Varicom Big Grizzly

[bbbs53]

The Panda line was offered by Thunder Tiger. I have a buggy and a 1/10 carpet racer in nitro. I have not finished past this question, but Playtron made at least 2 other nitro buggy type vehicles, the Viva Arizona and the Mercedes 500K in Europe. For some reason the Viva was never offered in Europe, but the states could get either. It is sad to say, they are pretty much fading away. I have 5 Vivas and a Lynx. I have the 500K NIB. Of those, one is complete and running, one almost finished, all NOS parts, One under restoration, one junker and one that is stock played with, painted yellow. 4 of them will be restored. One lot off the bay came with 2 gallon zip lock's full of parts, for the 2 nitro's. The Lynx was built and parked, it is nearly perfect. I have the decal sheet for all 3 that I have. It is interesting to note that the Viva may have been one of the first electric start nitro's. They also made a radio controlled starter for airplanes, yeah have that too, geek factor. Like most stuff old, the price is based on the 3 c's, condition, etc. Since there are no parts for the most part, a primo condition in box specimen will attract the attention of collectors. However, the market for vintage is down like most everything else. Unless it is exceedingly rare, it has gone down since obummer. Kind of like our money, houses and self esteem. Anyway I like this brand and have all I could find. Playtron is one of my saved searches although I am finding a Google search results in more results than epay's search engine, it has changed big time. By the by, I have not parted with a car or other since I started collecting. I am not in it for the money. It usually starts out I see a car and find out what I can, usually a beater. Then after that one a better often started NIB comes along, sometimes a NIB as well. Then a parts search, could take years, and usually end up restoring all of them. Crazy, probably. To the point of insanity, positively!

[Nicklindimer]

From the few Big Grizzlys I have seen on-line, it appears there are different color/logo schemes. Mine looks different from the ones I've seen but mine definetly says Big Grizzly on it. There is one on eBay right now and the motor is definetly different. Mine clearly is a Kyosho motor. Hmmm. . . .

Yep... that's a Grizzly, alright! I know that chassis anywhere, after all the "fun" I've had with mine. And after the original motor blew the bushing out of it's end-bell cap, I too swapped-in a Kyosho LeMans motor. (240ST)

The front one-way hub inserts broke first on mine, and it stayed 2WD until the day the splines for the rear-output of the center gearbox striped-out. Since then I recently began gathering parts & donors (Still have it--Museum restoration to come...!) and discovered that later issues of it came with revised front-hub stub-shafts, that allowed used of the rear wheel hub inserts, thereby eliminating the loss of 4WD issue.