JET HOPPER???

[garvey]

id="navy">[]HELLO ALL.

I HAVE A QUESTION THAT I HOPE SOMEONE CAN HELP WITH THAT RELATES TO A TAMIYA MODEL CALLED THE JET HOPPER[?] A FRIEND SAID HE uSED TO OWN ONE IN AUSTRALIA BUT WE CANT FIND ANY INFO OR PICS ON IT.

PLEASE IF ANYONE CAN FIND A PICTURE OF ONE PLEASE POST IT.

MANY THANKS.

[smiffy]

I use to own one of these many years ago, can`t really remember much about it now though but i will try and help if i can

steve

[kingeddie]

hi, i remember 'tandy' doing a nikko type buggy called a jet hopper but nothing tamiya, could be wrong though

[theshopkeeper]

I had a Jet Hopper. It was a RIKO RACER - Riko was the uK importer for Tamiya, I think the cars might have been re-badged Dickie models.

[Hibernaculum]

Well, I'm from Australia, so I think the "Jet Hopper" that he's referring to is none of the above (although I am unfamiliar with Riko or Dickie, so it's possible this car was just rebadged under those names in Europe).

It's actually the famous "Turbo Hopper" buggy made by the company Taiyo, and sold under the Tyco brand in America. Many people will know it as either the "Tyco Turbo Hopper" or the "Taiyo Turbo Hopper".

In Australia, the car was sold as the "Jet Hopper" under the Metro brand - i.e. "Metro Jet Hopper".

I'm sure tons of you know which car I'm talking about. This little buggy sold in truckloads during the 80s, and was extremely popular. While not being Tamiya standard, it was responsible for introducing many to the hobby. And it wasn't a total slouch either, with a fair turn of speed, and coming complete with a real spare tyre and a few knick knacks, like little orange witches hats to drive around...

http://www.zedic.com/collections/radio_con...er-03/pic03.jpg

It should be noted that this car went through several face lifts and upgrades.

The original (and best) version is distinguished by having "balloon" type buggy tyres - like perfect (but smaller) versions of the Buggy Spike Tyres on say, the Hornet.

Later versions had lower profile (boring!) tyres.

The Jet Hopper was so popular in Australia, that it was even mentioned in a law suit between rival Toy distributors, the documentation of which can be found here....

http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/030424a2english.html

...and contains the following quote...

"As a result, in 1986 GTI marketed a Taiyo R/C toy in Australia called Jet Hopper. It was marketed through retailers under the Metro brand which was owned by GTI. It was heavily promoted on television. It was fast, agile, able to clear obstacles and be used outdoors. It achieved phenomenal sales, about 130,000 units in 1986. That led to Tyco distributing the toy in the united States in 1987 under the name Turbo Hopper, with great success. Naturally, Playcorp's success advanced the business relationship between GTI and Taiyo. It is also led to many other R/C toys being successfully marketed in Australia by GTI and later Playcorp.

The R/C toy market developed, new toys were introduced and the range was increased. Briefly, in 1987 Jet Hopper was an even greater success selling more than 150,000 units, and Taiyo introduced a version on a smaller scale called Mini Hopper, two-thirds of the size and price of Jet Hopper. It did not possess the same performance levels, was cheaper and appealed to younger children. It sold in large quantities without affecting sales of the bigger R/C toys. In 1988 a third category or section of the R/C toy market was created when Taiyo introduced the Micro Hopper which was smaller again, and cheaper with lesser performance abilities, and which appealed to even younger children. Thus, by 1988 there were three distinct categories of R/C toy in the market in Australia, and that continued to be the case. They were the full or normal size high performance vehicle, the mini and the micro. Within that market there was a difference between toys that were promotional and those that were not, the former being the latest or a prior very successful toy to be promoted through various media including television commercials, at substantial expense. Some R/C toys held their appeal and could be sold steadily for some years. In some cases Taiyo would redesign a toy such as by a change of colour, decal, body shape or type, or other features to retain or create appeal."

There you go. It's actually a cool piece of RC history, if you're also interested in Tyco/Nikko/Radio Shack budget RC vehicles (like me).

cheers,

H.

[Shermanator2]

Far out I remmember that Jet Hopper. Hibernaculum hit the nail on the head with that. Very popular one. I remember a friend having one but what I can remember is that it was a white one.

