around here, they are becoming less and less mainstream. there are a ton of hobby shops in long island, more than most places in america probably. there's at least 6 in my immediate area, that's one of the reasons why i got into the hobby in the first place, because there was so much support for it. now, out of the 6 out here, there are 2 that at some point were redcat dealers. i talked to them both about it, and they both had different reasons for not continuing the relationship. the first one said that they just couldn't, because they would have to hire a separate employee, just for redcat. the reason for that was that their schematics were wrong, their part numbers were wrong, and they had no idea what parts had what part numbers, so they would have to have someone come in and literally just sit there for hours trying to figure out what was going on with their parts.<div>
</div><div>the second store, they were rejected after a year for no reason. they wanted to sell them, but redcat actually said that they didn't want to sell them in stores. so about them becoming more "mainstream", i think its gone in reverse. they had a chance, but i think at this point they blew it. its a great idea, a cheap alternative to the higher priced models, but they really need to have a better engineering team looking at what they're making. there is a way to make parts cheaper, and more efficient than what they offer now, and that's just design, that has nothing to do with production. but instead, they make reversions that don't use anything better than the last, they don't update their part numbers or schematics, and then the shops stop carrying them.</div><div>
</div><div>and again, what i'm talking about here is not which car is better, i'm just talking about price value. i think that there's a higher value in spending 200 for a used rs4, than a new lightning. i think that there's more value in a 200 dollar used slayer pro, than a 180 dollar vortex. that's just me, another point is, redcat's have absolutely no resale value, yet the revo, slayer, rs4, etc, will probably get exactly what you paid if you purchased at market value down the road, which is a huge bonus to anybody looking to "invest" money into something. i would never buy a second redcat. its a jumping off point for a beginner, but even for somebody like me that didn't plan on going fullblown into the hobby again, and just wanted something to run in a field, this truck could barely handle that task, so it was cheaper for me to ditch it entirely and move on.</div>