THE Cub Report – Live By Social Media, Die By Social Media

Here we are people, yet another beautiful Monday in the world of rc. I hope many of you got the chance to go outside and get your rc fix over the weekend. If not, here’s to better luck this coming weekend. Shall we jump on in???

Oh yes, we are officially in full blown holiday season announcement mode here at BigSquidRC. Some of the big releases for this fall have been announced and will be shipping soon, while others are still in the teaser phase. Trucks like the Axial UMG10 6×6 and Traxxas TRX-6 Mercedes should be hitting hobby shops soon, and both are expected to make big splashes.

However, perhaps the biggest releases of the holiday season lay in wait a bit longer. Axial is teasing their upcoming Capra portal axled rig (which gets a full announcement this Thurs), while RC4WD is teasing what I hear is a Very Sweet C2X scale machine. Other companies like Cross, Carisma, MST, and Gmade have also dropped (or are have on the way) new scale rigs. So yes indeed, the 2019 holiday season is going to be one very much based on selling scale realism.

Btw, there was one teaser that I think many people dismissed, but they won’t for much longer. Kraken RC has been a seriously hardcore large scale company up to this point, offering some of the trickest 1/5th scalers I’ve ever seen. Well, the Kraken crew posted a teaser a couple weeks ago that isn’t what you would expect from them, and it is a rig that is going to seriously rattle some cages in the rc biz. Tomorrow is the official announcement date, and yes, you Will want to see it.

Talking about sleepers in the holiday season shuffle, I can not forget to mention the new Ripsaw Tank from the guys at Pic Studio. Our post about the Ripsaw has been at the top of our “popular” list since it went up. Heck, even I want one. Several years ago I really wanted a vehicle with tracks that I could make the triple with at my local track. The result of that was our Axial Exo Terror Buggy (has it really been 6 years? Dang!), but while it could make a triple, it just didn’t turn worth a darn. The Ripsaw is a whole lot different than the Exo Terror Buggy and was definitely not made for an rc car track, but it looks super scale and should be a gnarly raging beast when driven off-road.

On a different note…

After talking to numerous people in the rc biz over the summer, it sounds like sales numbers have been quite low. Back in the old days industry peeps would often times deny low numbers, or say “vague” things to mask low sales. It seems we are past all that right now, with many people saying something to the effect of “Hey, things are S L O W, any ideas?”. Or something like “Ya, if you can do Anything to help, feel free!”.

Now, the product offerings coming up this fall from the rc manufacturers are truly top notch. Look at some of the X-Mas releases from ten years ago. None of them would have the incredible looks that we see from a “Joe Blow” scale release now days, let along today’s high-ender releases. The quality of products certainly isn’t the issue with rc, far from it. So what is “the issue”? That’s what Everyone is asking, so here is my take. I put the blame squarely on social media. How can that be? Everyone is on it, but worse yet, everyone is on it, ALL the time. If someone is busy hanging out on a social media website all the time, they aren’t buying/using/destroying rc cars. They aren’t outside jogging, or biking, or driving down to the mall to shop. Furthermore, when they are on a social media website, they are exposed to marketing from everyone from giant manufacturers of soap, to gaming, to cheap retail items from Asia, etc (instead of spending that 5 hundy on an rc, they spend it on a Rekluse clutch for their dirt bike, or a new Giant 27.5 mountain bike, or a new tablet for the wifey, etc). They might see some rc advertising, but then again, they might not. I certainly have no answers on a fix, but that is my take on why not just rc, but a whole bunch of awesome industries, are getting their butts kicked right now…

So there ya have it ya bunch of raving lunatics, you have made it through another illustrious edition of THE Cub Report. Until next week, support your local bash spots and hobby shops whenever ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter