by waaytoomuchintothis » Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:27 am
Yep, I'm big fan of Pioneer. Best of both worlds and surely the best argument for "slot cars don't have to cost so much" to be good stuff all around. Excellent product, good value for dollar spent, maybe the best for my money. And also important, they sell excellent parts separately, making Pioneer running gear very important to scratch builders.
Its so important that the price line has to be drawn for our hobby. In the 1960s, scale racing nearly disappeared as plastic bubbles that didn't look much like cars took over, and the costs of slotracing went absolutely nuts. The hobby all but died as a result. In no time at all, competing hobbies that were affordable took over, young folks never even tried slot cars because slotracing became obscure and hard to find, not to mention no kid could ever participate for the cost.
Today, with mass communication more prevalent and HRW among others here to promote and enhance the hobby, we have a better than even chance of passing this wonderful fun to generations after us, but we need to learn from what has happened to other pursuits as the costs went crazy and "standard" merchandise was dropped in favor of over-engineered nonsense (ex. golf, tennis, fishing, hunting, bicycling, sailing, woodworking, hotrod hobbies, etc).