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 Summer, the script flipped. For the first time in a long while, the big releases haven’t been RTRs… they’ve been racing kits.

Team Associated has been rolling out various racing kits- vintage, new, and even gas. Schumacher has been at it. Kyosho’s kept the re-re train rolling, and Tekno updated their buggy platforms. Yokoma has updated race kits. One after another, manufacturers have been putting serious race machines in the spotlight.

That’s not the norm these days. In an RTR-dominated hobby, kit releases usually play second fiddle to the big-volume bashers that move units by the truckload. But there’s probably a reason we’re seeing more kits right now: production. RTRs are huge batch runs, and that makes them a lot more vulnerable to tariffs, shipping costs, and supply-chain headaches. Kits, being lower volume, are a little easier to maneuver into the pipeline.

Whatever the reason, it’s been refreshing to see kits back in the headlines. They’re not about instant gratification. They’re about the other side of the hobby — sitting down at the bench, building, wrenching, and then taking something to the track that you know inside and out.

Is this just a blip, or the start of a real swing back toward kit culture? I’d say it’s more the former most likely, due to the aforementioned economic woes that are probably interfering with large batch RTR releases. But if 2025 keeps up this rhythm, it might go down as the year that kits quietly clawed back some spotlight.

As we head towards Fall and the holiday season, I’d guess we are going to see some high impact RTR’s announced soon, but if nothing else, the past mid-year shows that race kits are still viable and are still very much a thing in the hobby! You love to see it!

Alright, that’s it for me this week! Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!