Please stop complaining about the prices of the re-re

[Superluminal 3750]

30 minutes ago, Fuijo said:

You may consider it profiteering in the context of the situation you find yourself in. But Tamiya have no clue about your situation and obviously wont be taking it into account in any way when they set their prices. Why on earth should they?

It isn't profiteering when you don't have to buy it. And you don't. You have other cars. You could wait until this situation you find yourself in comes to an end. Or you can wait until the price gets reduced because everyone who wants one already has one.

So please, enough with the profiteering!

 

 

 

Did you get that from a reliable source, or did you read it in the entrails of a chicken?

Tea leaves this time. The chickens still a layer.

[mud4fun 1696]

3 hours ago, Superluminal said:

as anyone who follows Mud4Fun's postal racing it doesnt seem particularly robust or effective as runner / racer compared to other period chassis like the Terra Scorcher

I have actually now gifted my Vanquish to my youngest daughter and she has started to use it for her postal racing. We removed the 13T Dyna Run Super Touring motor and replaced it with a sport tuned which suits it better, unlike the Avante2001 which really suits the speedy motors and the 30-40mph top speeds and fast tracks, the Vanquish seems to prefer the lower powered motors and the small twisty off road tracks.

My daughter likes the Vanquish but even she is getting slower lap times than her silver can powered thundershot at the moment.

I think with time she'll get used to its very quick steering and other handling traits and her lap times will improve. The vanquish in our experience seems to be a one trick pony, excellent on hard packed slightly rough ground but not too rough, not too smooth, only likes jumps if they are a certain size and shape etc whereas the thundershot and terra scorcher cope with a much wider range of track design, terrain and jump conditions and are easier to setup for various conditions and are of course not just much more rugged and resilient but are much cheaper to repair. 

The Vanquish does do really well on rutted muddy grass and hard packed dirt compared with most of our other buggies. I managed to get it pretty close to my Avante2001 times for round 5 (and they were on tarmac) but that is an exception. In most of the previous rounds the Vanquish has either DNF'd due to catastrophic failures after grip rolling or has simply been outclassed by all our other buggies. We've done probably 10x more laps in thundershots and kerbed the buggies or rolled 10x more than the Vanquish but we have not broken anything on the thundershots whereas the Vanquish has now cost me approx £200 in replacement parts in just 5 rounds of racing. With no cheap and plentiful supply of parts the Vanquish is now virtually unusable whereas the thundershot based buggies can keep doing these races for another 40 years without issue.

I fitted yeah racing alloy hubs to all our Avante class buggies (the two Avante2001's, the Vanquish and the Egress) and they have been awesome, have made a huge difference to the durability and we now have buggies that we can race hard and not be quite so fearful of breakages. Since fitting the re-re alloy hub carriers and the yeah racing alloy hubs we have (between me and the kids) clipped kerbs at speed numerous times and impacts that would certainly destroyed a stock plastic hub have resulted in no damage. So we are over the moon with those upgrades. Sadly the Vanquish's other weak points are still there and I have used up all my remaining Vanquish parts to rebuild it twice now in 3 months, the tub, rear deck and rear shock tower/wing mount have all cracked and failed. The front gearbox has been replaced once and after I ran out of new front gearbox sprues I had to epoxy the current front gearbox together. The steering is also held in with epoxy as that weak point also showed itself after just a few hours of use and a roll.

If I had unlimited cheap parts supply then I think I would choose to run a Vanquish for more often than I do but with the lack of parts support I just run the Thundershots and Avante2001 as they are much stronger and quicker buggies over a wider range of terrain. 

 

[ExmouthAdam 37]

On 11/19/2020 at 11:46 PM, Champ85 said:

I think Tamiya has been on a bender lately (the past couple of years) where they have been clamping down on retailers that are "undercutting" their brand by pricing kits and parts too low for their liking.  I'm talking about Banzai (more than a year ago) and another online seller that was discussed on this forum recently that I can't find the name of right now.  Banzai got cut off from Tamiya completely as a result (and still is) while the other more-recent seller had a bit of renegotiating happen before sales of Tamiya products resumed after a few days of suspension.  

