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What is Tamiyas 'best selling' kit, and why?

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I've been pondering recently about which Tamiya kit is the overall best seller and why. Some kits seem to come and go very quickly and I wonder whether that's based purely on sales or whether there is some other agenda to keep certain kits desirable.
It seems that case that the kits with the most cross over of parts with other vehicles are the ones that stay In production the longest, maybe.

So, what is it that you think makes a kit (rerelease or not) stay around a long time and which kit would you say has been Tamiyas 'most sold' kit to date?*

*my vote would probably be the Wild Willy 2.

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Interesting thread. I would expect Lunchbox and Clod to be right up there across their respective journey’s on pure kits sold.

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My guess would be the Hornet, both org and rere.

Inexpensive, tough and look cool. B)

I'm sure @Mokei Kagaku will have some definitive answers. :)

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7 minutes ago, mtbkym01 said:

Interesting thread. I would expect Lunchbox and Clod to be right up there across their respective journey’s on pure kits sold.

Ditto for Grasshopper and Hornet

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The WW2 is a good shout- but I’m pretty sure there is a Tamiya that’s has never been out of production and it might be the LB or Clod as @mtbkym01 has just said. 

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Difficult as you have to bound “best selling”

most popular vs most sold

In terms of chassis then surely it has to be TT02 in terms of number of times that chassis has been utilised

in terms of full kit the models in the running have to be the lunchbox and the grasshopper because of cost, duration available and legendary status.

 

JJ

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Although, I have a feeling it may be one of the On-Road chassis’s.

 

 

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Agree there are number of ways to answer this - and suspect none are definitive because factory records are opaque / non-existent the further back you go 😂

Agree with JJ @Problemchild re the TT02 prob being the winner if kit sales = chassis type 

Strongly suspect the Hornet would win out if kit sales = model type + re re 

Which specific kit number sold most in isolation (so no re re or tweaks) is an interesting one 🤔 but (again) I’d bid the original Hornet at c. 750k worldwide 

That said, a number of the recent line up - and by that I mean last 10 years - will prob push it off it’s perch fairly quickly !

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With all the foxes you have @mtbkym01 they are up there 😂😂

I would think grasshopper or hornet 

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17 minutes ago, KalEl63 said:

With all the foxes you have @mtbkym01 they are up there 😂😂

I would think grasshopper or hornet 

Just trying to do my part 😂

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This topic comes up every so often. While, to the best of my knowledge, Tamiya has never released any hard sales figures, the Hornet was pretty much the agreed upon as the highest selling single model worldwide. 

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It surely must be the hornet for sales,think i read somewhere that it was the biggest selling tamiya rc buggy.The hornet was the first kit i built back in the 80s and it was pretty easy to build and not very expensive compared to other kits at that time.It wasnt the best handling but it was fast and fun and also looked good.when you think of the best tamiya cars of the golden era the hornet is right up near the top of the list.

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When I worked in the shop back in 2004-08, we were at the tip of the long wedge of the re-release phenomenon. 

The Lunchbox was an instant hit, the Pumpkin to a lesser extent. The Frog, Brat, Hornet and Grasshopper naturally captured the nostalgic customer who had one as a kid or who couldn't afford one at the time. Of those, The Lunchbox was overwhelmingly the most popular and is still sold today.

Road cars, to the British customer at least, were relatively unpopular. The price point was most important, the entry-level TT01 kits (Imprezas, the original Enzo) were around the £100 mark so made an affordable Christmas present for a teenager. Invariably they would return weeks later to buy another body (having messed up the paint) or needing help setting up the incredibly simple TEU101BK ESC :lol:

Throughout all of that there was always a consistent under-current of one particular kit. It was the Mad Bull - very cheap, very robust and really without much in the way of hop-ups. We sold hundreds of pairs of those splined hex drives for the rear wheels.

I suspect the modern equivalent is a similarly robust and cheap 2WD car. The DT02 series (Super Fighter G, GR and Violet) were always a popular alternative to the Mad Bull and often not much more expensive. The DT03 certainly seems popular with new arrivals to this forum. 

Once, we even managed to sell a Mammoth Dump Truck. What a day that was :lol:

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10 hours ago, Problemchild said:

Difficult as you have to bound “best selling”

most popular vs most sold

In terms of chassis then surely it has to be TT02 in terms of number of times that chassis has been utilised

in terms of full kit the models in the running have to be the lunchbox and the grasshopper because of cost, duration available and legendary status.

 

JJ

I'm new to this game...but did a bit of research before buying my kit. I went for the TT02B purely because of the availability of parts. The amount is insane, and the mods this chassis has available is astounding in my opinion. Or maybe, I'm late to the game as I haven't had a kit since the 90s?

I still think it's a solid chassis, though.

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6 hours ago, ChrisRx718 said:

The Frog, Brat, Hornet and Grasshopper naturally captured the nostalgic customer who had one as a kid or who couldn't afford one at the time. Of those, The Lunchbox was overwhelmingly the most popular and is still sold today.

My father just bought the Grasshopper re-issue. He loves it!

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In terms of off road I'd have to guess at the Hornet, if not that then Grasshopper, which are mostly the same chassis anyway.

Don't know about on-road chassis.

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Might be wrong through the clouds of memory but I seem to remember The Hornet being the most accessible model back in the day. IE sold in toyshops as opposed to just available in dedicated modelshops like Beatties etc, so would probably be the best seller for that reason

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Frog.....punky brewster had one.....everybody had to be like punky.

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Best selling chassis would surely be the, OVR chassis? It's been used since 1983 and still going!

Sales per kit number, I'd go with the Hornet #58045 1984-92. 

Although the Dark Impact #58370, was released in 2006 (according to ,tamiyabase ,) until 2014 (?), but it's still available, so 14 yrs?

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