Monster Truck Madness – Freshening Up Rotten Apple

You know, I’ve been running the Rotten Apple name on my r/c monster trucks for a long time now.

Back in 2016 when the Axial SMT10 came out, I wanted to ditch the Grave Digger RTR body because I much preferred coming up with my own identities. Given the truck had a neon green chassis, I tried to figure out something that would work for it. I didn’t want to use black as a secondary color, so I went with gunmetal grey. When it was time for a name, well, the colors somehow reminded me of one of my favorite Alice in Chains songs – Rotten Apple.

I never thought I’d keep running the name on my r/c’s and DEFINITELY didn’t expect to ever have a fleet of trucks sporting the identity, but here we are. It’s now something I really dig.

I figured it was time to crank it up a notch though, so I had my buddy Mike Arndt of Mike Arndt Designs have a go at creating a logo for me. Those of you into full scale monster trucks have probably seen a design or two of his ripping up a stadium, as he’s become a well known designer in the industry.

I sent him the idea I had in my head- I wanted a skull/apple design that utilized bright green with some red, and that also had four monster truck tires on it- a nod to the classic BIGFOOT cartoon truck. After a quick back and forth, he absolutely crushed it. Thanks Mike!

This is EXACTLY what I was wanting. The new Rotten Apple design is going to be done up on my TLR Tuned Losi LMT, which will be sporting a JConcepts 1997 Ford F-150 MT body. I’m not sure of the exact paint style I’ll go with yet, but I’ll try and make it something that has a 90’s vibe. I’ll then slowly start updating the fleet with new lids using the new graphics.

When I do the paint, I’ll do a writeup of it to show off the makeshift paint booth that I built and to share some airbrushing tips that I’ve learned in recent months.  Thanks to said tips, I’ve gone from dreading airbrushing to enjoying it!

Until then, keep it on all 4’s!