Anybody remember Venture RC? December of last year BigSquid was working in cahoots with HPI to tease the release of a Toyota FJ mystery scaler from Venture RC otherwise known as, you guessed it….HPI.
I admit I was part of the information/misinformation around this truck which no matter the outcome i’m sure helped fuel the fire. Social media was abuzz and rccrawler.com had a thread a mile long trying to find out who was behind this truck. Someone doing a legit license deal with Toyota and then putting out a promising looking truck was big news! Bigsquid had me trying to spread some viral marketing while also keeping me and everyone else in the dark, meanwhile on the other side of that spectrum some of my friends had the scaler community convinced Traxxas had finally jumped on board with the scale scene which as you can image turned out not to be the case. (seriously who launches a company and forgets the nail down the domain name?) A company in trouble thats who.
Well the joke ended up being on us all including HPI because rug got pulled out from under the entire company. Following a promising showing at the Nuremberg Toy Fair the Venture FJ all but disappeared as HPI fizzled to a halt.
Fast forward 11 months or so and we are finally seeing some movement regarding this new-ish truck. HPI has a new owner (Ripmax) and it looks like wheels are grinding back into motion. Supply chains are resuming operations or starting fresh as the case may be, and we are seeing life again which is great news. Many doomsayers were saying this truck would never see the light of day. While it might be a while before we finally do see the FJ, I have heard rumors that it should be on the street by mid 2017. Color me excited.
Had this truck hit around the time the SCX10II did HPI might have stolen a lot of thunder from industry leader Axial Racing, but yet again the RC gods have smiled on Axial as they merrily crush the competition while others struggle. For now we will all sit around impatiently waiting on this hugely anticipated truck to hit our shores. But when it finally does you can bet that Scale and Trail will bring you a full review.
Thanks for tuning in gang,
-Evol
For almost no more information you can click here!
in fact I would not even use that link, you should probably check out their FaceBook page.
