I cant believe you did not discuss Duratrax, It deserves a video on itself.

I remember Novak was the leader of ESCs. I got a Novak ESC, receiver, and servo for my 1989 JRX2. I remember when Novak released their high-frequency ESCs (I think one was the 410???), it was state of the art technology.

The thumbnail is great 😂. Another great video Roach.

Nice video, well done!

JQ and Mayako have won the 2022 European 1/8 4wd Nitro buggy championship with David Ronnelfalk driving the MX8

Honestly, the Durango thing is starting to happen with most brands, at least in the US. Most stores here only really carry Traxxas, ARRMA, Axial and sometimes a little bit of Associated and Losi now. You might see Schumacher and XRAY supported at trackside shops for 1/10th scale carpet tracks, I know Beachline carries them, and the same might be true for 1/8th scale tracks that have an on-site shop and brands like Mugen Seki and Tekno. But for the most part it's just those five at best, and more often it's just Traxxas, ARRMA and Axial. Honestly, I feel like "It's harder to run an RC company than you think" isn't the only lesson that needs to be learned from Durango's failure. Another one should be "if you only buy what's available locally, you'll never see anything else". As you said, LHSs only carry parts for the vehicles people run. And if all people run is Traxxas and ARRMA, then that's all the LHSs are going to carry. Following the "only run what's locally supported" rule religiously is what leads to that.

This guy makes these history videos so well. I'd love to see a full on rc history documentary from him. It would be a big project to take on, but I think this channel would make it great.

Great videos man🤙👏

Great video and awesome information

I have a HPI Baja 5SC, most don't know how popular the large scale interest is these days. If they would come out with an updated Baja they could make a killing if done right and also fully restarting the old Baja spare parts. Too bad though they would have to make it dirt cheap to compete with the clones coming from china. Those clones from china are hurting every RC company these days.

Great vid. Very informative. Yeah HPI, I only have their Baja (Flux), I like it a heap, but after restoring one for my son, I was kind of swearing under my breath at them and the previous owner of the buggy. But yeah they were pretty big for a while, I think there may have been a change of owners? Durango. I have a DEX210 and a DEX410 and I think they are some of the finest designed and engineered cars out there. But you had to pay for that, and I recollect hearing at the time that parts support just wasn't there. Hence quite a few Durango buggies being sold 2nd hand all of a sudden. I think they were released now with people a lot more used to ordering parts online they may have survived. Marui, I have three of their buggies/truck. The Big Bear was popular at the time they came out here (Aus), I remember seeing the Hunter once or twice and that's it. I have the Bear, Hunter and Samurai. It would be awesome if they got back into RC and re-released those models.

I used to own 2 hobby shops / racetracks. I really miss the business, hard to make $, but it was fun!

My HPI RS4 monster truck was a great vehicle. The first belt driven 4WD vehicle I ever had. Never had any mechanical problems. I later designed a bumper in I-DEAS CAD for it to be 3D printed as a mechanical engineering project for graduate school. Considering all the problems I have had with my Schumacher CAT XLS re-release, I can now say that my RS4 truck was actually a better vehicle than my world champion Schumacher CAT!

Love the video, your channel is slowly convincing me to purchase an RC car.

Gotta do one on innovation in the 1/8 off road scene and include tekno the new agama N1 lay down shocks car. Love the videos dude. Super chill vibes. And I like how the editing is done in a couple takes lol

My lhs still had an 1/8 team durango buggy on the shelf like a month ago... lol. You can still see a lot of the design cues from durango in arrmas current lineup

Oh rad another history video from papa roach.

Also thunder tiger worth a mention.

Nice video.!

Interesting. In the early 2000s I did make enquires are hobby stores about which brand of rc car was being use for road racing and I was told HPI. Never got around to doing any more research as I found other hobbies to take my interest.

