Why was your first Tamiya your first?

[ThunderDragonCy]

What lovely things to read. 

Like a lot of you, I had wired RC cars in the mid-80s as Christmas presents, but I remember seeing the Grasshopper box art in the Littlewoods catalogue when I about 10. MAN I wanted one! It was always going to be too expensive for me to save up for, but I lusted from afar. I remember playing with my friends Grasshopper and loving everything about it. There was a toy shop in town that had Tamiyas and I used to drag my Mum in there every saturday to hang my nose over the cool boxes and amazing models. Then in 1988 an amazing silver spaceship of a thing was dangling in the front window. A Thunder Dragon. I just LOVED it. My Dad had a particularly good year and work, so on my 12th birthday, we went for a trip to the shop, and they pulled that model out of the window, put together some radio gear and a battery and I got my first RC car. I am so fortunate my parents were able to get me such a great car for my first RC. A few of my school mates got various Tamiyas around the same time, but we didn't have anywhere to run them, so we just used to razz about in the streets or parks. The bug faded after while (similar to the 10 minute run time of the NiCAD batteries), but I always kept it. Although there probably isn't a single original part on it left, I still have "my" Thunder Dragon today. 

[Tamiyastef]

I went to an open door day in a technical school nearby and saw my first RC's in real life. A Holiday buggy, Sand Rover and a Frog. I got well informed by the owner and my interest was aroused. I got my hands on my first RC Guide Book and read that so often I still know parts of the descriptions by hard. Eventually in 1984 I got my Grasshopper from a local toy store where those promovideo's were playing in a loop. A well-considered choice as after saving all my pocket money and all chore money I could get I scraped enough to get a Grasshopper, a transmitter, slow wall charger and one 1200mAh Nicd battery. Because all other cars were more expensive and wouldn't allow me to get any ball bearings let alone a second battery I opted for a kit with a 380 motor. Choices back then were the ORV Lancia (too expensive and no good off road tires IMO back then), the ORV Brat (saying 4WD and being 2WD so a fraud iMO back then) and the Grasshopper (the then newest 380 star in the firmament - Sand Rover/Holiday Buggy were discontinued by then, had an open gearbox and no differential if I recall correctly) so a Grasshopper it was. 

A mate had a Marui Hunter and another one was gifted a beat up Sand Scorcher from his uncle. For the first 5 minutes they ran circles around me but then they had to wait another 12 hours while there batteries charged again and I was still running for another 15 minutes at least. I was a happy kid  (and still am )

Edit: because everything is better with a picture 

 

[GreenBar0n]

Birthday present in late 1985, had recently turned 13. Had the Tamiya Guide Book from that year, and stared at it cover to cover for about 5 months - before being able to choose: The Frog.

Parents took me to Wold's House of Hobbies in Dublin, CA, and let me pick it out. I remember asking the shop owner if the body had to be pink, he chuckled and took me to the Tamiya PC paint bottle rack, the Poly Carbonate brush paint is no longer a thing, but back then I picked the green PC brush paint, and a white spray can.  

Can't count the number of times I picked The Frog up from the rear, and put my fingers right on those extremely hot, white ceramic resistors, finger tip blisters a couple of times, still remember that. 

Eventually got a Subaru Brat body for it, and the Tamiya sponge knobby street tire kit, that had the red wheels, they weren't for The Frog, but was tired of wearing those spike tires out on the street. Traded all this away for Commodore 64 stuff a couple years later.

[JimBear]

@Tamiyastefs photo of his 'hopper.  (just leave the [img] tags out next time and it'll work better)

[Tamiyastef]

8 hours ago, JimBear said:

leave the [img] tags out

I edited my post and removed the tags but no picture showing... I've had pictures showing even in the new TC ERA of badges and old newbies  so not really sure what happened...

Edit: Aha, the Other Media box 

Edited June 25 by Tamiyastef
picture

[davidsen]

 

I'm a latecomer. It wasn't until the pandemic and the many boring evenings (on top of that, it was winter and my daughter had just been born, so I always had plenty of time in the evenings) that I ordered and assembled my first Tamiya.

I knew the brand from my youth, as I did a lot of plastic model building back then, and in the local shop, you could of course also see the remote-controlled models, but at the time they were far too expensive for me. After the plastic model kits, I also bought gliders, remote-controlled boats, and all sorts of other things there. I never even thought about cars back then.

Later, I built multicopters until it became too dangerous for me to fly them near a village or town.

So, back to the first Tamiya: after a couple of Lego kits and a mini excavator made of metal parts (remote-controlled, similar to Fischer Technik), I wanted something I could actually use. It had to work on the lawn in the backyard, work in the park, and be reasonably robust so that my little son (3 years old at the time) wouldn't break anything while pushing it around. It also had to look cool, of course, and it had to be a kit. For this reason, it became a Monster Beetle Black Edition...and after this Monster Beetle, things quickly escalated.

[Tamiyastef]

42 minutes ago, davidsen said:

things quickly escalated

They usualy do if RC is involved 

[Torhaantje]

Lovely thread!

My first Tamiya was a second hand Matra F1 .(58010)

F1 in those days( early eighties) was a real attraction to me: my father took me to Zandvoort on saturday for the practise sessions. In those days you could just walk from the grandstand to the Tarzanbocht (first corner) and watch the cars though the fence. I remembered one year that while I was standing there a certain Mario Andretti crashed his Lotus JPS just a couple of meters to my right.......

