THE Cub Report- 07.04.2011- Let Those Fireworks Rip!

Greetings from the overly posh BigSquid offices, and here’s to hoping you and yours are thoroughly enjoying Americas independence day, I know we certainly are. BBQ + fireworks + family + rc cars = uber July 4th weekend!

Our wacky BSRC bash crew spent the day in Peoria Illinois on Saturday bashing and thrashing two of Thunder Tigers new vehicles- their SparrowHawk 10th scale 4wd stadium truck and their new 12th scale short course truck. Saturday was my first time wheeling either truck, but after pulling trigger on both of them I was impressed. Both trucks had impressive power, drove well, and took ridiculous abuse with minimal breakage. Yes, I am starting to sound like a Thunder Tiger fanboy, but when their trucks deliver a lot more than we expect, I am gonna give them props.

So… during the course of testing the Thunder Tiger 12th scale short course truck we hucked it off the roof of the drivers stand at the Rivercity Raceways track in Peoria. That particular drivers stand is fairly tall, with its roof being roughly as high as a two story building. We had a hard time even getting the truck up on the roof because of the way the drivers stand was situated, but once placed, it had to come down one way or the other, and where we come there is only one option- to jump it off. To our BSRC bash crew, that was a relatively “normal” part of testing, but for the local racer types watching they just couldn’t figure out why we’d do such a thing, it just did not compute to them why we were intentionally trying to destroy a brand new truck.

We see it all the time while testing, the looks on some peoples faces are priceless. They call us idiots, they look at us like we are the anti-Christ, they shrug their shoulders, they eventually look the other way in disgust. To a racer who does everything possible Not to break their truck (and can’t grasp they are actually playing with toy cars), they just can’t seem to understand.

So… exactly why do we huck trucks off a two story drivers stand? Some of the posers out there have told us we do it because we don’t pay for the trucks and don’t care if they end up in a pile of rubble (we are actually more brutal on our personal cars that we do pay for). Others say we are just feeding our masochistic tendencies (which I may not argue with… LOL). But here’s the scoop- when a basher hucks his truck off a two story building they are attempting to break it, but they are hoping it won’t. Bashers spend a lot of time and money building their trucks to be rock solid, to live through the ultimate of abuse, not to break while doing so. Bashers simply do not find it acceptable that a truck breaks after barely tapping a pipe like some racer types might. When you’ve built an uber bash-mobile, you’ve got to put them through some pretty tough testing to make sure they are up to par, including hucking them off 2 story buildings.

We know our readers are bashers, guys that demand their trucks to be tougher than nails, so when we test box stock trucks we put them through extreme testing to give our readers a baseline on how tough the truck is out of the box. If a basher were to buy one of the new Helion Animus trucks he’d know after reading our review that he’d have to do absolutely no upgrades for durability. The Animus can go directly from the box to the worst of abuse with no mods, it’s just that tough, and to a basher that turns the Animus from just some average truck into a must buy.

We’ve all owned that “one” truck, a truck that seemingly broke with the smallest tap from another truck. Being core bashers nothing makes us madder than a truck we spend more time wrenching on than driving. We are in this hobby to have fun driving with our buddies, not sitting behind a card table wearing down our Thorp hex wrenches. With that in mind, when you read a review of ours where we plow full speed into a concrete curb we are doing so with the intention of weeding out weaker product. If we are doing our job properly you guys should be able to depend on our reviews. If we say a truck is bulletproof, you shouldn’t have to do much, if any, wrenching on it, even during extreme use.

You can’t miss the “Basher Approved” logo we give to certain products. Many readers might think that the “Basher Approved” award is just some bogus marketing ploy, but it is not. For a product to get our “Basher Approved” award it has to be “above and beyond” tough. The entire BSRC crew literally sits around a table and debates whether a product has proven itself worthy. If even one “Basher Approved” product isn’t worthy, we lose all credibility with our readers, and without that, there is no reason for BSRC to even exist.

Where a racer takes pride in being the fastest on a track, bashers take pride in having the toughest truck. While some of our testing might seem downright sick to certain people, it’s actually a necessity, and it’s not as severe as what our readers subject their trucks to.

Support our hobby, your local hobby shops, tracks and bash spots!

YOUR Cub Reporter