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 on a tear, dropping new vehicles — and not just race buggies — that all seem to be dipped in the same sun-faded glory of the original RC10’s box art. We’ve now got a touring car, a desert racer/short course truck, a six-wheeled semi truck, and even a trail truck, all wearing livery that screams 1984.

It’s kind of wild.

The RC10DR desert rig looks ready for Dakar cosplay. The RC10 American Custom Semitruck 6×6 (because why not?) is peak toyetic weirdness, and I say that with affection. There’s the small scale RC28 Touring Car. And then there’s the RC10 Trail Truck, which might be the furthest departure from the RC10’s roots, yet still rolls out of the box wearing the badge, the white plastic, and the gold.

So what’s going on here?

From a marketing standpoint, it’s kind of brilliant. The RC10 name is still one of the most iconic in RC. And nostalgia sells — it’s what got a lot of us back into the hobby in the first place. So Team Associated has done the smart thing: they’re not just selling you new vehicles. They’re selling you a feeling. A connection. A ghost of a memory that maybe never even existed the way you remember it.

But let’s also be real: none of these rigs are actually RC10s. Slapping that name on a 6×6 truck doesn’t change that. And depending on how seriously you take your vintage RC icons, this either feels like fun branding… or brand dilution.

Personally? I’m not mad about it. It’s kind of fun seeing how far they can stretch the gold. And if it gets more people curious about the heritage of the RC10 — or gets a younger crowd asking, “Why does everything cool suddenly come in this weird yellow?” — then maybe it’s doing its job.

I’d also argue that the vintage scheme looks amazing, even if you remove the nostalgia in regards to what it actually is. Old school liveries of any kind tend to rule, after all!

But I do hope this experiment isn’t the end goal. If we’re going to play in nostalgia territory, let’s really do something special. Imagine Team Associated adapting that classic Camel Yellow RC10 look — the white wheels, gold tub vibe, old-school stripes — onto a modern, bleeding-edge race buggy. Full race trim. Cab-back aero. Big wing. Carbon and aluminum. The kind of thing that could hold its own on a national track but still turn heads because it looks like it time-warped out of 1986. That’s the kind of tribute that honors the past without being stuck in it.

Until then? Enjoy the Camel Yellow era. It might be strange, it might be brilliant, and it might be the closest some folks ever get to owning a piece of RC royalty — even if it’s got six wheels and a ladder rack.

Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!