ORIGINAL: Chris_RC
Traxxas cares about the money like most RC manafaucters (mainly the ones who sell exclusively RTRs). Their RCs are popular for noobs who dont know how to maintain a vehicle, just drive drive drive. All they care about is speed, and that is where Traxxas comes in. It is pretty sad to have a vehicle bought on how fast it goes, not by the quality or handling of it. That is why Traxxas is so popular. Traxxas made race kits back in the early 90s, but they sucked so they mvoed to RTRs. Traxxas has done more harm than good for my side of the hobby. Before Traxxas, the pioneers of RC said there was about 5-6 tracks within 30 minutes of their house (southern california). Now, there is 0 tracks within 30 miutes from me. All of them are sorted throught, 1 45 minutes away, 1 2 hours, etc. Now, the people who buy Traxxas's dont come to the track which means tracks have to close becuase not enough people are coming. BUT, to each its own.
I don't think Traxxas can or has 'harmed' the hobby persay, they can't force anyone to buy their stuff and a racer is still going to be racer, a basher is still going to be a basher, with or without Traxxas. The only thing Traxxas is doing is bringing new people to the hobby, they can shift percentages but that's all. There's no net loss of racers just b'cos Traxxas exists. If you have a club of 10 expert racers, and 90 newbies join, you still have 10 expert racers in the club.
Traxxas is around today b'cos they were able to capitalize on the evolving market. I think the 'no track' thing is more of a regional issue, with urban sprawl ('suburbia'), little actual open or free land within the cities.