Tamiya has made changes to pricing all over the world recently to almost MAP-style levels (Minimum Advertised Price).  Tamiya have redefined themselves as a "premium brand" that therefore commands "premium pricing".   You may or may not agree with this assessment of theirs, of course.

I think Tamiya did some internal auditing, external discovery, and financial analysis to determine that in order for the company to continue to exist they needed to raise prices and enforce world-wide consistent pricing or face financial ruin in the long term. 

 

Interesting if true, because this type of behaviour can be illegal in Europe and the UK.  Recent big fines for Fender and Roland for leaning on retailers to keep prices high.  Industry is different but the principles will be applied exactly the same.

[Juhunio 6830]

On 11/20/2020 at 2:27 PM, Superluminal said:

This is an outrage!!!!

brilliant, that took me back!

[Superluminal 3750]

Im fully equipped with a papoose

[Juhunio 6830]

2 minutes ago, Superluminal said:

Im fully equipped with a papoose

<loses entire afternoon down a Mighty Boosh rabbit hole....>

[mud4fun 1696]

8 hours ago, MadInventor said:

new moulds would have been made for the unique parts. Moulds were already in place for the non unique parts (The same situation as today), so the percentage price differential then gives a good indication of the relative production cost of the model, factoring in a reasonable profit margin. The available information would therefore indicate that a larger profit margin has been attached to the VQS.

Funny thing MadInventor is that most items in the Vanquish kit have already been re-released by Tamiya in other kits and even as spares with relatively low prices which just adds to the mystery as that would suggest the tooling did exist and was in good condition?

There are actually only a few sprues unique to the Vanquish and with modern tool making techniques the cost to make new tooling would be much lower (proportionally) than it would have cost in the late 80's so even that would not really explain any of the price increase even if they had to make new tooling as long as the volumes were reasonably high.

• Sprue A - front gearbox - used on all Avante re-re's
• Sprue B - rear gearbox and diff covers - used on all Avante re-re's
• Sprue C - front and rear hubs - used on all Avante re-re's
• Sprue D - vanquish tub top deck and battery cover - unique to VQS
• Sprue E - bumper and camber link rod ends - unique to VQS/Avante2001
• Sprue G - rear deck and shock towers - unique to VQS
• Sprue H - gearset - used on all Avante class including re-re's
• Sprue J - front wishbones -  unique to VQS/Avante2001/Egress - re-re'd on Egress
• Sprue K - rear trailing arms - unique to VQS/Avante2001/Egress - re-re'd on Egress 
• Wheels - used on several re-re's albeit in different colours.
• Body shell and wing - unique to VQS
• Tub - unique to VQS

I will ignore metal parts because most don't require expensive special tooling although some may require new CNC programs and prove outs but relatively minor as long as volumes are high enough (eg. 1000+ units). I am even capable of producing most of these in my shed for pennies so I hardly think they are a factor in kit cost. Same for screws, nuts, washers and o rings etc - all bought in from specialists for pennies so again no significant affect in overall kit price.

So it seems the only tooling really required, if it was lost, would be for sprues D, E and G plus the tub and shell? I'm not an injection moulding expert but I'm gonna guess that doesn't account for £150 extra per kit on a production run over 1000 items plus?

I'm 80% certain in my mind that the VQS was priced simply for a very large profit margin from collectors with no real intention to sell to people like me that actually run their cars. I wouldn't have any issue with this if Tamiya ran off a good parts run to help me get broken buggies fixed but they won't which means I need to rely on kit breakers and higher kit prices means higher costs for the parts from kit breakers.

