Are we the only ones keeping the R/C history alive?

[emspjay 138]

So I'm in my 40's and my wife and I are not going to have any kids. Our brothers and sisters have kids but none of them are into anything R/C and I have given them R/C gifts. They like video games and other new tech stuff. I think there will be a big decline in R/C in the future, I really appreciate everyone in the hobby that passes it on to their kids but I think it might slowly dry up in the future. What do you guys think?

[Theibault 1535]

This is the age old axiom for the RC hobby. I don't think so. There will always be a certain type of person who's drawn to RC and those numbers tend to stay the same as generations pass. What's shifting is what's popular. Traxxas, Arrma, Axial, and a bunch of other companies are doing fine. There will always be fluctuations in the participants in the hobby, but it'll always be around.

[87lc2 2781]

I agree that RC will always have a place, but the new generation does seem to be more interested in social media & video games than actually building or doing anything.  I have a massive RC collection that I would have flipped out about when I was a kid, but my nephews (3 of them between 8-11) could really care less.  Two of them have hobby grade RC trucks, but they ran them only a handful of times and I haven't seen the trucks since. 

Sometimes I wonder if its the RTR nature of the hobby nowadays.  Kids get a truck that they can take out of the box, run a few times, and then just forget about it as they really have nothing invested in it.  My first RC was a kit (as I'm sure many on here can relate to), and I spent about a week of school nights putting it together with a little help from my dad.  I will never forget building that car and since I built it with my own two hands I had a lot of pride in it and knew it inside and out.  I think the 'disposable' nature of RTR cars/trucks these days takes a lot away from the hobby and personal investment kids are putting into the hobby.  Just my opinion, but I know if I never put together that first car myself I may not have been so invested.  Even after I left the hobby for 10 years or so, the most enjoyable part of the hobby to me today is still either building a new kit or taking apart and restoring an older model.

 

[Pablo68 1094]

Yeah,
I bought my kids a buggy each back around 2007-8. They were both Tamiya kits and they liked them well enough and enjoyed building them. They played with them a fair bit but over time stopped playing with them.
I got the buggies back and reconditioned them as well as putting new electrics and tx/rx set up. Once again used them a bit and then .....stopped.

Possibly just not their thing really. Then again as young adults they have their own lives to deal with. Maybe they'll go back to them when they are older.

I think I had a point to this post but I've forgotten what it was....

[Shodog 1842]

I would agree that a substantial amount of kids today could care less about R/C cars.  My girlfriends son is indifferent about them and wanted an Xbox one instead of a Scx10.2. 

My son finally got into R/C’s.  Over the years I had built him killer vehicles to run so that he had something to run with me. We had two micro RS4,  two 18t’s, Two XRay T1 and two RC10T3 and evethough he had all those cool vehicles he was kinda Meh towards R/C. Then one day when my son was about 14, his friend brought over a tt02 to show him.  My son mentioned that he had an Xray T1 and his friend didn’t believe him. So he called me up and I brought both Xrays over to drift in my ex wife’s empty garage. We had a fun afternoon and he was hooked.  Since then he has bought and sold a few more drift cars but now his main focus is scale trucks and crawlers. For his birthday I got him a Cross SG4c. His enthusiasm has motivated me more towards the rock crawl scene and now I’m buying more scale trucks.  

Last month my son, girlfriends son and I went out to rock crawl at a local hotspot. We had a great time until the Traxxas ESC died.

 

[Juggular 5079]

I would think that about half the people in Tamiya Club are builders. 

One thing Tamiya kits do better is that the building process is organized better.  If you follow the instruction, you will complete a car all on your own.  You get a sense of accomplishment.  It's like a Lego kit, only it's powered and controlled.  Tamiya has been building kits like STEM kits, even before "Science-Technology-Engineering-Math" became a term.   

As long as people have a builder-gene in them, people will tinker with RC cars.  

 

[Nobbi1977 1793]

I think all types of club think the same thing. Because we have forums like this we forget what a niche bunch we are.

The same discussions are going on on motorcycle and climbing forums all over but most thinks survive, they just go in waves of mass popularity. 

