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Old 31-01-2010
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terry.sc terry.sc is offline
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CoroCoro Comic is a childrens comic which in the early 80s one of the stories featured a character called R/C Boy who (not surprisingly) raced R/C cars, thus leading to the Thunder/Fire/Super/Saint Dragon range of bodies and the R/C Boys range of basic R/C cars. The bodies were originally available as replacement bodies for the Grasshopper and Hornet, with all except the Super Dragon being released later as the 4WD chassis. I believe the hero of the story drove the Super Dragon. The black character with the open mouth on the stickers is the logo for CoroCoro Comic.

CoroCoro used to feature articles on the Mini 4WDs, showing children how to modify and improve the performance of them, as the children could afford to buy them compared with the very high cost of R/C cars. In 1986 due to the popularity of the Mini 4WDs the publisher of CoroCoro approached Tamiya to create a story in the comic featuring them, called Dash! Yonkuro, like R/C Boy it's about rival groups of children racing the cars. CoroCoro Comic also sponsored the Tamiya Grand Prix, originally an R/C event that lent R/C cars to children to run around. As a sideshow they included Mini 4WD tracks that proved more popular amongst the kids than the R/C cars, so it became a Mini 4WD event, attracting up to 70,000 (yes, thousand!) competitors in it's heyday. The Mini 4WD phenomenon grew so much Dash! Yonkuro became a cartoon TV series.

Unfortunately as the kids grew up the popularity waned in the early 90s, and Dash! Yonkuro disappeared. In 1993 Tamiya redesigned the cars, again promoted by CoroCoro Comic. The publishers released a new story called Bakusokyodai: Let's and Go. The artist for Bakusokyodai was used by Tamiya for the weird and wonderful Mini 4WD body designs we have had ever since, his sketches were converted into cars by Tamiyas designers.

You might notice a lack of anything R/C here, that's' because their popularity was limited amongst the young children the comics and TV cartoon were aimed at. The Dragon bodies were based on cars in the Dash! Yonkuro stories and were also made as Mini 4WD chassis.

A google for Dash Yonkuro will throw up plenty of information about the cartoon.
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