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Would you consider them monster trucks?

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Out of the earlier original Tamiya trucks (Bruiser, Blackfoot, Monster Beetle, Lunch Box, Clod Buster, Midnight Pumpkin, Mud Blaster) would you consider them monster trucks?

I don't think of the Bruiser as monster truck despite having tires similar to a Blackfoot. The sheer size difference makes the Bruiser more of an off road or mud bog truck nor was it referred to as a monster on the box. But how about the rest?

Surprisingly, only the Clod Buster and Lunch Box were described as monsters on their boxes, "customized monster pick-up truck" and "customized monster van for racing and show", respectively. The Monster Beetle is just an "off roader"  and the rest are "off road pick-ups", (well the Pumpkin is fully described as  "customized pick-up" or "classic 1950's pick-up truck style" depending on the version).

Aside from the Bruiser, I think of all of them as monster trucks despite what the box states, especially the Blackfoot considering it's name similarity with another large Ford, Bigfoot.

  

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I agree the Clod & Lunchbox are clearly labelled & intended to be ‘Monsters’


The bruiser is the start of the Tamiya monster truck scene. True it is not labelled such but the disproportionate size of the wheels and tires bear more than a passing resemblance to the proportions of the 1st Bigfoot, in my opinion.

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Monster truck is such a loose term in general, but to me the only Tamiya trucks I consider actual Monster Trucks are the Clod, Juggernaut, TXT-1, and Agrios.  I love all of the others mentioned, but how can a 2wd be considered a monster truck?  Funny you mention th Bruiser, it's actually closer to a monster truck than the Blackfoot but if I had to choose I would call the BF a monster before the Bruiser :) 

In the end I guess it's all just subjective, pretty much anything with oversized tires can be called a monster truck, but it really means different thing to different people depending on how you were exposed I guess.  To me it has to be 4wd, have solid axles, and have huge tires.  Now that I think about it, I guess the Bruiser is a monster truck.  It does have tires similar to the 48" agricultural tires that the first monsters had...I'm pretty much just going in circles at this point, a great question that will probably get 20 different answers.

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8 hours ago, 87lc2 said:

I love all of the others mentioned, but how can a 2wd be considered a monster truck?

I go back and forth on this in my head sometimes. 4 wheel independent (or just front in the LB/MP case) and 2wd does not a monster make (outside of some odd ones like the full size T-Maxx monster truck). In the end, I guess I just accept the RC version is different and go based on looks otherwise trucks like the Big Brute, Big Bear, Royal Crusher, etc. would be out too, not to mention the USA-1, Double Dare and High Roller if one takes suspension style into consideration. Most of the MRC ads and RC Car Action always called them monsters or crushers so that influenced me as well in my youth.

8 hours ago, 87lc2 said:

Now that I think about it, I guess the Bruiser is a monster truck.  It does have tires similar to the 48" agricultural tires that the first monsters had..

Good point! Outside of the RCCA monster truck shootout, the Bruiser wasn't really considered a monster truck when I was a kid by most, rather a lifted variant of the old Toyota Hilux (despite being mostly all-new at the time). When you get down to it, the Bruiser was the most monster trucky (is trucky a word?, I'm going with it) thing before the the Juggernaut. Like you said, it just mimics the earlier 48" trucks.

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A more complicated question than it first sounds.  If I was being truly strict with my definitions, a proper "monster truck" must be 4wd and must have solid axles and must have a certain "monster" stance.  Which counts out all of the Tamiya bigwheel trucks except the Clod Buster, Juggernaut and TXTs, but includes the Bruiser and CR-02 cars despite them not being (in my opinion) monster trucks.

So we fall in the grey area of having to make allowances for the scale intention of the model.  After all (as I remarked on the LMT thread over in the 4x4 forum) the Clod Buster is still considered the archetypal RC monster truck and is still the de facto standard for building a custom monster today, despite its motor-on-axle design being completely non-scale.

