Gee, and here I was thinking all these years that Canadians were a polite group of people after watching "Due South" back in the 90's

Seriously, it's not all about the bling. There's only ever been a handful of IC engines offered for sale over the counter by the various manufacturers that ran good enough to fly pattern without requiring too much experimentation from the end user. So a fancy pattern engines is/was a must have unless you wanted to muck around and try and get something else going properly. Although some have good sucess with the OS 1.60's when pumped. Electrics have been a bit of a game changer in this regard.

Airframe wise, if you can tell me why every man and his dog wants a "scale" looking flying turd instead of a proper flying plane then I'd like to know the answer. Until Joe average modeller decides he want to start buying planes that fly properly, the ARF manufactures will keep turning out far cheaper (because of mass production) scale looking planes. To be honest I think the blokes that buy "scale" planes because they want to believe they're flying the real thing have bigger problems than the blokes who spend up big buying something that flys properly.

Radio wise, faster more powerful and precise servo's are always a good thing.

I agree though, bang for your buck isn't what pattern's about, but is a $100 dollar bottle of wine really that much better than the $2 bottle of leg opener from the bottle shop? It all depends on how you intend to use it I suppose