Radio Controlled Models
Tokyo Marui was also at the forefront of the developing radio control hobby in the mid-1980s with a line of high-quality 1/10-scale electric buggies, monster trucks and even an unusual NASCAR Winston Cup stocker, all in kit form. This kit of Bill Elliott's Coors Melling Ford Thunderbird was built on a four-wheel drive buggy chassis; despite that full-scale NASCAR racers are rear-wheel drive. The body could be raised or lowered for either onroad or offroad use and two full sets of wheels and tires were included, pre-mounted sponge slick tires for onroad and knobby spiked rubber tires for offroad. The Big Bear Datsun, a 1/12-scale monster truck topped with a Datsun pickup truck body, powered by a Mabuchi RS-380 motor and initially sold via mail order, was one of the best-selling radio controlled models of the period and contributed greatly to the hobby's growth.
Scale variations on the simple and strong Big Bear chassis included both regular and "Super Wheelie" versions of the Jeep CJ-7 Golden Eagle and Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser, each lacking the oversized wheels and tires of the Big Bear and equipped instead with more scale-looking Goodyear offroad tires. A proposed third version which would have been Marui's ninth release was that of a Mitsubishi Pajero, shelved due to licensing problems. Twelve models were released in all, numbered 1 through 13 since the aforementioned ninth model never made it to market.
Strong competition by the end of the decade, especially from Tamiya and Kyosho, caused Marui to pull out of the hobby-grade R/C market. They returned to the R/C market in 2000 with a still-popular line of ready-to-run, 1/24-scale military tanks (see below).
The company released and sold the following models:
- Hunter 2WD entry-level sport buggy
- Galaxy 2WD sport buggy
- Galaxy RS 2WD sport/mild competition buggy
- Shogun 4WD sport/mild competition buggy
- Samurai 4WD competition buggy
- Ninja 4WD competition buggy
- Coors Melling Ford Thunderbird 4WD NASCAR stock car
- Big Bear Datsun 2WD sport monster truck
- CJ-7 Golden Eagle 2WD sport offroad, available in regular and "Super Wheelie"
- Toyota Land Cruiser 2WD sport offroad, available in regular and "Super Wheelie"
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