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The Backyard – Planning a Reactor Build
Greetings all and Happy Friday! With the announcement and release of the JConcepts Reactor, I’ve found myself going back and forth… and then back again… on what exactly I want to do with mine. When I first learned about the Reactor, I had a pretty straightforward plan. I was going to build it as a standard Retro monster truck racer—Clod Buster-sized, 10.75” [...]
The Backyard – The Truck(s) That Got Away
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! You know, as I sit here trying to figure out what JConcepts Reactor I want to build (short or long wheelbase?)—and then going down the rabbit hole of what body, what tires, what direction I want to take it (more on that in a future write-up once I actually decide)—it got me thinking about [...]
The Backyard – Choosing Your First Scale Crawler Kit
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! I spent most of this week traveling, which meant a little more downtime than usual—and as is often the case, that turned into a bit of “talking R/C” with friends of mine online. In doing so, a longtime racer friend of mine FINALLY said he wanted to buy a scale crawler. This is someone that [...]
The Backyard – Retro You Can Actually Race
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! There’s been a steady stream of retro releases in the r/c world over the last few years, and for good reason. Nostalgia sells, and a lot of us enjoy revisiting the platforms we grew up with—whether that’s through re-releases, throwback liveries, or modern takes on classic designs. And overall, I think that’s a great thing [...]
The Backyard – Why Some R/C Platforms Just Won’t Die
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! Every so often in this hobby, someone will pop into a comment section or forum thread and ask a question that seems perfectly reasonable on the surface: “Why are they still making that?” It usually comes up when talking about platforms like the Tamiya Clod Buster, the Lunch Box, the Traxxas Stampede, or a handful of [...]
The Backyard – Buy Me A Boat
Hello all and Happy Friday! Welcome to The Backyard! Here’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately: why is it that I just can’t seem to get into R/C boats? Because the weird thing is, I actually like boats. Quite a bit, really. Just maybe not in the way the R/C boat market typically leans. For starters, I’ve always had a soft spot [...]
The Backyard: Long Live the Forums
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! Earlier this week, a little corner of the r/c internet went dark — and for a brief moment, many of us thought it was gone for good. RCCrawler.com’s forums went offline, and initial word from the site admins suggested that was all she wrote. Years of posts, build threads, tech advice, and hobby history… potentially [...]
The Backyard: Conservative Motors, Occasional Chaos
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! I’ve come to accept something about myself over the years — when it comes to power systems, I’m generally a pretty conservative guy. I don’t automatically go for the biggest/highest KV motor that my vehicle can safely handle. I’m not usually chasing the highest cell count an ESC can tolerate. Most of my trucks are [...]
The Backyard: Monster Trucks Finally Got Monster Truck Tires
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! The recently updated Traxxas Stampede is actually what got me thinking about this week’s topic. Traxxas quietly refreshed the truck with proper chevron monster truck tires — and not just any chevrons, but ones that actually look like scaled-down versions of full-size monster truck rubber. Tall sidewalls. Aggressive V-pattern tread. Proper proportions. It finally [...]
The Backyard: JConcepts Reactor Monster Truck — Deep Dive
Happy Friday and welcome to The Backyard! Settle in, all ye monster truck faithful, because this week I want to spend some time talking about one of the most interesting announcements we’ve seen in a while — the newly revealed JConcepts Reactor Retro Stage II Monster Truck. After years of releasing aftermarket accessories for the solid-axle r/c monster truck world, the folks [...]
- 2/6/2026
- 7:51 pm
- JConcepts
The Backyard - By: Doug
The Backyard – A Truck Guy’s Take on Nuremberg 2026
Greetings all, and Happy Friday! Welcome to The Backyard. The Nuremberg International Toy Fair is officially in the books, and as always, it brought a flood of new R/C announcements with it. There were plenty of on-road cars, off-road racers, and competition-focused machines unveiled over the past week — and while all of that is cool, longtime readers know I’m a [...]
- 1/30/2026
- 3:23 pm
- The Backyard
- By: Doug
Rumor: Hot Wheels May Release a Tyco Turbo Bandit–Inspired…
Long-time R/C fans may remember the glorious era of toy-grade R/Cs during the late ’80s and ’90s. Few vehicles from that time period were as iconic as the Tyco Turbo Bandit off-road truck. Fast and flashy, the Turbo Bandit carved out a permanent place in R/C history — and who could ever forget that legendary Turbo Mode? Well, it looks like [...]
- 1/23/2026
- 3:27 pm
- Rumor Mill
- By: Doug
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The Backyard – When Kyosho Finally Goes Crawling
Greetings all, and Happy Friday! As winter weather is about to wallop a good portion of the U.S., I find myself hunkered down in the workshop, coffee in hand, doing what many of us do this time of year: scouring the internet for release news ahead of the Nuremberg International Toy Fair, which opens next week. One of the first big pieces [...]
The Backyard – What Might Tamiya Unveil in Nuremberg?
Happy Friday all, and welcome to The Backyard! This week I’m in a bit of a ponderous mood, what with the Nuremberg International Toy Fair set to kick off in juuust over a week — January 27th through the 31st in Nuremberg, Germany. While a wide range of R/C companies will be announcing products and showing off new wares at the massive [...]
- 1/19/2026
- 12:10 pm
- Tamiya
The Backyard - By: Doug
The Backyard – It’s All in the Rubber
Well, we’re officially here — the first real Friday of the new year. Last week doesn’t count; the working world was still half-awake and surviving on leftover Ferreror Rochers. But now? We’ve had our first proper Thursday release, and it’s a good one. Axial just dropped the 1/30 Axial SCX30 Chevrolet K10, and wow — if you’re even remotely into old [...]
- 1/9/2026
- 4:33 pm
- Axial
The Backyard - By: Doug
