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Chilihook

Old RC Car Action Magazines

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While hunting for a book for my daughter in the basement tonight I found my old collection of magazines in one of the boxes. A little musty smelling and sort of yellowed, but man! What a flashback! So many manufacturers of cars that we never think of today - Nichimo, Pacesetter, BoLink, MRP, Circus Hobbies, Parma, and a lot of others.

did anyone have any of these more obscure manufacturer's cars in addition to their Tamiyas?IMG_4718.JPG

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I miss Chris Chianelli. I grew up in CT and used to see him driving his Excalibur. His back page was my favorite part of that magazine while he did it.

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Didn't the mag start out as quarterly? Those were the days. In the early issues you can see the writers trying to get a footing in this land-based hobby. RCCA quickly hit its stride and wasn't bad at all. They were even critical of poorly designed cars. Columnist like Dick Brinton and Bill O'Brien (who I found on Clodtalk) often offered straight-talk on cars. Sadly, the magazine became a love-fest, where everything was great, no matter what. Some of those other brands were neat but they weren't Tamiya. We're spoiled by descent cars like HPI and Traxxas. Tamiya's rep for solid vehicles and great instructions was also built on the fact those older manufactures weren't all that great often times. Vague instructions and missing parts weren't totally uncommon.

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Yes, the first year was quarterly. Interestingly, the first issue has almost no ads. I think there's one full, two-page spread for the Associated RC10, but other than that, only an ad on the inside front cover and on the back. The next magazine was close to half full of advertisers. Mostly hobby shops that are long gone.

Gotta say though, the Nichimo models always kind of compelled me as did the Hirobos. Never saw one in person or knew of someone who had built one. Guess my Marui Big Bear was about as far from the mainstream as I got. I'll try to post some pics of some of the ads tonight. Many looked like they were done on a typewriter!

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I had a run of issues from around 87-90 that i sold on here to someone in the early 2000s with a different user name. Pretty sure it went to the UK too

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"Old RCCA issues" for me are late-90s, as they happened to be available for a dollar or two at my local hobby shop. As it was roughly the era of the cars I am interested in, flipping through them revives the excitement of having those cars readily available and/or newly-released; ads featuring sales on the then-new Tamiya GT-One and JGTC/JTCC racers always catch my eye. Thinking about saddle-pack batteries, frequency receiver modules (Super Freqy!), and low-turn brushed motors as the pinnacle of technology back then is also interesting, given how the hobby has changed since then.

Not too many now-defunct brands in those issues, but plenty of early Associateds, Traxxas, and Losis along with the Tamiyas, Kyoshos, and Yokomos, and so on...

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On 1/19/2017 at 7:51 PM, Chilihook said:

 

did anyone have any of these more obscure manufacturer's cars in addition to their Tamiyas?

Yes.. Back in the day I couldn't really afford Tamiya's so I had a number of Hirobo cars like the Alien, Celica and Peugeot 405. From there I jumped on the Aristo Craft brand and had a couple of Kangaroos and a Dolphin. I recall these where cheap and RTR from Toys-R-Us here in the state.  I had the old beat up kangaroo box up until a few years ago with the $69.99 sticker on it. 

 

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6 hours ago, racer1 said:

Yes.. Back in the day I couldn't really afford Tamiya's so I had a number of Hirobo cars like the Alien, Celica and Peugeot 405. From there I jumped on the Aristo Craft brand and had a couple of Kangaroos and a Dolphin. I recall these where cheap and RTR from Toys-R-Us here in the state.  I had the old beat up kangaroo box up until a few years ago with the $69.99 sticker on it. 

 

Here's a Kangaroo ad from 1987!

2017_01_20_18_12_59_265.jpg

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Nice! I have PDF versions of the first few years, but they took the ads out, which is a bummer. The ads are half the fun.

Issue #1 of RCCA was what made me want to get into this hobby. I had a couple of toy-grade RC cars, but once I saw just what was possible, I had to have "the real thing."

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15 hours ago, Chilihook said:

Here's a Kangaroo ad from 1987!

2017_01_20_18_12_59_265.jpg

Thats it.  Still have one in the basement that i've been meaning to restore for a few years now.  Unfortunately the body is in pretty bad shape but the rest o the car is pretty nice. 

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