[Mad Ax 10028]

Nobody was really into RC cars when I was a kid, but I always loved them and craved them.  Although when I was a kid, fragile second-hand cars lack of parts availability made it a frustrating hobby and often as not my cars would be shelved waiting parts while I rode around on my mountain bike instead.  But regardless, I always loved RC cars and would have sold my soul for a collection like I have now, or to have had a dad who had a collection like mine.

My daughter is only 2, so not old enough for RC yet.  But I'm really looking forward to the day when she's old enough to build her first car.  Maybe she'll really take to it - right now she's into everything daddy does; if I take a sip of my drink at the dinner table, she'll take a sip of hers.  If I roll up my sleeves, she'll roll up hers.  If I've got her in the workshop and I start using a screwdriver, she'll pick on up and start trying to use it on things.  Now maybe in 5-6 years time she'll be the same, and she'll love the time daddy spends sitting with her at the workbench helping her build her first car.  Or maybe she won't; maybe there'll be some new craze that she wants me to help her with.

I'll offer to take her to the local race club when she's old enough, I'll help her come up with a paint scheme and I'll help her tune her car and I'll help her learn how to marshal properly, and may be she'll love that.  OTOH, there's no mileage in trying to live your own dreams through your children - if she doesn't want to do it, I can't make her.

All I can do is give her every opportunity to enjoy RC with daddy, and if not, maybe she'll give me the opportunity to enjoy something different with her.

[Bromley 681]

My parents simply couldn't afford to buy me rc cars when i was a kid. Only now can i afford to indulge my childhood fantasy. This is and always has been a problem for a lot of youngsters who would otherwise like to get involved in our hobby.

[Saito2 7246]

I touched on this in a topic awhile back, "Where will it all go?". I looked at my collection thinking our generations (most of us are at least in our late 30's at this point) might be the last to assign value to these RC objects. Perhaps that's why I notice when a long time members like TAMark or Terry SC fades from the boards. Gotta keep the numbers up 'cause they're not making folks like us like they used to, lol. 

Seriously, I think RC will go down the path of model trains. People have been crying about how they'll die any second now but they are still around. The core group will shrink, but because of the modeling aspect of RC, it will survive. There will always be people with the modeling/hobby aspect built into their personality, regardless what year it is. Now the RTR fanbase (looking at you Traxxas) may dwindle. Traxxas was smart to diversify in the scaler market and even offer a kit. The problem with typical Traxxas-type RTR is much of it is based on "extreme" How high can it jump? How fast does it go? How big can it get? Can fly to the moon? etc. Eventually, you run out of those avenues to explore and the whole thing dead-ends. Those initially amazed folks are the ones who quickly get bored and move on. Traxxas got their money, but is it sustainable?

Like alot of issues (at least here in the US) it can be traced back to the internet, you rather its easy accessibility. Kids have everything at their fingertips and don't know anything different. It makes them (generalizing here, not true for all) impatient, (ever wonder why drivers are getting more crazy?), and the have trouble focusing. These are not conducive to our hobby. 

 

[78Triumph 2611]

7 hours ago, 87lc2 said:

I agree that RC will always have a place, but the new generation does seem to be more interested in social media & video games than actually building or doing anything.  I have a massive RC collection that I would have flipped out about when I was a kid, but my nephews (3 of them between 8-11) could really care less.  Two of them have hobby grade RC trucks, but they ran them only a handful of times and I haven't seen the trucks since. 

Sometimes I wonder if its the RTR nature of the hobby nowadays.  Kids get a truck that they can take out of the box, run a few times, and then just forget about it as they really have nothing invested in it.  My first RC was a kit (as I'm sure many on here can relate to), and I spent about a week of school nights putting it together with a little help from my dad.  I will never forget building that car and since I built it with my own two hands I had a lot of pride in it and knew it inside and out.  I think the 'disposable' nature of RTR cars/trucks these days takes a lot away from the hobby and personal investment kids are putting into the hobby.  Just my opinion, but I know if I never put together that first car myself I may not have been so invested.  Even after I left the hobby for 10 years or so, the most enjoyable part of the hobby to me today is still either building a new kit or taking apart and restoring an older model.

