It seems to me like much of the discussion here is about competitions and the attendance, rules, growth or decline of them. What about the scalers and crawlers who are just in it for fun and will never enter any form of organized event? Say tomorrow there were no more crawling comps, they're just gone for good, would the crawling segment just die off? Would you just shelf your rig and be done? No, because it's not just about competing, it boils down to having fun, nothing more.
I race every chance I get, but if the classes I run disappeared or all the tracks were gone, I wouldn't just toss my sc trucks. I run in a box stock slash spec class because it's pure, cheap, and really brings the result down to the driver. I also run in 2 open classes where i can dump obscene amounts of cash to beat the other guy, but at the end of the day I still have to be a better driver. I have currently 6 rc's not one of which is a crawler...yet. I plan on buying one soon, and will maybe never enter a comp, I just want a truck that won't spin it's tires when trying to conquer the terrain in my "yard" I love my sc trucks and racing them, I also love my 4x4 pede, the thing is a blast. When I first got into the hobby 20 years ago nobody knew the name traxxas, it was all tamiya, kyosho, ae, losi.
Love traxxas or hate them, without big companies and the mags that cater to their money, there would be no rc, no growth, no exposure. They bring new blood and competitors to the hobby and that is always a good thing. The new blood gets excited about the fun they are having and decides to do a google search on crawling because they saw it in the 2 pages of rcca. Hello, first result is this site right here. Truthfully that scenario is flawed because my 12 year old isn't going to the bookstore in the first place, he's going online first and maybe strolls upon rcca. Of course rcca is one big ad disguised as journalism, their "reviews" are nothing more than paid ads, literally. Just like every other magazine known to man. Magazines aren't going to bite the hand that feeds, whether it's right or wrong, because it's the only reason they stay afloat. I was lucky enough last year to have my 1:1 mazdaspeed 6 modded for free by a car magazine for their power pages column. Who do you think supplied the free parts? The advertisers in the mag. What do you think happened when a certain big name exhaust company who pays big money to advertise gave me an exhaust that failed to up my horsepower? The numbers were run again to have a more advertiser friendly result. It's just the way things are, for better or worse.
The internet is wonderful and awful all at once, brings a wealth of info to our hands anywhere, but kills the printed media. It allows us to buy things at great prices from all over the world while killing local business. The printed word is dying, the local store is dying, I can go on and on, the music, movie, tv industries are all dying because of the net. They will never die, they'll just change to meet the new way of the online world. I ramble because I care, and forget if I even had a point. :???: Oh yeah, my point is, crawling will never die, just like rock and roll. Because as long as there are people interested and involved in something, there will always be innovation, and arguments, and new people involved by word of mouth, or advertising, or google searches.