In a way all it does it reinforce my long standing view that the Terra Scorcher was the superior buggy - Tamiya had that much confidence in it themselves that they priced it perfectly to allow it to sell in volume to kids and people who actually use their cars, allowing people to enjoy them worry free and will have created a whole new generation of people that love that chassis line. Whereas they had so little faith in the Vanquish they either ran very small volumes or made very large profits by aiming only at collectors who do not run their cars. 

edit: I have gone through 2 x sprue B, 2 x sprue C and 3 x Sprue G this year alone to maintain one vanquish for regular racing. That shows just how many parts I would need over a few years. So if they produce 1000 kits they would ideally need to produce 3000+ of the sprues featuring those commonly broken items - IF all the buggies were used, as would have been the case back in the 80's. Sadly with so many shelf queen collectors not running their buggies I fear the demand for parts would not be high enough to warrant the production runs?

[krisby 89]

I wouldn't mind the rise in prices of re-res if the product worked out of the box. Both mine and my partners MBs had problems with rear universal joints popping out of the cups. I had to buy OG frog dog bones, which have fixed her problem, but mine still persists. So I have a $300 MB that I spent additional money on to resolve that I still can't drive at the moment.

I have a rere Brat, and one of the rear body mounts keeps coming lo0se, the crushed washer friction suspension thing keeps moving on one side no matter how tight it is, the left wheel came off one day when driving it, so I had to buy the OG front axles, I only replaced the left thinking it was a one off, last weekend, 1/2 lap on the track and the right hand wheel comes off, without the spare with me, reducing me, annoyingly to only 2 cars of 4 that I took to the track.

My rere Buggy Champ engine cover does not seem to be able to fit modern motors, there is only just enough space for and old 2 pin silver can, anything with external gubbins won't fit. The steering servo can not be glued down. It just won't take, one jump and it comes loose. Manual makes no mention of servo mounting blocks being needed, but oddly there are holes in the chassis. Parts bag for the buggy makes no mention of the parts, so I've had to try and find another model that has those parts, then finding it in stock. The battery tray is still not made for a full size Nimh either. I'm all for keeping faithful to the original, but if I can't use my RC car for its intended purpose, then that is a failure of Tamiya and they can not justify putting their prices up. In theory, couldn't we have a class action lawsuit against them for selling cars not fit for purpose? Not that we would, just saying for arguments sake.

Its put me off buying any more re-res as a 100% fail rate does not instill me with confidence. I'm even looking at moving to some Kyosho models instead. 

 

[mud4fun 1696]

Sorry to hear that @krisby 

We had a few issues with my daughters re-re Terra Scorcher but oddly enough the biggest problems were because of items that Tamiya fitted to the re-re that were not on the original. We have now binned the rear UJ driveshafts and the alloy motor mount. No idea why Tamiya chose to fix something that wasn't broke but rather bizarrely the UJ driveshafts won't operate smoothly at the angles the rear driveline will be at if you build the rear suspension as per the manual. They caused horrific vibration. The only fix was to either lower the suspension by fitting big spacers to the shocks or as we did, replace them with dogbones. The alloy motor mount was not machined correctly and gave incorrect meshing on the pinion (on top of the manual having the wrong offset for the pinion). We replaced that with an original pressed steel motor mount and all is now well. We also had to replace some gears and shafts that were poorly moulded or machined undersize. The only problem remaining is that the rear gearbox case is not the correct dimension on one of the bearing recesses so the bearing has some slop in it, it is not a tight fit in the recess. I have temporary fixed this with threadlock but we'll also need to replace the rear gearbox part with a vintage one that we lots of spare of. Quite odd that as the bearings are a tight fit in the vintage casings. It is only a thou or two out I guess but it make a huge difference. Overall though we have been delighted with the Terra Scorcher. The car is now running smoothly and alot quieter 

[MadInventor 3884]

