Ok ive got a pretty cool story about me and my tycos. Years ago when I was about 5 and the red and black bandits had just come out my friends who were brothers lived behind me and got a red bandit and black bandit 9.6v turbos for christmas of 92. At the time I had the radio shack "off-roader" truck that was black with the white wheels and had hi/lo gears with the super low crawl ratio so it wasnt near as fast as the bandits but would climb anything. We used to race our trucks together all the time and I wanted a bandit so bad that when I used to go over to their house I would play with them more than they did. Daniel used to drag his red bandit behind his bike by a string so it was only a matter of time before they would of thrown them away. So years pass and in 97 they moved away to another city and we eventually stopped talking. Since tyco had stopped making the bandit back in 92 I searched and searched to find one at a garage sale or anywhere cause I just had to have one. I never had any luck on the bandits and after dozens of other cars I still wanted a bandit more than anything else out there. In 2002 I started to use ebay to try an find one and ended up seeing one on there brand new in the box. I went nuts and thought, I have to win this auction at any cost because ill never see one like this again. I ended up winning the auction after a war of 35 bids and a final price of $305.00 and all my friends thought I was nuts for buying it when I could have got a E-maxx or anything else for that price. To me it was worth every penny of it but still it wasnt the original bandits I played with as a kid. I went to college back in 2005 and slowly stopped playing with all the rc cars I had built up over the years. So one day back in 2006 I was in college and just happened to walk into one of my classes 5 mins early. I went up to the teacher to ask her something then I hear, Joey??? So I turn around to see who it is and its none other than daniels brother greg sitting right there. So im thinking, no way and start catching up with him and got into car talk and then one of the first things I thought to ask him about was the bandits. I didnt think he would remember them and I when I asked him about them I thought for sure they had thrown them away years ago. So im sitting here thinking how cool would it be if he still had one of them. Then he says oh yeah, I remember them very well and actually, I still have both of the sitting in the closet. I just about had a heart attack and said no *censored* dude. Then I said hey would you sell either of them, and he says sure. So im thinking crap how much do I offer him for these and off the top of my head I said ill give you $25 for em both and says, OK. So we went back to his house down the road and he gets the 2 bandits out of the closet and I about had a nostalgic attack. The black one which was his was in awesome shape and had the remote but no battery cover and he points to the fog light that was missing and says do you remember breaking that off with your off-roader when we first get these? I remember now knocking it off with my truck when we had a head on collision full speed. The red one had neither the battery cover or the remote and the front shock towers were both broken off and all springs were missing. So I took the truck apart and borrowed springs off a wild thing turbo hopper then took team associated rc18mt suspension parts and set up the shock tower and oil filled shocks in the front and the truck is now bullet proof. I would never for any amount of money consider selling either and they now sit up on a shelf next to the "off-roader" that I used to race them with.
I have a ton more tycos but the other one I remember was my ultra rare Twin Turbo Lamborghini that was the last one sold from toys r us back in 1998 and was extremely rare because it had the big square remote with the chrome handle like they used on the heads up hopper, instead of the pistol grip remote or the small square remote like the single turbo cars had. I feel like a totally idiot for returning it a week after I got it just because I flipped it over and knocked the wing off. I still after dozens of searching on ebay for the last 8 years have never seen another one out of the 200 ive seen on ebay.