 

Absolutely!  The RTR is just a more expensive and better quality equivalent of buying a toy grade RTR RC in the sense that kids want that instant gratification and when the novelty wears off it collects dust in the garage or the closet.  The "hobby" aspect of RC to me was always building the kit, painting the body, adding hop ups, etc. From what I see that's a dying part of the hobby.  My daughter has a few rabbits she's been raising and shows at the local 4H event every summer.  They have an "RC Club" as well at the 4H that sets up a booth and it's just a half a dozen kids with RTR Slash's and Aarma Raiders.  What's the hobby in buying something, pulling it out of the box and running it?  It's the same thing as static model building.  Kids don't build model cars anymore.  Times have changed and kids these days aren't hands on or interested in building things.  What does that mean for the RC hobby?  Nothing good I'm afraid.

[acprc 1463]

59 minutes ago, 78Triumph said:

Absolutely!  The RTR is just a more expensive and better quality equivalent of buying a toy grade RTR RC in the sense that kids want that instant gratification and when the novelty wears off it collects dust in the garage or the closet.  The "hobby" aspect of RC to me was always building the kit, painting the body, adding hop ups, etc. From what I see that's a dying part of the hobby.  My daughter has a few rabbits she's been raising and shows at the local 4H event every summer.  They have an "RC Club" as well at the 4H that sets up a booth and it's just a half a dozen kids with RTR Slash's and Aarma Raiders.  What's the hobby in buying something, pulling it out of the box and running it?  It's the same thing as static model building.  Kids don't build model cars anymore.  Times have changed and kids these days aren't hands on or interested in building things.  What does that mean for the RC hobby?  Nothing good I'm afraid.

A lot of the Tamiya nitro I am now restoring were actually only issued as RTR not kits. Kits issued in 2003 and 2004 to me are now collectible even though they were RTR. 

[Grastens 2802]

2 hours ago, Bromley said:

My parents simply couldn't afford to buy me rc cars when i was a kid. Only now can i afford to indulge my childhood fantasy. This is and always has been a problem for a lot of youngsters who would otherwise like to get involved in our hobby.

This is exactly why I am only intermittently involved with the hobby. Any young builder faces getting priced out with each new project; if the kits are not getting more expensive, the finishing supplies are, or something else. One would have to be quite passionate to continue this way - economically speaking, (good-quality) RTRs make more sense, even if there may be less of an emotional investment in one and thus less long-term interest.

I also agree with the sentiment that the echo chamber that is our space on the Internet makes it difficult to see anybody else "keeping the RC history alive." It seems quite a lofty achievement for a single Internet forum or demographic, yet surely other forums' members must feel the same sometimes...

And if you are that worried about the new generation (including me ) being a bunch of self-centred touchscreen-idolizing hands-off types: I (hopefully) have quite a few years left and intend to keep building... touchscreens or none 

[acprc 1463]

3 minutes ago, Grastens said:

I also agree with the sentiment that the echo chamber that is our space on the Internet makes it difficult to see anybody else "keeping the RC history alive." It seems quite a lofty achievement for a single Internet forum or demographic, yet surely other forums' members must feel the same sometimes...

I used to think that everyone knew about Tamiyaclub. I have however since met collectors globally on my travels that have huge collections and have never heard of the site.

[markbt73 5610]

To be honest, whenever one of these "what will happen to our stuff, keep the dream alive" type of threads comes up, I try really hard to care, but I just... don't. Maybe it's the fact that I don't have kids, or just plain old selfishness and/or misanthropy, but I couldn't care less what anyone else thinks of my weird little hobbies, and I don't plan to leave anything un-used for anyone to do anything with. I don't want to be 80 and surrounded by boxes of stuff I could have been having fun with, but didn't, because I was "saving" it. And I don't have the patience to explain to anyone younger than I am why they should care about our old manual/mechanical hobbies; if they would rather stick their noses in a screen, let them.

I do feel lucky to be part of a generation who can really revel in our nostalgia, possibly unlike any generation before. We grew up with physical toys, but they were made of plastic, so a surprising number of them have survived. We have a global database and distribution network that can get these relics into whatever hands may want them. And we have the funds and time and luxury of re-creating the really popular things, either through official re-issues, or, increasingly, through technologies like 3D printing. Our childhood toys will never go away.

