Welcome to the new wave in the hobby! ARF mania.
It started slowly but has taken over the industry like a virus and what you see on the national magazines is just a reflection of what is happening out in the flying fields across this country. I've been involved in the hobby for almost 30 years and the first trainer I bought back then was an ARF distributed by Hobby Shack, called Tristar .40, it took off flew half a pattern and then one of the wings broke in midflight, that made me a believer in building my own airplanes from then on. I enjoy building from scratch and kits and in between those an ARF or two, and somehow they always dissapoint me, as you say, even the ones that are scale, are not accurate at all, but some of them are attractive. What goes around comes around, and by looking at the prices some people are paying for kits on the classified section, it won't be long that manufacturers might start venturing back into the market again, at least I hope they will, somehow I had the vision of this happening and a few years ago I started buying good quality kits before this site changed name to RCUniverse and have around thirty in my garage, waiting to be built and I am very glad I did it back then, as today it is very rare to find a quality kit anymore, by the most part they don't fit my criteria and the prices are just like real estate, go figure, people are paying astronomical figures and then they become collectors items!
And yes, the people writing magazines articles are also new generation ARF'rs, the good scale article writers have gotten old, many have died, and so we have to put up with this trend, there are however some very good British magazines for the scale enthusiasts, which I love reading, national mags to me are not saying much, too bad. [][]