35 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

Sorry to hear that @krisby 

We had a few issues with my daughters re-re Terra Scorcher but oddly enough the biggest problems were because of items that Tamiya fitted to the re-re that were not on the original. We have now binned the rear UJ driveshafts and the alloy motor mount. No idea why Tamiya chose to fix something that wasn't broke but rather bizarrely the UJ driveshafts won't operate smoothly at the angles the rear driveline will be at if you build the rear suspension as per the manual. They caused horrific vibration. The only fix was to either lower the suspension by fitting big spacers to the shocks or as we did, replace them with dogbones. The alloy motor mount was not machined correctly and gave incorrect meshing on the pinion (on top of the manual having the wrong offset for the pinion). We replaced that with an original pressed steel motor mount and all is now well. We also had to replace some gears and shafts that were poorly moulded or machined undersize. The only problem remaining is that the rear gearbox case is not the correct dimension on one of the bearing recesses so the bearing has some slop in it, it is not a tight fit in the recess. I have temporary fixed this with threadlock but we'll also need to replace the rear gearbox part with a vintage one that we lots of spare of. Quite odd that as the bearings are a tight fit in the vintage casings. It is only a thou or two out I guess but it make a huge difference. Overall though we have been delighted with the Terra Scorcher. The car is now running smoothly and alot quieter 

I must admit I'm not looking forward to breaking the seals on my re-re terra scorcher after what I've been reading here. I've got some vintage gears and diff units, and I have good engineering grade steel to make replacement idler shafts with. Bit of a worry about the motor plate though, as I don't have a vintage replacement. I have one in my thundershot, so could use that as a pattern  to make a replacement if necessary, but that's a lot of work for something that should work out of the box. If the quality keeps going down like this then very soon people who want to run the cards will be looking for vintage models in preference to the re-release models.

 

 

[taffer 948]

@HornetRacer 1971 used the new motor mount without issues, I went straight to my vintage one, using the new design in my partially assembled tshot. Didn't check pinion distance yet, need to remember to do it.

I did actually manage to use the plastic spacer with the new motor mount rather than measure the distance for the pinion, it was fiddly to do.

The new CVD's also seem ok for me, unsure if they contribute to the extra noise but I'm not bothered too much now I have run it for a few hours.

Will be interesting what Tamiya do, if anything, for the rerere fire dragon, if the original motor plate makes a comeback they will be even cheaper to buy than now (£4-£5)

[mud4fun 1696]

@taffer @MadInventor yes, I should clarify here, the re-re terra scorcher did run fine out of the box however we have a fleet of thundershots that are racing together on the postal racing tracks, so we had them all going on the same surface on the same track within minutes of each other and it was then very apparent that the new re-re was very noisy compared to the vintage cars (even though the 'vintage' cars had been rebuilt from new vintage parts only a few years earlier. My daughter was getting quite alarmed because the noise sounded like gears being crunched! 

Some of the noise gradually reduced as the re-re was used and bedded in but it was still significantly noisier and suffered from severe vibrations, especially under braking from speed into a corner on tarmac. 

NOTE: My daughters re-re terra scorcher has been running either a 22T mag meyhem motor or a 19T Reedy quad mag race motor which is 12mph faster than the stock silver can so that may have highlighted the poor fit of the components more than somebody running a silver can? I have run 19T Reedy's in my thundershots and terra scorchers for decades without issue so I know that was not the cause of the noise. I am actually running a 13T Dyna Run Super Touring in my thundershot and it is far quieter and smoother than the re-re was when first built. I would guess that the higher rpm motors will highlight the poor moulding on the gears or binding on the UJ's much easier than a silver can.

If you didn't have an existing quiet and smooth vintage thundershot to compare to you may never have realised that there was an issue, probably would have just thought it was a noisy buggy by design. 

[taffer 948]

My original thundershot runner is much quieter but still has a howl which is a little more pronounced when running the steel 32dp pinion, if the terra was my first of the chassis or my only one of the chassis I would have been disappointed and more concerned to try and solve it.

However after 15 years of running thundershots it doesn't bother me, if it explodes one day, I'll rebuild it! 