The other side of this is that there is a glut of nostalgia: everything is either still around or has come back, which makes the old things less special than they might have been. You can't go all misty-eyed over things that are readily available on eBay or Amazon. And the prevalence of "retro" stuff, I think, turns off a lot of the younger crowd. We come across as a bunch of old fogies who never came into the modern age.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. I'm thankful to the modern era for the increased accessibility and decreased cost of the things I have thought were cool since I was 10, because I'm honestly not interested in hardly any of the "new" stuff. So I'm just going to enjoy my old toy cars, and my model kits, and my vinyl records, and if they get used up or worn out, then that just gives me an excuse to hunt for more. And if I leave nothing but worn-out scraps of plastic for the next generation, I'll have done the thing right.

[Fuijo 913]

After just going through a period of several years, where you could switch to a popular radio station in either the UK or Netherelands and hear 80's music all

over again, played all day long (which was a bit weird by the way, young people), I'd say the chances of it gaining an interest again at some point in the not-too-distant future were quite good.

There's a young lad, 10-12ish who comes to our local track fairly often. He drives a TT-01 with a GTR shell that required building, and seems caught up in his own little world while he's driving around,

as happy as a pig in mud.

Where there's one, there will be more.

[Baddon 860]

Kids today are different from back in our day (sound like my dad here----SORRY) they want everything instantly, have parents who have (usually) more disposable income and as a result get more stuff...so what does not really hook them gets left to gather dust.

 

BUT what they dont do, is spend months looking in model shop windows and browsing the guide books ( you all had at least tow of those I bet?) till they fell apart. HOURS and HOURS spent deciding what you would get when you could eventually afford it. Kids today just dont do this. They may research it on uTube UNTIL they get a link to something else that takes their attention away.

So in 40 years time there will be no fresh crop to replace us for Tamiya to milk. BUT RC will survive as long as there is batteries and motors. Its just good fun for kids of all ages!

[Yalson 514]

12 hours ago, acprc said:

I used to think that everyone knew about Tamiyaclub.

You clearly don't know the first rule of Tamiyaclub.

[Yalson 514]

15 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

My daughter is only 2, so not old enough for RC yet.

Not old enough? Ah.

*Puts the Grasshopper 2 I literally only finished rebuilding tonight for my 2-year-old daughter back in the cupboard.*

What age do they have to be, then?

[Jonathon Gillham 4672]

36 minutes ago, Yalson said:

Not old enough? Ah.

*Puts the Grasshopper 2 I literally only finished rebuilding tonight for my 2-year-old daughter back in the cupboard.*

What age do they have to be, then?

If you have epa on the transmitter then as long as they can hold it you're good to go. My son was a late starter at 3 1/2

[emspjay 138]

Awesome!! I love everyone's responses!! I am happy to hear everyone thinks it will continue!! I hope so myself! The other question is did Tamiya just raise the prices because of low sale volumes?? I don't know if I'm ready for these new high prices? Might just buy used stuff to fix up. These new high prices might hurt them in the long run??

[Crash Cramer 617]

16 hours ago, Bromley said:

My parents simply couldn't afford to buy me rc cars when i was a kid. Only now can i afford to indulge my childhood fantasy. This is and always has been a problem for a lot of youngsters who would otherwise like to get involved in our hobby.

Ditto on this, I won't say they couldn't afford it as much as they WOULDN'T afford it, I had to earn my first one and it could have been a reason I longed for and still long for something to build/rebuild/repair/enjoy.I agree with the other member talking of the fragility of the RTR that were available to us in the 80's, ever the Arrow buggies from Radio Shack could be repaired to a degree, but they were RTR and fragile all the same. The newer RTR are much more robust than 30 years ago, some of that is due to better plastics and then there are others factors too, but regardless, this hobby IS NOT FOR KIDS who have little to no income to keep something running no matter how gentle they treat it when the adrenaline of racing gets you going over curbs and BMX jumps etc.

1 hour ago, Yalson said:

You clearly don't know the first rule of Tamiyaclub.

I had a good laugh at this, but it is quite a thought that EVERYONE should have heard of TC by now, but I guarantee you there are scores of USA folks that don't know about it at all.