[HunterZero]

A kid down the road from where I used to live had a Metro Jet Hopper. I remember it was red, and I used to use it as a ramp for my Frog! It was fast for a toy RC, but nowhere near as fast as a 540 powered Tamiya.

Saw a white one at a car boot sale the other day, but couldn't see the remote handset for it so I passed...

It's rather like a smaller scale (about 1/18 I think?) Grasshopper chassis with Hornet styling.

- HZ

[WillyChang]

I seem to have inherited a bunch of Jet Hopper parts...

tyres, axles, some odd gearbox casings - no idea how to ID them.

Not a big Metro/Taiyo collector, so... [;-)]

[DJTheo]

Two friends of mine had one, poor thing stood no chance to my hopped up Boomerang (actually it wouldn't even to a 380 powered GH), still it was fun and nice to drive compared to most toys of that time as it could be even driven off road at a time where most toy cars had so few power that they couldn't.

Cheers

[garvey]

[]thanks everyone thats excelent work.youv put a smile on someones face.my mate started to doubt he ever had one because we couldnt find anything on it.[]good workid="navy">

[Bigwheels_inc]

i bought a taiyo jet hopper for £4.00 in the original box last week for my daughter whos 3 but the steering side of the transmitter has a fault and it needs new spiked rear tyres the controler is 27.095 mhz so tried a set of matching crystals in a tamiya qd transmitter but it didnt work so if anybody has the transmitter or tyres please let me know

make a 3yr old happy

cheers

pete

[Gixer Jay]

The Hopper was a great buggy back in its day. The speed of the "TURBO" was one of the best features the buggy had.

It took me a very long time to find as they seem to be extremely rare NIB, but here is mine. One of my favorites.[]

[supergreg]

I got a boxed one as shown above. It's just missing one headlight, so could you please detach one from yours and send it over here? [] No, serious: Back in the day I had the one with balloon (Hornet-like) spike tires and I could swear it had black bodyshell (if they ever existed), but i'm not sure.

The Jet Hopper was distributed and rebadged by Dickie here in Germany as Hibernaculum already said. I remember driving mine together with a friend who had a Marui Big Bear. As often as he tried to crush me, I switched to Turbo mode and cornered away!!! [8D]

I would really love to get one with spike tires instead of boring flat ones, so my hunt will continue.

I hope we will see a lot of Jet Hoppers in showrooms around. I will put mine in asap.

[Bigwheels_inc]

hi greg

my one is in black with hornet style balloon tyres your not going mad because thats the one ive got here the box on the uk ones was branded taiyo here in the uk

[rroodd]

I'm in Aus too, and a while back I put my old Jet Hopper on ebay for sale, and got quite good money for it ! Couldn't believe it at the time, as I didn't think anyone was 'collecting' these...

I have old Australian R/C magazine's from the 80's, and they have the letters sent in by readers asking questions/tech info, etc. and there was always someone writing in asking how to 'hop up' their Jet Hopper..! (The usual reply by the editor was "they are just a toy", and "you can't hop them up", so "just buy a Hornet instead"...!!

They certainly were leaps ahead of most of the other R/C buggies in that same price range though. Quite a bit of fun for what they were.

Rod.

Rod.

[Live Steam Mad]

Hi, I remember these in Toy & Hobby in St.Helens (which went some years ago ) when I was with my friend Andrew back in 1988 when I was 14 years old, I remember the Jet Hopper name and I seem to remember that it had a transmitter with the Turbo facility (see this Ebay link to see what I mean ) ;-

http://cgi.ebay.ph/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...5&indexURL=

...but the ones I see in people's showrooms have the same transmitter that I had with the Tandy yellow 4x4 pick up truck (with no turbo position).

Except that masterbsax says in his showroom that he HAS got the turbo position on his TX, but this is on his Turbo Jet Hopper MK.2 ;-

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.a...50&id=20877

...can someone tell me what is going on and give us some more links to these nice little vehicles?

We could do with a "Vintage Jet Hopper" blog / website

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[fatboyslim]

Three years between posts???

Could this be a new record??

[B.M.T.]

There might lay the difference between the Jet and Turbo Hopper. Both red and black (27 & 40 mhz) versions of the Jet Hopper had the ballon tyres on the back.

I think what was the big selling point with these was that they were the first r/c "toy" to have suspension. They appeared in Australia for Christmas 86, right at the time that the local Tamiya distributors were running a hard tv ad campaign for the Falcon and Fox, Metro jumped on the coat tails with a $90 option.