So I think we need to be generous and include Tamiya's intent when we consider what is a monster.  Building a scale monster truck obviously wasn't impossible at the time (take a Bruiser and add bigger wheels) but it wouldn't have had the speed or robustness offered by the Monster Beetle, Blackfoot etc.  The Blackfoot and other trucks on the same chassis definitely have the monster stance as well as the big wheels, as do the Lunchbox and Pumpkin.  The original Wild Willy doesn't (the wheels are too small), the later WW2 had bigger wheels but IMO still lacks the stance of a true monster - it is a lifted 4x4.

Which brings us full-circle to the Bruiser.  Is that a monster truck?  Well, if you scaled it up to full size, its wheels would probably be bigger than that of Bigfoot 1, and it has the solid axles and 4wd that we demand earlier.  But by the release of the Bruiser in 1985, the monster truck world had moved on and the high-body, 66" tyre platform was the norm, while regular civvie owners were outfitting their Fords and Toyotas with body lifts, solid front axles and big tyres, for fashion as much as for mud bogging.  Even growing up in Britain, I remember seeing lifted Hiluxes on fat chrome steels in the 80s, and they were way too shiny to have ever seen anything but pavement.  So - IMO, obviously - the Bruiser is intended as a lifted street truck.

Once we leave the Blackfoot era behind, things change.  The Blackfoot might have started the truck racing craze, but the RC10T truck conversion defined the formula.  Buggy bodies with wide outriding wheels and low-slung truck bodies, they looked nothing like the 1:1 truck racing scene but were a popular race class.  I've never fully defined the difference between a truggy and a stadium truck, except that truggy seems (to me at least) to be a newer word.

In the background, the rest of the RC world moved on and, building on the TLT-1 design philosophy, we had things like the AX10 and SCX10.  With 2.2 crawler tyres, these were bigger than the previous generation's monster trucks and they had the right suspension powertrain layout, but the real world had moved on too - these weren't monster trucks, these were rock crawlers, rock racers, mud boggers, or something else, depending on specifics of the design.  So as the world changes, so the definitions change.

Building on those scale truck platforms, the RC world is now blessed with the SMT10, MTX-1, LMT, etc, all of which follow the plan of late-stage monster trucks.  IMO a manufacturer can't make anything that deviates too much from this design and still call it a monster truck.  The majority of what we sell as 'monster trucks' today aren't, IMO, monster trucks.  The E-Maxx, T-Maxx, Stampede, Rustler, even the Summit, are not monster trucks.  They're truggies, stadium trucks or stunt trucks.  Intent is no longer enough to apply a label to something because our manufacturing is so good.

Well, that's my take on it, anyway :)

3 hours ago, MICHAELs TopForce17 said:

The lunch box is you know that thing you carry your lunch in:lol:

Unless you are referring to a certain Jamaican-British Olympic sprinter from the late 80s / early 90s, in which case it means something else ;) 

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I have to agree with the above comments - I think in the eyes of a 1980’s kid I would wholeheartedly say yes - they are monster trucks! But... I now feel that the 4x4 element is essential for a true monster truck... so as an adult - the clod and the bruiser qualify, but all of the 2WD trucks, as cool as they are, to me are more like ‘beach buggies’ with big wheels....

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I always thought of monster trucks in terms of RC to be a bit discreet when compared to the 1:1 scale vehicles they are supposed to emulate.  Oversized tires would be a must for sure in any case, so the Bruiser could  be considered the first one.. however I don't think most regarded it as such at the time it was released.  The price, for one thing, meant that people would be less likely to go bashing around trying to jump over things as one would according to the nature of a monster truck.  3-speed transmission and lack of suspension articulation for more rough play would be another deterrent I would assume...   

The Mauri Big Bear (released in 1984) is considered the first RC monster truck in contrast.  It was much cheaper than a Bruiser and much less capable in fact with a 480 motor.  Still however, many people bought them and bashed them around.   I wonder if that was enough of a positive result to convince Tamiya to release the Blackfoot.  To me, the Blackfoot was the first Tamiya monster truck.  After the Blackfoot and Monster Beetle were successful sellers, but limited in performance... many other companies started making monster truck conversion kits for the RC-10, Ultima and Losi Jrx, using Blackfoot or Monster Beetle wheels and tires.  

