G and all the great times my dad took me out and I got to drive around and then have to wait for the trickle charger. Had some other brands RCs over the years but always come back to Tamiya. You never forget your first.

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I didn't have a Tamiya or anything else as a kid, so I am not nostalgic. 

Still, Tamiya buggies look sort of like 1:1 offroad buggies. At least some do. Most other manufacturers' products look either like really stupid spaceships, or like they were designed by bros for WWE enthusiasts. 

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10 hours ago, lsear2905 said:

(obviously there's a lot of other reasons, but the post said one thing)

Yes, it did...but hey, I've had three already! So fill your boots...

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4 hours ago, Silver-Can said:

Off topic/ awesome album and 101 also awesome album and video. /off topic.

It sure is, and yes 101 is also a classic. I broke six ribs and suffered a concussion in a mountain biking accident right at the beginning of the school summer holidays in 1990, and Violator got me through those long weeks laid up in bed 🌹

4 hours ago, Silver-Can said:

... then secondary school then girls, music, mates, life then around 2010 was at work wondering what ever happened to tamiya. 5 Google minutes later had ordered a hotshot. 

Very similar to my experience, except 2019 and Bigwig 😃

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I love what @Juhunio said about heritage and it's most likely the exact same nostalgia that got me back into Tamiya in the mid-00s.  My first kit as an adult, a Dark Impact, had the exact same feel and brought back the exact same memories of the Mud Blaster that I built as a child in the early 90s.

But for me now, it's something else.  It's the huge depth, breadth and wealth of models and parts available, and all the history that I can draw on as I try to craft something new.

As I'm now mostly a custom builder, I love to make things from parts.  @TurnipJF kind of hits pretty close to the mark here.  I love that I can build a TL-01 with buggy arms, or put narrow arms onto a WT-01, or make a monster truck out of various different parts.  Although I can (and do) incorporate parts from other manufacturers, the interchangeability as noted by @TurnipJF and the heritage mentioned by @Juhunio means I can build things that are more coherent and with more than a passing nod to the past, something that is more than "just a custom car" but a custom car that uses parts from and the same design philosophy as a classic.  A talking point, as much as a functional model.

It's probably my familiarity with Tamiya, as much as the availability of new and used parts, that keeps me coming back to Tamiya for the base of a custom build, it's the ability to turn it into a talking point or use the legacy as inspiration for the build, which makes Tamiya a better choice for me.

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3 hours ago, wtcc5 said:

For me Tamiya is famous for complex designs regarding their chassis. Their design is like there is an internal championship on which engineer comes up with the most complicated-strange-design-tub. And that gives every chassis its uniqueness. 

I was just thinking something similar when attaching the battery tray to my TB Evo III build....I love how it's moulded so the prop shaft runs through it. Such an elegant design touch...probably impractical, there are probably better solutions available, but look at it. So cool!

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It reminded me also of the way the belts thread around the chassis plates and battery tray on the 30th Anniversary 934...so precise 😃

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I think what I love about tamiya is basically everything! From static models (which I don't know anything about but admire a lot) to my passion which is the rc part of tamiya and the vast amount of trucks, cars, buggies that tamiya has produced and sometimes the bazaar that make's you think "really tamiya"......just brilliant! And if it wasn't for tamiya the hobby most definitely wouldn't be as diverse as it is now?

I started back in the late 70's early 80s drooling over the Tyrell six wheeler and then the sand rover/holiday buggy came along and I was just blown away because it just looked like a model and I remember thinking "that's actually radio controlled" so you can imagine what I thought when the SRB'S arrived which the ranger was my first real rc car and that truck was used to an inch of its life.

It's the white boxes with fantastic painted vehicles and the rc guides and rc tamiya book (rc museum's) the posters with the pictures like the boxes on one side and  vehicles in motion on the other side! The tamiya rc videos back in the days of Beattie's (uk) so what I'm trying to say is its everything that I've had all my life to the present day has had tamiya involved in it practically on a weekly basis:wub: and now we have the re-releases which feeds into my nostalgia which is a whole new chapter! And long may it continue:D

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Drivers. 

waqOKed.jpg

Is that strange?  I love having an avatar sitting in an RC car. 

FB3TR5Y.jpg

I wish everything came with a driver, so I could know how big/small things are.

(Below are 2 vehicles made into RC)

fcwFonG.jpg

TUYJqnC.jpg

 

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I love how Tamiya observe the world of human endeavour to recreate machines faithfully and playfully, which enables me to join in with their celebration and feel good about that aspect of being a human. Oh and sniffing the tyres of course.

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The quality.  The selection of models.   The manuals.  And my love for R/C started with Tamiya back in 1988 so it's also sentimental.   The Manhattan Project stirred my love for the BRAT, and I remember the day I bought my BRAT, walking across the parking lot from RC Outlet in Jacksonville FL, removing $200 from the Navy Federal ATM and walking into the shop like I was buying a Mercedes in cash.   LOL

What a day.