My first two almost hobby grade rc's were Marui, the galaxy and Big Bear. The Big Bear was fun but the galaxy was a continual disappointment. The speed control died within a couple runs and then the rear gearing would last about 3 runs. I'm so glad to see them out of the RC market, things are so much better

I’m new to all of this and was gifted a blitz with castle system on 3s and fell hard in love with it. I have it apart now in hopes of racing it but I’m not to sure if they’re allowed or raced anymore but I haven’t checked I’m just stating off of current race posts and other popular alternatives. Great vid!

Ok, one thing about HPI, the discontinued list kinda exaggerates things with them. A lot of the models listed there are either refreshes of older models or RTRs of their touring cars with different bodies. Also, it wasn't that HPI lost popularity. What happened to them was MUCH worse, they were on the receiving end of a one-two punch that nearly killed the company. A major Taiwanese factory that made a LOT of the hardware and tooling for a LOT of different things, including multiple RC brands like Associated and, of course, HPI, had shut down, disrupting supply chains everywhere. Not even a few months afterwards, Traxxas filed a patent infringement suit against HPI for using an O-ring to seal the Blitz's radio box. This resulted in HPI losing both their manufacturing capabilities AND a really large amount of money. The company filed for bankruptcy and has only recently been able to recover.

Watching HPI fade way into obscurity hurt, what hurts even more is watching them try to claw their way back into relevancy, and fail. Shame, because I feel like they could easily pump some meaningful life into the brand with 5 or 6 solid releases that people loved. Make the RS4 is a 1/7th size with both a flux and nitro option along with the 1/10 scale option. Drop that stupid ass Vorza and bring back Hellfire in both Nitro & Flux. The modern bullet & jumpshot are aids, being back the Firestorm 2wd and MT2 4x4 Bring back the Crawler king. Then relaunch the 1/5th scale gas line. 5B, 5T, 5SC, 5R Re-release updated versions of all the bangers that made them what they are. At least they kept the savage alive.

liked and subbed bro great info and interesting to see the old footage of days gone by cheers man

Love the thumbnail lol

Seeing the URC footage is nostalgic.

Tenth technology should have got a mention. What amazing buggys they made. The predator now easily fetches close to 1000 pounds on ebay but they're very rarely available to buy hence the huuuuge price tag. I wish I'd brought one at the time they were released but sadly they passed me by and I missed the boat

I visited kyosho HQ in Japan and sort of interviewed them. Sadly they have been bought by other company famous for e commerce. Since 201i Kyosho moved from its large building to a small office infront of it... famous for Mini z now. Many designers quit. Making few products obsolete. Like v one series..

Novak was the best speed control back in the day.

Probably should mention HPI and a bunch of brands fell victim to HRP going out of business brands like Axial under them got picked up by Horizon and flourished others weren’t so lucky. That URC footage filmed at the old NORCAL hobbies location in Union City CA 😢 miss that place, permanent outdoor on road track a 1/8 &1/10 outdoor off-road track and originally a carpet indoor on road track that later became an indoor Clay off road track all open 7 days a week to practice with racing on weekends. The new hobby shop is fantastic under it’s current owner but the new San Jose location is just so small now and no permanent on road track just indoor carpet off road and they setup a parking lot track on weekends still a great place to race but miss the ability to practice whatever anytime I wanted during the week first world problems I guess 😂

I recently traded a atomic purple Gameboy color for a hpi sprint 2 sport. Its the yellow 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STI car and it came with a set of drift tires on it along with the original box and electronics. Its my first hobby grade touring/ drift car.

I can't say too much about durango having parts support problems (I live in LATAM so every rc brand has bad parts support here) but something that surprised me a lot when they were still around was the sheer quantity of models they offered: they had 1:10 buggies 2wd and 4wd, 1:10 Stadium truck, 1:10 sc truck 2wd and 4wd, 1:10 tc car, 1:8 buggy and truggy both nitro and eco. It seemed that they were biting more than they could chew, so when they got out of business I thought that was the main reason. With that being said, the DESC410 is probably the best handling car I've ever driven, it felt just like cheating to run that truck even against newer trucks.

i bought the last Novak Pit Wizard Plus from TTM. Shipping was brutal 50 Euros. it's vintage so i can't count on the leds working...why i needed it!