 

Now onto my own twocents worth of useless opinion, it may or may not keep going, this RC business, but that is more due to PROFIT and Loss issues over passion and doing. I mean, look at art, people still fling paint and varnish onto canvas and folks pay for it, weather it is by Bob Ross or Monet, someone wants to enjoy looking at something so much they pay for it, even some crazy rich person has a 2/3 shredded painting courtesy of Sotheby's earlier in the year. LOL

What makes things fade is "progress", I mean real cars don't actually DO anything more than the cars of 100 years ago, but the WAY they do it is so much more comfortable and efficient etc, so you will see the hobbyist car guys have that saying BUILT, NOT BOUGHT when it comes to how fast or souped up their car/truck is, so there is that faction as they are a relatively small group of folks driving around in the world these days, not unlike us that find time and fun in building model running cars.

There are people that build puzzles, then there are folks that build Lego, they are almost one in the same depending on the result one is after, you can CREATE with Lego or just build it per instruction, you can usually only build the puzzle to instruction, no creation, so there is still another factor to consider in that hobby, the will or want to CREATE something that is more individual than the next person.

I would have said sometime ago that FORMAT would suggest a demise, but with the up tick in Vinyl records popping back on the scene, I might be wrong on that, I'm still waiting on 8 track to be offered again so I can retrofit it into my new car. LOL

 

I don't know that we do any harm or any good in worrying or wondering if this hobby will stay alive, because we will ultimately find demise ourselves, but we could sure enjoy the ride and try to be better about hanging out with folks we share common interests in.

Not to drag this post down, but I just found out that ebay seller JSourbeck had passed away in August at only 54 years old, so we all have an expiration date, of which we don't know when or why it will be, so let's enjoy the ride.

[Jonathon Gillham 4672]

I think that the hobby will always be around but always as a small niche thing, not mainstream in the same way as say tennis or going to the pub. People will always enjoy creating things, its just now there are more things to create. We used to be restricted to physical things and music, now people can be creative with software as well which opens up a whole new range of things to do, and we all only have 24 hours a day to do it.

Peoples involvement evolves too. I started out thinking it would be backyard fun with my son, then started racing electric, tried onroad and now nitro. My offroad club is growing and just heald the biggest nitro meeting that NZ has had, at least recently. Talking to people 8th nitro buggies are selling like crazy right now. I have also started scratch building stuff, as much fun as building a kit is, its an expensive way to enjoy making stuff!

The other thing is in my neighbourhood there are a bunch of kids who love playing with out cars. Whether this translates into their parents buying them cars and also joining in who knows, but the potential is there. Its definitely more accessible today, the price to get a Tamiya up and running is similar to what it was in the 80s but incomes have increased many times.

[t3garett 268]

Just to chime in .... 

I read all of this with great interest. And I find it reassuring the mere fact that we can have this conversation. 

Personally I have already wondered about this because I have two kids the eldest is 5 and plays a bit with a tamiya bearhawk but is much more interested in putting stickers and "painting" his bodyshell with washable felt tips than actually driving it.... so I think he s going to be a builder more than a runner so I told him that when dad was young he built matchbox model tanks and aircraft. Then I started wondering if that was still a thing or if he would be a weirdo at school for building models then thay got me thinking will there still be humbrol paint pots in the future...... then I got melancholy. 

I think we fear for the demise of what we love and that the thought of it continuing is reassuring. I am rather optimistic though as a former mechanic turned english teacher I once took my ta04 trf to school so the kids could see what rc was and their enthusiasm was overwhelming. They never knew that kind of thing existed. 

[VagabondStarJXF 350]

6 hours ago, Crash Cramer said:

Not to drag this post down, but I just found out that ebay seller JSourbeck had passed away in August at only 54 years old, so we all have an expiration date, of which we don't know when or why it will be, so let's enjoy the ride.

I used to buy from him until UK Customs and Excise made that too expensive. He always had some rare goodies that I couldn't afford.

It's sad to hear of his passing.

Back on subject... I too think our hobby will go the same way as hobby trains and static model kits, barely kept alive by people like us, occasionally passing the hobby on to younger generations, and maybe the hobby will have a resurgence in popularity one day.