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Approachability/accessibility/user-friendliness. Tamiya products are consistent, and consistently nice to work with, their designs make sense (although sometimes it takes a while to see why they did it that way, when you see it, you get it), and I have no qualms recommending them as a starting point for someone getting into the hobby. No other company is able to make something as simple as a Grasshopper and as complex as a Bruiser and have them both make complete sense when you look at the manuals and work with the parts. It's excellent design and expert engineering from start to finish, and I really admire that.

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13 hours ago, Juggular said:

Drivers. 

waqOKed.jpg

Is that strange?  I love having an avatar sitting in an RC car. 

Not strange at all, in fact it made me think....my first three builds were Bigwig, Boomerang and DF03. I loved painting the drivers in the Bigwig and Boomerang and was then surprised, almost put out, that the DF03 didn't have one. So I took an Avante driver and cut it down and painted it to fit the DF03!

But I've not painted a driver figure or cockpit since. I think that's the next thing I have to tackle, the next skill to attempt and then improve on, especially for touring and rally cars. Some of the driver / cockpit work that gets shared on here is mind-blowingly good 👍

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Here's another, although also not unique to Tamiya:

*clear, well-written, lavishly illustrated instruction manuals. 

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I thought long and hard about this and honestly I found the question nearly impossible for me to answer.

I could list reasons like peeling an onion. The vehicles themselves are unique (both in engineering and presentation), imaginative and often whimsical. The Grasshopper cleverly evokes its namesake in appearance, etc. The Lunch Box on the other hand was clearly inspired by the full size Rollin' Thunder monster van. Still, it took Tamiya to add the whole backstory of it being a lunch wagon from the California area and the suitable name "Lunch Box", both in its purpose and boxy van appearance. Brilliant. They all have personality in their bones that extends down into how their mechanicals are designed and perform. 

The box art is second to none. Duplicating it is my retirement goal. Hopefully I can still hold my paintbrush by then, lol. Photo boxes don't do it for me, nor do the full art boxes like Tamiya's earlier static models. Its the awesome art plus the white background that ticks my all my boxes.

The care in which the old kits were presented gave you the feeling that even a pedestrian Hornet was something special. The blister packs, the pictures of the model on bag's header cards, the photos on the inner box dividers all meant something, all how a certain pride in presentation, not just a bunch of parts tossed in a shoebox. Is it any wonder why the smell of fresh kit tires bring back so many good memories? 

The manuals were great and everything fit. RC kits were/are expensive. Imagine the disappointment of spending all that money and getting something frustrating or faulty. We may take for granted how smoothly thing go nowadays but it wasn't always the case. Manuals could be terrible, vague or just plain wrong. Parts could fit improperly or worse, just be missing altogether. Not so with Tamiya.

So, to pick one of these facets would be impossible for me. Earlier Tamiya RC is also one of my special interest for decades now. They are a safe place where I can get lost. They are always accessible in my brain to think about when times a stressful or I just have some idle day-dream time. When I meet folks who remember these cars, I have to really reign in my enthusiasm as to not overwhelm them. I'm guilty of this on the forum sometimes too and feel a bit bad how I began spouting and tossing pictures up on the recent Kyosho Car Crusher thread. I'm terrible about balance and adjusting to social norms and it probably even comes through on wordy post like this one. Thanks for tolerating me. I guess all can say is I'm glad Tamiya has always been there for me, whatever my favorite part may be.

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Nicely articulated @Saito2. In many ways (totally dumbed down) Tamiya just evokes emotions and expectations way beyond the sum of its parts. 

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On 9/8/2022 at 6:22 AM, Killajb said:

Character

This, this and this.

Almost everything else is clinical in comparison to the bizarre or esoteric style of Tamiya. There are only a few that are similar, maybe a few Kyosho models from waaayy back and others that just seemed to be trying to emulate the success.

All Tamiya stuff has a touch of it in there somewhere. It’s what keeps me coming back, I have other models but they just don’t really click with me like a Tamiya does

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On 9/8/2022 at 9:35 AM, wtcc5 said:

For me Tamiya is famous for complex designs regarding their chassis. Their design is like there is an internal championship on which engineer comes up with the most complicated-strange-design-tub. And that gives every chassis its uniqueness. And then the basic tub kit is an ugly plastic duckling, but you can grow it with Hop-Ups and it becomes a beautiful harmonic composition of aluminium-carbon-shiny-plastic.

 

On 9/7/2022 at 4:19 PM, TurnipJF said:

For me, it is parts interchangeability. There is enough commonality in terms of suspension mounting systems, straying components, drivetrain parts, etc to be able to come up with any number of models that Tamiya themselves have not released, but can still be built out of stock parts.

Even if you lack the tools, skills and space to custom-make your own parts, you can still create a custom vehicle unlike anything anybody else has built, and if they like it, they can build one too!

 

For me, it's combination. How Tamiya manages to come up with unique chassis while reusing common parts. Sometimes it's getting close to Lego :D

 

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I love that they allowed me to buy all the kits I could not back in the 80s. 

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