HPI had a good price before this global goblins. But now in NZ they are pricing themselves out.

A Year later and it looks like HPI might have a shot to fully come back, they are going to need to make a 2wd Drift car platform to help pay the bills for race chassis development. Kyosho moved the business model to only doing a couple race chassis and put all of their full efforts on their various drift platforms because the Scale market is much stronger than the racing market in RC right now. Success in RC depends on 2 very important things: 1 - you have to provide a product that is not only good, but easily supported, 2 - you have to watch the trends very carefully and balance risk and return (if you are ahead of the trends you risk developing something the rest of the market can deliver better, if you are too late you miss the boat, either way your development costs are wasted)

Would love for Kyosho to come back into racing. Loved their Ultima RB5.

Ofna/hobao/hong nor

I enjoy your Videos buddy, thought you were about to go in on kyosho. I was holding my breath for a minute. But your right about that with 1/10. I personally have never been into the one/10. Just 1/8 nitro mostly, some ebuggy but dont like it. Im rambling, but 1/10 super super hard racing class engineering prep and whatnot, I feel like it'll be hard pressed to design a new card at these days that would compete with what's out there now or be better. But that's possible I suppose, keep up the good work man.

Love the content, but I think that a brand that also fits in this category would be Tamiya. What are your thoughts on Tamiya? I have a TT02B and have more or less just given up on making it a competitive buggy. I want to make it work, but I am realistic on its capabilities.

Just thought about the dex410. Used to see people run it when I had my bmax 4. Speed passion, LRP ( still running their flow works), nosram..

I did not realize Durango was related to Serpent, but I guess it makes sense looking at Jorn Neumann’s cars through the years

Arrma for speed and racing, Tamiya for nostalgia and best looks! 🙂

AYK. Radiant,,the tornado,hurricane 1/8 cars. The kangaroo and dolphine I forget but it's on the tip of my tongue,,, the Ripper 4wds by royal industries

Mt first car was a hpi rs4 mt, it spent more time broken that being used for sure. Too expensive for kid me to keep fixing.

Here I am, the guy who's owned all these brands at some point 🥴 I'm jus waiting on the new 8th ebuggy from Agama to try out. Schumacher is my go-to 10th scale brand.

It's funny, every time you look at someone's box of destroyed nostalgia up for auction (for waaay too much $$$) on eBay, 4 outta five it's got at least one Novak electronic in it.

Team Durango: -Wins a world championship -Goes bankrupt Why couldn’t they follow in Team Associated’s footsteps?

Wow you put down Kyosho. They are huge right now. Even the legendary models are de done for the new brushless systems. Not to mention they crush the arma and traxxas brands.

I really thought Hot Bodies Racing would have came up. They are pretty much defunct at the ground level in club racing and their Team drivers are mainly young no-names that haven't lifted off yet. They have nothing in hobby shops that I have seen since Ty Tessmann left around 2016 and even then it was sparse. It sure doesn't help they are one of the most expensive manufacturers of a 1/10 2wd buggy kit being a whopping $140 more than the premium versions that TA and TLR sell.

Not saying they’re a big company but Team Mayako just won the 1/8th Euros last week

u forgot lrp, losi, hongnor, hobao and i quess teamcorally

Sad for Novak. I had a 410m1c, then a Cyclone and my charger was the DigiPeak+.

I would probably still be running Durango.

Durango is still exists as an arrma. Durango dex8 is arrma talion

Buds Racing Products (BRP)

Novak 🤦‍♂️what a dumb strategy Interesting vid, thanks

3:50 I'd love to be able to SEE what you're scrolling by, but SOMEONE decided to make the video 24fps. 🤮

Raido shack

Novak started with servos not ESCs. No electric offroad worlds in 2010. -U10

Novak kicked ASS.

The fact is Horizon Hobby ruined our hobby & made it far worse than ever.

HPI have no business selling RC, especially in 2022 with this half baked comeback.

I call CLICKBAIT.

HPI is the best even if Traxxas tried to destroy them Traxxas is pure crap