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The Backyard – Frankenstein’d Monsters!
Greetings all, and Happy Halloween! Welcome to a spooky edition of The Backyard! It’s the day of the year when witches, spooks and monsters take center stage — though, for R/C fans, we’ve been creating our own kinds of monsters all year long. And no, I don’t just mean the kind with giant tires and chrome roll bars (though those certainly [...]
- 10/31/2025
- 1:56 pm
- The Backyard
- By: Doug
The Backyard – Rally Fever
Greetings all, and Happy Friday! If you’ve been reading The Backyard for a while, you might remember my column — “I’m Shocked That R/C Rally Racing Isn’t More Popular.” Well, it looks like the hobby gods have answered, because Traxxas just dropped a new rally machine that’s about as good a reason as any to check-out the category — the Mini [...]
The Backyard – Vegas Goes Vintage
Greetings all and Happy Friday! Las Vegas isn’t just about neon lights and blackjack tables this week — it’s also home to one of the coolest RC events of the year. The Team Associated Vintage Championships are happening right now at The Orleans Hotel & Casino, bringing together racers, collectors, and die-hard fans to celebrate the machines that built the hobby. [...]
The Backyard – Reefs RC Enters the Vehicle Game
Greetings all and Happy Friday! The big Pro-Line By The Fire annual crawling event is happening this weekend in Apple Valley, CA, and as is tradition, it’s brought with it a wave of new product reveals from across the industry. One of the biggest announcements making waves on the rocks? The REEFS XP10 Plague Founder’s Edition. REEFS RC built its name on [...]
FMS 1:10 FCX10 Land Rover Range Rover Camel Trophy Edition R…
FMS is bringing the spirit of the Camel Trophy to 1/10 scale with their new FCX10 Range Rover — a release that promises equal parts nostalgia and trail prowess. How well does it deliver? From: FMS Direct Link: FMS 1:10 FCX10 Land Rover Camel Trophy Edition Range Rover Link to Companion YouTube Video Review: Click Here Review By: Doug Welker Pictures By: Doug Welker Specs- RTR or [...]
- 10/9/2025
- 4:02 pm
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Reviews - By: Doug
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The Backyard – What Happens in Vegas… Fills Your Hobby S…
Hey all, Happy Friday! As if the last couple weeks weren’t crazy enough with all the product announcements, this past week in Las Vegas was the annual National Retail Hobby Store Association show, better known as NRHSA. It’s always a unique one on the calendar because it’s not just about the manufacturers showing off their latest toys, it’s also about the [...]
The Backyard – When It Rains, It Crawls
Greetings all and Happy Friday! Hooooo boy, this past week was a wild one on the announcement front. Practically every major player in the R/C crawling world had something to unveil, so let’s hit each of them and then tie it all together. Traxxas surprised everyone with the TRX-4M Nissan Pathfinder, sporting a fantastic licensed body that nails the late-’80s/early-’90s vibe. It’s [...]
- 9/26/2025
- 1:19 pm
- The Backyard
- By: Doug
The Backyard – When MAP Becomes a Battleground
Hey everyone, welcome to The Backyard! ICYMI, last week Team Associated publicly called out Horizon Hobby for alleged “unauthorized price reductions” of their vehicles. These kinds of disputes usually stay behind closed doors, so it was eyebrow-raising to see Associated frustrated enough to air it publicly. And funny enough, a big hobby shop near me is having a major in-store sale right [...]
The Backyard – A Lot About A Lot
Greetings all. It’s Friday and you know what that means- time for The Backyard. I don’t really have a through line this week as there are a variety of topics I want to discuss. Let’s get to it. RIP to Hall-of-Fame Monster Truck / BIGFOOT 4×4 Driver Dan Runte. There has been a lot written and posted about Dan on various [...]
- 9/12/2025
- 6:12 pm
- The Backyard
- By: Doug
The Backyard – When Kits Take the Spotlight
Happy Friday all, welcome to The Backyard! The middle stretch of 2025 has looked a little different than usual in the RC world. Early in the year it was business as usual — a handful of flashy RTR bashers, some monster trucks, a crawler or two. The kind of stuff you’d expect to headline the news cycle. But somewhere around late Spring/early [...]
The Backyard – Golden Age Colors Never Fade
Happy Friday all and welcome to The Backyard! This week Team Associated announced another version of their RC10GT stadium truck – the 1/10 RC10GT Richard Saxton Edition Kit, and once again it’s wearing that classic look from RC’s golden age. It’s hard not to smile when you see those old-school stripes and sponsor splashes come alive on a brand-new kit. I mean [...]
The Backyard – End of Summer Trip with a Land Rover
Greetings all and Happy Friday! Welcome to The Backyard. One of the things I love about this hobby is how it tends to creep into everyday life. Vacations, weekends at the lake, camping trips — RC always seems to find its way into the packing list. Next week I’m heading down to Branson, Missouri, for a little time at a cabin [...]
The Backyard - I'm Shocked that R/C Rally Racing Isn't More …
Happy Friday all, and welcome to The Backyard! We didn’t have a ton of new news this week in the r/c-sphere, so I wanted to share a take that I’ve been sitting on since we did our review of the Rlaarlo 1/12 XTS-P12 Rally Car in early July and discuss r/c rally racing. I am seriously shocked that in 2025, organized R/C [...]
The Backyard – One Week, Three Ways to Have Fun in RC
From high-end crawling to big-air bashing to small-scale monster trucking, the RC world is starting to hum again with new releases as we head into Fall! This is great to see, because after the blitz of new releases in Winter/Spring, it was a VERY dry Summer. Let’s take a look at some of the releases from the last week! The Vanquish [...]
- 8/8/2025
- 2:03 pm
- The Backyard
- By: Doug
The Backyard – Everything’s Coming Up Camel Yellow
If you’ve been paying attention, you might’ve noticed something funny happening at Team Associated HQ lately — a sort of… golden renaissance. But not the kind that involves a classic gold-pan buggy tearing around a track. No, this one’s painted on. I’m talking, of course, about Camel Yellow. The color. The vibe. The legacy. Over the past few weeks, Associated has been [...]
