THE Cub Report- 04.11.2011, Version- On The Cover of Rolling Stone

Hola BigSquid readers, and welcome to yet another funtabulous edition of THE Cub Report.

It seems we’ve picked up a lot of new readers around this place lately, so here’s a brief rundown on what’s kicking at BSRC during a typical week. We post news as much as we can all week long (including Sundays). Monday sports “THE Cub Report”, Tuesday features our product review of the week, Thursday has “ASK Cub Reporter”, and Saturday features Jeff’s uber-dope “Around The Web” column.

The St Louis round of AMA/Monster Energy Supercross went off on Saturday night with BigSquid all over the house. With special thanks to our friends in the moto industry, we had a most outstanding time. There is no doubt that moto and rc are a great mix, both on the consumer and industry side.

While walking the stadium during a Supercross event it’s easy to see perhaps the best virtue of of the sport- it’s truly family oriented. You see lots of men and woman in the stadium, but more importantly, you see a TON of kids. If you were to hit a local motocross race, you’d see the same thing- plenty of kids and women, and many of them are racing not just hang’n out. That’s one of the biggest problems I have with rc racing- kids and woman are treated like s#*t when they attempting to race. And lets be honest here, spectating a local rc race is more boring than watching carpet grow. It’s really a shame that too many racers take the hobby wayyyyy more seriously than what it really is- racing toy cars.

Anywhos… back to the Supercross. For those of you that have not attended an event this year, you’ve been missing some incredible racing, and more importantly for rc fans, you’ve been missing something extraordinary- what Traxxas has been doing for our hobby. Most Supercross races put between 30 to 60 thousand people in the bleachers and Traxxas gets a lot of face time for rc during the events. And Traxxas isn’t just some minor sponsor, they get a lot of play, from demo’ing on the actual Supercross track, to banners, to numerous mentions during the event, to all the achtung they get while giving away a Traxxas edition KX450F at each race. While Monster Energy may be the title sponsor of AMA Supercross, Traxxas definitely gets their moneys worth at each event, you basically can’t go anywhere at a Supercross without seeing or hearing something about them. I’m still in awe of sitting at a Supercross event and hearing about hobby grade rc over the loudspeaker, or watching a Supercross race on CBS Sports and seeing a Traxxas commercial. My oh my has our hobby come a longggg ways…..

So during the Supercross qualifiers held Saturday afternoon before the night program, I got a text message from one of my homies in the rc industry. He went on and on about how stoked his company was to have locked up the cover shot on one of the rc mags with one of their new trucks. Now… back in the day, hell ya a cover shot was a huge deal, but now days a lot of people (even big cheese marketing guys) don’t realize it’s a different story.

So why would a cover shot not a big deal? A couple years ago I complained in a Cub Report how I could not lay hands on a current issue of an rc mag to save my own life. Bob Hastings (who was working for Driver at the time) emailed BSRC and asked for my address so he could personally look up a retailer that carried Driver for me. We shot Bob my address, but we never heard back him. Maybe he forgot to reply, or maybe he simply didn’t care, but I tend to believe the reason he didn’t reply was this- there simply wasn’t a retailer close to me that actually sold the mag.

We like to act like Myth Busters here at BSRC- the science might say this, or logic may say that, or source “A” might say this, but the only thing we truly believe is what we see first hand. One of the questions I like to ask while talking to the guys at the track is “Has anyone actually laid eyes on an rc mag lately? And out of every single person you know in our hobby, have any of them actually held a new mag in their hands lately?”. It’s very rare when someone pipes up and answers yes. But when I go around and ask “Have any of you been on Bigsquid, Redrc, or Neobuggy in the last 24 hours?” nearly everyone says yes. Heck most of’em say they hit one or all of those sites ten times every day, and these are just random guys at different tracks.

To get back to my buddy and the mag cover shot, this is what I text him back, “What good is a mag cover if nobody sees it?”. I want to see my buddy do well, I want to see his company make money, I want to see their new truck become a huge success, but if he honestly thinks an “exclusive cover shot” is going to get them a lot of exposure, then he’s either delusional or stuck in 1994. Being on the front page of BigSquid for 24 hours would give his product more exposure than a mag cover now days.

Obviously if you are reading this then you check in on BigSquid from at least time to time. So here’s my challenge to you- ask your rc buddies when was the last time they actually laid hands on a new rc mag, then ask them when was the last time they read an rc news site on the web. I hope this tiny bit of first hand research will help drive my point home.

Ok, I’m done ranting for this week. 🙂

That’s it for this week, support your LHS, local tracks and bash spots!

YOUR Cub Reporter