From there, the stadium truck/truggy niche branched out in a different direction but as far as monster trucks, the Clod Buster was the new standard.  A truck big enough to actually plow over other RC cars like the real thing!  I can see how some would view the Clod as the first true monster truck by definition, but then looking back at actual monster trucks like the original Bigfoot monster truck its clear that the Blackfoot was modeled after it.  It was cost-effective for Tamiya to use the ORV chassis and existing Ford Ranger body at the time and when Tamiya did design a purpose-built monster, the Clod Buster checked all the boxes.  

I consider all successors to the Clod Buster (Bullhead TXT-1, TXT-2) as monster trucks.  

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I agree with most of the sentiment above, but also bear in mind the Lunchbox and Midnight Pumpkin. While 2wd, wheelie or stunt trucks they are both replicas of real 1:1 monster trucks of the day ( Rolling Thunder and Frankenstein respectively). 

As I child in the late 80’s I raced. 4wd buggy at my local club and eventually my dad got me a Kyosho Hi Roller Corvette to have something to play with at home outside the track. Save “his” race buggy for race day ( even though he tuned , I drove ) 
Soon enough the Monster Vette was doing double duty backyard basher and getting run in our club’s MT class. The Vette was a 2wd independent suspension rig ,but it had the wide stance and tall tires of a scale American Monster Truck

At the time most of our track’s MT class was made of Tamiya “car crusher” series , kyosho’s like mine, and lots of Blackfoots .There was the occasional Clod but our track layout favored the higher top speeds of the 2wd trucks, so Clods were not as common in MT class 

When RC10 T and Losi JrxT conversion kits started to emerge it kind of killed the class. The seed of what would become stadium trucks was already planted.

Even as a youth I understood the drivetrain was not correct but the look and stance was correct on what I considered “true” monster trucks ( the Tamiya’s, my Kyosho , Marui Big Bear , ) 

To me there were tiers of what an RC MT should and could be 

1 The Clod - the undisputed “King “ but unattainable to a lot of kids back in the day. It had proper drive train , it could roll over ,or through almost anything.  Plenty of “serious” adult racers who were too A Main drivers in my club had clods to play with, mud bog , etc but they didn’t complete in the MT class.

2 The “right look and stance but wrong drive train “ club These had proper tall, wide chevron tires that stuck out of the fenders ( the pin spikes on the beetle not withstanding) . This includes most of the Tamiyas of the day and my Kyosho . A lot of people kept the pogo friction dampers on their rigs, they may have been 2wd but they did Juno and bounce around a lot like the full scale “Stage 1 and Stage 2 “ monster trucks of the day did in 1:1 scale . 
 

3 The buggy conversions. Best performers on the track but were already getting away from what a monster truck was. 
 
Flash forward a few years and there were very few Scale , solid axle MTS in the monster world . 
Traxxas would go on to make the Sledgehammer, the Orignal Rustler ( when it had a truck body before it evolved into a “trigger” , the stampede all of these 2wd Independent suspension, but still more for the garden/ backyard than the Track.  
 

The buggy,truggy/stadium truck and the Monster Truck had taken divergent evolutionary paths. 
flash forward a couple more years the 

The T Maxx/ EMaxx would come along and they would define what an RC MT was. One nitro one electric but they both had 4 wd, and big terrain pounding tires, even if they were independent suspension. The HPI Savages and such all fell into this vein. Today you have ARrma  plenty of other manufacturers making their version of this MT stance  truck bodied 4wd stunt truck formula  
You also had the Revo/ E Revo/ Arrma NERO type things which were / are totally different beasts.

Meanwhile people are still building / Racing modifying the Clod.

A few more years later and the scale appearing Solid axle MTs start coming back. 
except now they are shaft driven instead of motor on axle like the Clod.

I own an axial SMT10 and it is a fun truck, very scale in some ways, not very scale in others. I don’t participate in solid axle MT racing but I have watched of Trigger King and JConcepts videos. It seems Mod-Clods and Customized SMT10s are the 2 most dominant platforms in that scene today.  
I had a post when I started this rant but I’ve gone I long enough and my coffee is getting cold so I’ll wrap it up with this final thought :

If someone came up with reliable , easy and cheap way to mod a cW-01 axle to add steering my “ dream “ RC MT would be a custom built MOA based 12th scale truck using modified CW01 axles, HPI Wheely King chassis parts and possibly a Midnight Pumpkin body. 

