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THIS IS THE THIRD TIME I’ve talked about mini trail trucks in this spot—the first time was when I reviewed the 1/18-scale RC4WD Gelande II in the July 2016 issue, and then I got all fired up about the mini machines again in the October 2016 issue when Pro-line rolled out the 1/25-scale Ambush (hopefully Pro-line will bring it back—fun truck). Now we’re back at it with a shootout in this issue between the ECX Barrage 1/24 and the revised RC4WD Gelande II, and once again I’m thinking about mini scalers.
I wasn’t big on the first wave of minis when the Losi Mini-t, Team Associated Rc18-series, and their various clones started swarming hobby stores in the early 2000s. Nothing against those models, I just thought 1/10 scale was the perfect size for Rc—for my taste, at least. Despite their small size, the first wave of go-fast minis didn’t significantly shrink the amount of space required to have fun. Whether a model is 1/18 scale or 1/10 scale, if it’s going 20mph you’re going to need a similar amount of space to wring it out, regardless of its dimensions. And it’s not like obstacles got any smaller; the lip in the sidewalk that a 1/10 stadium truck easily swallowed might send a 1/18 truck into a cartwheeling wreck. But when it comes to mini trail trucks, you really do need less space, and the relative increase in obstacle size is a plus. Most of us only have two or three obstacles in the yard that might challenge a 1/10 trail truck, but when you shrink the machines down to 9 inches long or so, you can find plenty of interesting terrain just by navigating the shrubs (not to mention the fun you can have building courses indoors with whatever’s lying around the house). Or go explore the entire neighborhood; depending on battery capacity, you can easily walk a mile or more in your quest for micro adventure. And of course, a micro price doesn’t hurt either. Most 1/10 RTR trail trucks ping the cash register at $350 to $450, while a mini rig will scrape significantly less out of your wallet at $100 to $200. So yeah, I’m liking the mini trail truck scene and hoping for more models and choices. Pro-line, get that Ambush assembly line running again. Traxxas, a mini TRX-4 would be red-hot. Team Associated, you’re not in the trail category at all—jump in with a mini! Anybody else? Let’s see what you can do.