Strange Article

Nightwing · #1 12-22-2002, 02:59 PM

Strange article over that the Washington Post. If I read this article correctly I come away with the following.

1) Spam junk email is the reason why these little cars are hyper hot.

2) Tomy & Hobbyco are banking on copywrite to curtail clone sales.

#1 makes no real sense.

And #2 did they give up on the FCC side?

A copywrite is only for a specific designed etc. A RC car is too vauge to patten even under US laws. And with the unlimited different designed around would take every dime they have to even try to put a stop in the flow. Time will do it for them. Esp if they went to stop RS.

evileric · #2 12-22-2002, 04:00 PM

OEM Cars are great! Plus, competition for our dollars is what fosters innovation, I hope that the clones continue to be produced, TOMY quality is much better, but in some cases the price difference is CRAZY.

As for the email spam thing, I can almost believe it... What day and page was the article on?

Nightwing · #3 12-22-2002, 04:08 PM

Dec 21. Hate to link to their site. They want info to view it.

Cool! Just found out its on msnbc.com and here is the link.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850710.asp

I think the clones, as long as they are not too close, will be avaiable.

The catch is that Tin cars and a lot of others use the same control chipset etc. Going to be tough to stop them.

Cox does an outstanding job of filtering junk email so dont see alot of stuff.

georc · #4 12-22-2002, 05:07 PM

I haven't gotten any e-mails, but I've seen a few pop-ups advertising clones: "Sold out in stores." Their Idea of a good deal was $29.99 + $4.95 S&H. These looked like the same clones that the local grocery and drug stores have been advertising for $9.99. Of course, as the pop-up says, they're always sold out. Unfortunately, most people don't know that quality products (Bits or MSs) are available from their local hobby shop, or a reputable online seller, for same price, if not less.

Having clones around are fine. I kick myself for not picking one up when the grocery store had a table of them for $10, a couple of months ago. The fact is that people in the know are always going to be looking to get the original products. This will keep the inovative companies profitable. At the same time, competiton in the toy business continually pushes manufacturers to produce something better than last year. The inovative companies just need to hope that they can keep their "recipes" under wraps until each current years Christmas season is over. Next year they'll sell the next big (in this case - little) thing.

Nightwing · #5 12-22-2002, 05:58 PM

Same. May grab one or two extra clones myself. Wish I had done the same late Autum. Micro Q were cheep and are decent quality. After xmas will be scarce. But may have some good prices also. May go for a Panther or some really cheep ones. But prices have been going up on even the clones.

I guess with portional and multi function will be the next level. Be nice if they would also come out with scale buildings etc. I think the Tomy busses are about HO scale after being crush so to speak. The "track" for the battle Wild Char-G is a good first start.

#6 12-22-2002, 09:40 PM

Well what sold me was Shaq being the spokesperson for ZipZaps. I saw the huge cardboard cutout and I just said "wow, if I had one of these I could be a big black man too" and viola, I bought a bit. Since I didn't get a Zipzap, I'm not big or black, but I still feel like Shaq.

BTW I'm kidding. I haven't seen a single popup ad or received any spam email about these cars. I just think their appeal is the affordability and the incredible degree to which you can mod them. Plus, you can get cool cars like Skylines.

Kajoq · #7 12-22-2002, 09:49 PM

Ive gotten like 4 or 5 of the spam emails... Theyre out there

Nightwing · #8 12-23-2002, 08:10 AM

The only thing close to the "spam" email was Buy.com and their over priced clone. Was and still is a price mistake of the day.