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For me it's about the relative size of tyres to the car and the width with respect to the height. Lots of modern monster trucks look to wide for a given height for me. I like a bit of tire under the wheel arch, otherwise it just looks like a buggy with large tires and truck shell.

I think monster trucks should look a little ridiculous. The bruiser looks a little too much like a real truck that would be practical. The MP is pushing it, but it looks like a first shot at a Monster truck.

Don't really mind about drivetrain, axles etc it's about dimensions and looks. Essentially a good MT probably won't drive the best, but then that's not the point. It's car-crushing-hotdog-eat-bud-drinking-USA-USA action action action!

 

 

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40 minutes ago, Nikko85 said:

The MP is pushing it, but it looks like a first shot at a Monster truck.

Yeah, the MP and Lunchbox are both  based on real Monster Trucks of the day 

A4D2EFE7-7BD8-4842-B9DE-306324A6AE2A.jpeg

C42E478E-2AB1-4DBA-B012-15EA0CBD0C24.jpeg

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I guess it depends, I would consider the Lunchbox, Pumpkin, Blackfoot, Monster Beetle and the like from the 80’s Monster Trucks, as well as trucks like the Stampede, mainly since they were build as monster trucks with more ground clearance outside of just taller tires. I don’t consider the trucks that have the flat pan type chassis , monster type tires, and jacked up body shells as monster trucks though, they’re just stadium trucks to me.

 

That said, here’s my Stampede, has nearly the stock ground clearance, but sits a whole lot lower!
3F015E50_6016_46E3_8131_8CDD7B90BE6E_IMG

 

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On 2/26/2021 at 5:17 AM, Mad Ax said:

The original Wild Willy doesn't (the wheels are too small), the later WW2 had bigger wheels but IMO still lacks the stance of a true monster - it is a lifted 4x4

When I was a kid, I always questioned the original Wild Wlliy's monster status. Its tires were substantially larger than those of a buggy at the time, but in the end, I knew it wasn't marketed as such. 

The Wild Willy 2 on the other hand...

Monster truck photo album

The WW2's stance with its Lunch Box tires and shot wheelbase always reminded me of the old Hot Stuff and High Voltage monster Jeeps from BITD.

On 2/26/2021 at 7:10 AM, Killajb said:

The Mauri Big Bear (released in 1984) is considered the first RC monster truck in contrast.  It was much cheaper than a Bruiser and much less capable in fact with a 480 motor.  Still however, many people bought them and bashed them around.   I wonder if that was enough of a positive result to convince Tamiya to release the Blackfoot.  To me, the Blackfoot was the first Tamiya monster truck.  After the Blackfoot and Monster Beetle were successful sellers, but limited in performance... many other companies started making monster truck conversion kits for the RC-10, Ultima and Losi Jrx, using Blackfoot or Monster Beetle wheels and tires

I've always felt that was the case. Marui beat Tamiya to the punch. I think Tamiya saw the Big Bear's success and monster trucks as a new market niche and came up with the Blackfoot as a result. Was the Big Bear even called a monster truck by the Marui (the Japanese company, not whomever handled marketing and distribution), despite clearly being one?  Some of the inner Big Bear box statements included "1/12 scale dynamic action off road car" and "super big wheel car". Its quite possible Marui and Tamiya, being Japanese, simply lacked the proper English verbiage to describe their products at first (monster trucks being distinctly US/American at the time).

Big Bears were a novelty but like many RCs at the time, races formed around them. MIP made hop-ups for them, even a ball diff, IIRC. When the Blackfoot came around, it was game over for any track-action for the Big Bear and ORV monsters more or less took over until conversion trucks hit. I remember as hopeless as those Big Bears were against Blackfoots, so were Blackfoots outclassed by RC10 buggies riding around on monster truck tires. The King Cab was probably the first fully-kitted racing truck that could match the conversion trucks. In short order, the Losi JR-XT brought about stadium trucks and the later RC10T started the progression to the low slung bodies and wheels far outside the wheel wells that we see today. 

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