My next build is a parts build fire dragon, which I will look in more detail when building at the new motor mount etc

[mud4fun 1696]

I'm not sure why nobody else has noticed the issues with the UJ's though? They will definitely not operate at the same driveline angles that either the vintage ones did or anywhere near close to the extreme angles a dogbone will run at. You can see this for yourself if you lightly rotate one in your hand holding it over a protractor. The new design UJ's start to bind at something like 10 degrees less than a dogbone. My daughters re-re is using the stock rear shocks built as per the instructions and mounted to the correct hole on the lower arm so I would have thought the vibration issue would have been picked up by others. It is fine once on the ground with a heavy battery as the rear end sags enough to reduce driveline angles HOWEVER on tarmac racing my daughter needed stiff suspension to avoid the rear end bottoming out at speed when hitting ridges in the tarmac so she is using the large spacer. Under normal flat driving all is well but under braking or just lifitng off the throttle from high speed the rear end goes unloaded as the nose dives and then the vibrations really are horrific!

We have temporarily replaced the UJ's with dogbones but we are building up a new set of shorter CVA's with firmer short springs to fit to her car, that will lower it to suit tarmac racing and reduce drivelines angles so she can have her UJ's back.

 

[taffer 948]

Yes, recently (this year) I've been driving my car's (except cc-02 and g6-01) Japan style on nice clean dry tarmac, my terra is built per manual but no spacers so has a saggy bottom, my fire dragon will have an increased ride height but I'll use dogbones on it 

however @HornetRacer 1971 terra has the large spacers on his, hopefully he can check his cvd's to see if they do this.....

[Snappy1 966]

This thread has really got me curious about re re numbers being manufactured per run, I always figured it was more like 10,000 kits per run , but looking at stock levels and the rate at which stores sell out 1,000 may well be closer to the truth,
 

regarding this thread I have many re res and vintage originals, love them all, especially my re re Egress, it’s one of the best runners I have, wether it’s fitted with a brushed or brushless motor, I have two Avante 2001s so I just had to have a VQS, I did think the price was high, put it down to COVID 19 and clicked buy, I managed to get some high caps for it too, if it drives half as good as my Egress  I will be happy, and by the sounds of it a pretty limited re release, which kind of makes it feel that little bit more special

[MadInventor 3884]

2 hours ago, mud4fun said:

@taffer @MadInventor yes, I should clarify here, the re-re terra scorcher did run fine out of the box however we have a fleet of thundershots that are racing together on the postal racing tracks, so we had them all going on the same surface on the same track within minutes of each other and it was then very apparent that the new re-re was very noisy compared to the vintage cars (even though the 'vintage' cars had been rebuilt from new vintage parts only a few years earlier. My daughter was getting quite alarmed because the noise sounded like gears being crunched! 

Some of the noise gradually reduced as the re-re was used and bedded in but it was still significantly noisier and suffered from severe vibrations, especially under braking from speed into a corner on tarmac. 

NOTE: My daughters re-re terra scorcher has been running either a 22T mag meyhem motor or a 19T Reedy quad mag race motor which is 12mph faster than the stock silver can so that may have highlighted the poor fit of the components more than somebody running a silver can? I have run 19T Reedy's in my thundershots and terra scorchers for decades without issue so I know that was not the cause of the noise. I am actually running a 13T Dyna Run Super Touring in my thundershot and it is far quieter and smoother than the re-re was when first built. I would guess that the higher rpm motors will highlight the poor moulding on the gears or binding on the UJ's much easier than a silver can.

If you didn't have an existing quiet and smooth vintage thundershot to compare to you may never have realised that there was an issue, probably would have just thought it was a noisy buggy by design. 

My existing 'old' thundershot is quiet considering it has a 4000KV brushless in it running on LiPos. I probably won't put anything as mad as that in the terra scorcher, but it's going to need something with more beans than a silver can. I've got after market CVDs in the front and top force in the back, with no binding issues. I'm actually starting to wonder why I bought the Terra Scorcher now.............

