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 of R/C news to break ahead of the show has already landed — the 1/10 KC10 Toyota Land Cruiser 60 Readyset from Kyosho.

As of right now, we only have a single promo image to go off of. There’s no body-off shot or detailed spec breakdown available at the time of this writing, as the truck will be shown off properly at the show itself. Still, even with limited information, there are already a few interesting discussion points worth digging into.

For starters, it’s kind of wild when you stop and think about the fact that Kyosho has never released a true, modern 1/10-scale crawler. Shockingly… this is their first real swing at it. For a brand with such deep roots and such a long history in the hobby, that alone makes this release noteworthy.

And honestly, the fact that it’s Kyosho immediately has my attention. Japanese manufacturers tend to approach things just a bit differently than their American counterparts, especially when it comes to scale accuracy, proportions, and overall presentation. I’m genuinely curious to see what they bring to the table here — particularly in how they interpret “scale” through a Japanese lens.

This announcement also got me thinking about the other heavyweight Japanese R/C manufacturer — Tamiya — and how they might tackle a modern 1/10-scale crawler if they chose to go all-in on the genre.

Sure, Tamiya has had (and still has) vehicles in their lineup that sort of live adjacent to the crawler world: the Bruiser, High-Lift, CR-01, and CC-02 chassis all come to mind. But if we’re being honest, none of those platforms are what I’d consider a modern 1/10-scale rock crawler in today’s sense of the term. They’re more like Tamiya’s unique interpretations of trail trucks and scale rigs — charming, capable, and sometimes quirky, but not directly comparable to what dominates the crawler market now.

That’s not a knock — in fact, it’s part of what makes Tamiya Tamiya. Still, I can’t help but wonder what a ground-up, modern crawler designed by them would look like. What would they prioritize? Scale realism? Mechanical ingenuity? Some delightfully odd engineering solution we didn’t know we wanted?

As for Kyosho, I can’t wait to see this Land Cruiser in the flesh. My personal ownership experience with the brand is limited to the Blizzard and the classic USA-1 platforms, but I’ve long admired Kyosho from afar. They’ve always felt just a little different — and I mean that in the best possible way.

The Japanese companies tend to march to the beat of their own drum, and I’ve found that I often love the quirks and personality that come along with those alternate takes. If that mindset carries over into Kyosho’s first true crawler, we could be in for something really interesting.

We’ll find out soon enough.

Until next time, folks — keep it on all fours.