The Backyard – Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
Greetings all and Happy Friday! Welcome to The Backyard!
We started off 2025 with a freakin’ insane amount of releases. Nearly every week we had a big r/c kit announcement!
Since early April though, it’s been a bit of a ghost town. Part of this is no doubt because a lot of stuff had just been announced by a lot of companies, and it HAD to cool down a bit. Another part of it has to do with the tariff stuff, though. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this affects the release landscape of the hobby as we go through the rest of the year.
I’ve talked to several employees at reputable hobby shops to get their take on things…and those were, um, not fun discussions. Basically, there is a ton of uncertainty about how things will play out. However, the shop staff I talked to both have been told the same things by their suppliers.
They see a relatively quiet period for the hobby through the Summer as the tariff stuff and pricing around it is figured out. As such, expect fewer new releases and fewer restocks. Then, expect a bunch of stuff to hit during the Fall season- some of which was already planned, some of which had to move from Spring/Summer to that window.
If you are a racer or basher that likes to break parts, if you are able, I’d probably want to stock up on certain components for the immediate future. Don’t panic buy or anything like that….but just know you may not be able to get certain things for a moment as restocks are put on pause. This isn’t a Covid-level disruption in supply chain or something like that, more of a kind of breather for a moment to figure everything out.
Then, later in 2025 things will probably be more or less back to normal, albeit with (dreaded) price increases. So I guess the point of this is to say that everything’s gonna be alright…..just more expensive.
So yeah, tough times for the hobby at the moment, but it will get through ’em. It always does.
Stay safe out there and support your local hobby shop!
Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!