[mud4fun 1696]

LOL, @MadInventor my daughter suggested that I should get one too but as I said to her, what was the point, my thundershot already has all the terra scorcher hopups so it came down to shell. I actually prefer the Thundershot shell whereas she prefers the terra scorcher. Each of us has our own preferences so at least the re-res give everybody a chance at owning what they prefer.  (as long as they are priced sensibly, which the terra scorcher was and same is true for fire dragon, both within Xmas budgets for kids)

[MadInventor 3884]

4 minutes ago, mud4fun said:

LOL, @MadInventor my daughter suggested that I should get one too but as I said to her, what was the point, my thundershot already has all the terra scorcher hopups so it came down to shell. I actually prefer the Thundershot shell whereas she prefers the terra scorcher. Each of us has our own preferences so at least the re-res give everybody a chance at owning what they prefer.  (as long as they are priced sensibly, which the terra scorcher was and same is true for fire dragon, both within Xmas budgets for kids)

I got my terra scorcher from Fusion Hobbies at the start of the year, with my TC subscriber discount I got it for a shade under £160, which I thought was very reasonable for what it is.

[mud4fun 1696]

1 hour ago, Snappy1 said:

If it drives half as good as my Egress  I will be happy, and by the sounds of it a pretty limited re release, which kind of makes it feel that little bit more special

The vanquish is a superb buggy, one of my favourites to drive off road. It is the only Avante class buggy to beat my thundershot on our rough off road track. The suspension is supple, the balance of the car is lovely and it has good ground clearance. My mighty Egress or Avante2001 can't come close on rough ground as they are too stiff. Opposite is of course true for tarmac racing. The only reason it is my least used buggy is that it is my most fragile. If parts were plentiful and cheap I'd use it all the time but the Thundershot has much better supply of parts AND the fragile parts are cheap and easy to find. Sadly the vanquish fragile parts are expensive and rare as rocking horse manure... This is probably the reason I get so annoyed and a little emotional over parts supply and pricing.

I have a love/hate relationship with mine. I fix it, drive it, it reminds me how fantastic it drives off road, I fall in love with it again then it breaks, I can't find parts and it goes back in the attic for a year in shame....

The steering is quick and it can turn very tightly so does require a bit of getting used to if coming from the likes of a thundershot. However you will be fine if used to an Egress.

Note: I should add, the breakages this year were from a couple of high speed rolls on tarmac while it was running a 33K rpm motor at 25mph+ after clipping a kerb while trying to beat a club racer driving a race spec touring car.... so not an inherit design flaw, simply being pushed beyond its design limits. The car has now been gifted to youngest Mudlet who is racing it with a sport tuned motor and so far no breakages 

[Avante2001R 305]

On 11/19/2020 at 11:46 PM, Champ85 said:

I think Tamiya has been on a bender lately (the past couple of years) where they have been clamping down on retailers that are "undercutting" their brand by pricing kits and parts too low for their liking.  I'm talking about Banzai (more than a year ago) and another online seller that was discussed on this forum recently that I can't find the name of right now.  Banzai got cut off from Tamiya completely as a result (and still is) while the other more-recent seller had a bit of renegotiating happen before sales of Tamiya products resumed after a few days of suspension.  

Tamiya has made changes to pricing all over the world recently to almost MAP-style levels (Minimum Advertised Price).  Tamiya have redefined themselves as a "premium brand" that therefore commands "premium pricing".   You may or may not agree with this assessment of theirs, of course.

I think Tamiya did some internal auditing, external discovery, and financial analysis to determine that in order for the company to continue to exist they needed to raise prices and enforce world-wide consistent pricing or face financial ruin in the long term. 

 

I lost respect for Tamiya when their business model consists of churning out old models re re after re re. Their UK parts supply and high pricing is just ridiculous. Needless to say I won’t be buying any more of their kits unless they reinstate the TRF cars (these cars were always special). There are far better other RC cars available from other manufactures namely our own British brand - Schumacher. 

[Avante2001R 305]

On 11/20/2020 at 8:01 AM, Grumpy pants said:

I think it is pretty straight forward really there are a huge number of people that are employed and that need to be paid, dozens of hidden costs, shipping, VAT, rates, Corporation tax, etc, etc and every company has to turn a worth while profit to survive, attract talent and to develop new lines. 
 
Aside from the over riding factor that no one is forcing you to buy anything from Tamiya.

I think moaning about the lack of bearings and hop ups is tedious as well.