The "turbo speed" function was also a draw card, we know it as a 2 step speed control Except when you steered it would drop back to 1st speed.

Most Jet Hoppers met their end with steering failure.

These have had a lasting impression in the Australian culture. Even now, uninitiated children refer to rc buggies as "Jet Hoppers", even though they'd of been born 10 years atleast after the rise and fall of the little 1/12th buggy.

[Live Steam Mad]

There might lay the difference between the Jet and Turbo Hopper. Both red and black (27 & 40 mhz) versions of the Jet Hopper had the ballon tyres on the back.

I think what was the big selling point with these was that they were the first r/c "toy" to have suspension. They appeared in Australia for Christmas 86, right at the time that the local Tamiya distributors were running a hard tv ad campaign for the Falcon and Fox, Metro jumped on the coat tails with a $90 option.

The "turbo speed" function was also a draw card, we know it as a 2 step speed control Except when you steered it would drop back to 1st speed.

Most Jet Hoppers met their end with steering failure.

These have had a lasting impression in the Australian culture. Even now, uninitiated children refer to rc buggies as "Jet Hoppers", even though they'd of been born 10 years atleast after the rise and fall of the little 1/12th buggy.

WOAH, way cool post, many thanks! I love reading about this stuff!

What I would like is a (UK would be nice!!) catalogue showing the Jet Hopper and Turbo Jet Hopper, in fact could anyone tell me whether Toy & Hobby ever did a catalogue? Or leaflets? I remember that Toy & Hobby did a general TV advert but I didn't ever see any UK TV adverts for the Jet Hopper. I would love to see any promotional adverts TV or otherwise for the J.H.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

These have had a lasting impression in the Australian culture. Even now, uninitiated children refer to rc buggies as "Jet Hoppers", even though they'd of been born 10 years atleast after the rise and fall of the little 1/12th buggy.

That does indeed seem to be the case. I just looked for J.H. vid's on the Tube and found a 1/8 rally cross buggy or somethin' being run and the video was called Jet Hopper Doesn't make it easy to search for real J.H. vid's

Cheers,

A.G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Just seen a reference to the " Jet Hopper MK1 " on an Australian 1:1 car forum. Trying to e-mail the guy and get a picture off him.

All the earliest ones I see so far are " Turbo Jet Hopper " and not " Jet Hopper " (written on the rear wing ).

We really need a website showing the history (various changes they made with good quality pictures) of this model. Where's H. when we need him?! LOL come back mate!!

I did find 2 TV adverts featuring the TJH and the Aero Turbo Hopper ;-

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/687/

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/5790/

This buggy is just the right size and speed for my very modest new Off Road track in my back garden

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

OK I think I just worked something out, there seems to be no driver figure in the Turbo Jet Hopper or the 9.6V Turbo Jet Hopper . The driver figure is in the " Heads Up " version of the J.H.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Hey guys I just found the website for Taiyo who made the Jet Hopper ;-

http://www.taiyo-toy.co.jp/

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

hi greg

my one is in black with hornet style balloon tyres your not going mad because thats the one ive got here the box on the uk ones was branded taiyo here in the uk

Hi, only just noticed this post after a search... have you still got the box for the UK version of the Jet Hopper? If so I would really appreciate it if you could help me out by posting some nice quality high res. pictures of the front and sides and internals of the box and packaging and the car itself. I just bought a Jet Hopper ( German Dickie version ) and I am on a quest to see what the UK box looked like, since I am from NW England and I can't remember what the box looks like (it's a long time ago!) ;-

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=48441

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

A fella called Nigel just e-mailed me with some great pictures of the Jet Hopper 2 ;-

He tells me "I sold these to a guy in Adelaide, last March for 25. I had had one of the buggies from new, 1996. It had generally worked ok, but did have a broken front bumper and had stopped working. Not being able to readily identify the problem, it sat unused for some time. I found and obtain a second one from the local ‘recycling’ centre (tip). This had a Tamiya connector wired to the motor. Whilst it ran, I never had the two working properly, so eventually they went on Ebay."

The JH2 has a different rear wing, different front tyres, flat profile rear tyres, and no spare front tyre on the roof, compared to the original version, and the controller is different.

Also note the name on the box. " Riko Radio Racer ". The Riko bit comes from the name of the UK importer of Tamiya and Taiyo.

Cheers,

ARG.