Anyway, since that time Iwas hooked on F1. One day, I must have been 13 years,  I saw the Tamiya Ligier in a radioshop  my father visited with me to get some electronic stuff. Seeing the light blue matra of Jacques Lafitte in 1/10 th scale ' suitable for radiocontrol' ( no wire to operate it!!!) made me want  it so much!  I got it for my birthday together with a two channel 27 mhz Graupner transmitter set, a 6 v , 1200 mha Tamiya nicad battery and an Acoms trickle charger. I was the happiest boy in the world. Charging the battery overnight for a 15 minute run after school the next day, was just magical. I can still recall the smell of the mechanical speedcontroller after each run....

(Link from Tamiya.base.com)

After a crash of the Ligier against the boardwalk because of the 27 MHz glitch ( thete were many 27 mhz radio amateurs BID), I broke the front end.😥

My father repaired it and painted the shell black with gold JPS striping and decals to mimic the JPS lotus livery of that time.

 

Happy days........🫠🙃🙂😉

Rick

[ploots]

I first saw a bloke at our local pub i use to goto with my parents he had a sandscorcher it was brand new very early 80s, I knew then I loved rc cars, my 1st car was a 2nd hand holiday buggy that was probably about 1982, in 1984 I got a new ford ranger ive still got it now apart from the body I really have no idea where that went it's now running a rere sandscorcher body

[Mad Ax]

Note: this post has been open in my laptop, unposted, unfinished, for over 6 days, waiting for me to finish and post it.

I'm pretty sure I've told this story before, but for a long time my only experience with Tamiya was with Mini 4WD.  I knew that they made RC versions, and I always wondered what the big versions of my little cars looked like, but I rarely saw one.

There was a time, at primary school, when a kid brought in a Lunchbox, and I recognised it from the Mini 4WD kit box, and it looked awesome and huge and fast compared to my Nikko Turbo Panther, but for a long time, that was as close as I got.

Then one day my cousin called me over to see his birthday present.  It was a Tamiya King Cab, and he was in the process of putting it together.  The chassis was complete but the body wasn't painted.  I couldn't work out why it was clear plastic, I thought that was a stupid idea, plus I hated painting things and always screwed up my Airfix models by painting them badly, so I thought a car with a coloured plastic body would be way better.  I would have just thrown the stickers on the coloured plastic and driven it.

Anyway, that's all I saw of that King Cab until a year or so later when he offered to sell it to me for next to nothing.  He'd completely trashed the body and thrown it away, the tyres were smooth as billiard balls, and it had a very well-used feel to it, but it was all there, and it worked.  I paid lunch money for it, and used some pocket money to buy a new bodyshell and paint from the local hobby shop.  I remember choosing the body - I remember the man in the shop getting 3 or 4 clear plastic bodies off the shelf for me to look at, and me doing my usual indecisive child "look at them all for over an hour without ever thinking about anything that would be considered making a decision, instead wondering which one I would regret the most not buying."

I don't exactly remember what body I got, or who made it.  Given the era, it could have been Parma.  I remember it was a squarebody pickup, and it had 2 or 3 moulded pancake filters poking up through a hole in the hood.  I remember getting some silver paint to paint them.  I did the rest of the body red and black, but I was afraid of spray paints (I knew I'd get overspray everywhere and get told off) so I bought brush paint bottles, and I bought the wrong paint type.  The black came out OK but the red was always streaky and uneven and was sticky for years after.  I only had a slow charger and 1 battery pack, so I could run it for 5 minutes every day - that was it.

Still, I loved that truck.  I ran it to badword and back.  It broke a few times - taking it anywhere seemed to be the kiss of death.  I took it on holiday once, I ran it on the 1st day and then plugged it in to charge overnight, but that night my dad unplugged it to put the radio on and didn't tell me.  I was devastated when I could run it the 2nd day.  On the 3rd day I got a full charge, but the splines wore out in the rear hex (gosh darn those splined hexes!) and that was that, it was out of action for 6 weeks while I waited for a replacement hex to arrive on the slow boat from Japan, via Riko (remember them?)

Another time we were going to one of my favourite places (actually still one of my favourite places, I might go there on Sunday for a walk) - it's an old lead mine that's been turned into a nature reserve, with hills, troughs, ponds, and all these cute little paths that are just big enough for a monster truck to race down.  We always went at the absolute last minute with no warning, so I never had a battery charged and ready to go.  Except this one time, when I was warned early and I got it charged.

I couldn't believe my luck when we arrived at the location, an hour's drive from home, and I actually had my monster truck and a full battery, and...  Oh, my dad must have caught the power switch on the old Acoms chrome-faced transmitter, and it had been turned on all the way there and the batteries had died.  So, yeah, no monster truck.

I still loved that truck, though.  I've never owned another King Cab - in fact I've barely ever seen one, I don't think I've ever seen a running example with the King Cab body, but I've got an angle on a Monster Racer.  Actually my friend has several, all runners, and they're all for sale.  I just need to work out what to offer him for one of them...

[Grumpy pants]

A Toyota Hilux 3 speed at 15 YO, way back in ‘84 or ‘85 😳
 

Like this one I own now -

[Mo Powah]

Lunch Box- well what 80's kid didn't want a yellow van with oversized wheels and a blonde on the side?