If Tamico can manage competitive pricing and they have similar taxes and overhead to us in the UK then surely the UK prices can be on par. 

This is one of the reasons why people buy from HK or Tamico, people want to save money where they can. 

On a separate note, they cannot even use better plastics still the same old brittle plastics. If they want to charge a premium then use proper materials and have at least a good spares support to stop all these eBay scalpers which seem to be exclusive more so on Tamiya parts. Don’t get Scalpers doing the same with Schumacher parts.

[Avante2001R 305]

On 11/21/2020 at 1:41 PM, Norco Kid said:

I think @GTodd is just trying to stir the pot and keep this thread going. The majority agrees that they are overpriced, but It's clear that his viewpoint is fixed and he is trying to "educate" us with unsubstantiated theories and wild assumptions.  Do you really think the Chinese can sell a replica bruiser for $200 and STILL make a profit, but Tamiya is taking a loss at 500? I've shared my thoughts, I'm out.

Who is GTodd to tell people to keep their opinions to themselves? Is he Mr Tamiya? Does he own shares? Why is he taking it personally? 

People have the right to comment on pricing if they feel it is expensive and beyond what their justifiable limits are.

[Avante2001R 305]

On 11/22/2020 at 7:06 PM, mud4fun said:

As I said above,

I will decide what is essential to me and my kids in enjoying hobbies to alleviate mental health issues during lockdown, not you!

I will decide what I consider is value for money, overpriced or a rip off, not you!

You have every right to voice your opinion and we can happily disagree but don't even try to silence my opinion on some baseless assertion that it will put Tamiya off making re-re's

Oh and correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it you only a few weeks ago extolling the virtues of a fake/fraudulent/knock off Dynatech motor because your view at the time was that you couldn't afford the prices Tamiya (or the market) were asking so you were quite happy to support criminals?

Have you heard of the term 'flogging a dead horse'? it seems you and GTodd are doing just that 

Lol 😂

[Avante2001R 305]

On 11/22/2020 at 8:33 PM, mud4fun said:

GTodd chose to select a very specific definition of profiteering to suit his narrative. There are others that fall under profiteering or exploitation such as 'making use of a situation to gain unfair advantage for oneself' that may well apply to my comment but you chose to ignore that.

and going by GTodds definition of what is essential then his PC, laptop or phone used to post this thread is itself non essential.......and we would not even be arguing over it as it wouldn't exist 

However, no worries xray mark, I'm happy to bury the hatchet, I have a few good places in mind......... only kidding!  

In all honesty this whole re-re thing is a red herring, it simply takes attention away from the fact that Tamiya no longer produce a premium 4WD buggy that kids aspire to own and in my opinion is what will ultimately lead to Tamiya diminishing as a brand in RC cars. They have now gone for 20 years without producing a mass produced premium buggy. The TRF's don't really count as their numbers were very low and generally aimed at PRO racers. The opposition from Schumacher, Associated, Losi, Kyosho, X-ray, Traxxas or even RTR's such as FTX etc is significant and if my kids are anything to go by then Tamiya have a bleak future if they continue down this collector led business model. My kids spent hours trawling modelsport looking for things to add to their xmas lists - the top 5 RC cars they wanted did NOT include a Tamiya...... they have grown up immersed in Tamiya and have driven Thundershot and Avante class buggies since they were 8yrs old!! If Tamiya really do read this forum then they should take note, their lack of parts support and their continual regurgitation of old crap instead of developing new cutting edge buggies is going to bite them on the bum. The only reason my mudlets may end up with Tamiya cars this xmas is down to them deciding that they'd rather have a cheap Tamiya (DT03) and have budget left over for warhammer or Lego. Both girls have said that next year they want Schumachers for their birthdays and that will basically end their ties with Tamiya.

I ended up buying two Schumacher Cat and Cougar cars which I can drive hard and not worry about spares or immediately being discontinued. Schumacher cars are the way to go if you want to have something modern and high quality and not get fleeced on parts prices. They also have excellent customer after sales support either pick up the phone or send an email. Your girls will be happy. They are awesome machines.