i gotta disagree with you john, tamiya's make excellent bashers IMO.
some are tougher than others. but lets just take 4wd buggies, tamiya's buggies are way tougher than race bread buggies, from the df01 to the df03 it's tough to find a tougher 4wd buggy.
traxxas does have the monster truck market locked up pretty good though, then again most people seem to upgrade the hell out of them with rpm stuff, so maybe they aren't as tough as we think in stock form.

plus we are talking about a dad and a 7 year old, no reason not to go with a nice kit. (i can't wait for my son to be old enough for me to teach him how to build a kit)