Blast Arrow is another entry full of firsts.

I picked up this particular kit while working from a co-working space in Mandaluyong. By this point, I was already deep into the rabbit hole. Everywhere I went, I found myself checking if there happened to be a hobby shop nearby.

As it turned out, Lil’s Hobby Center was only about two blocks away.

Around the time everyone was supposed to clock out, I quietly slipped away and made the short walk over.

Lil’s is the kind of place you’ll miss if you blink.

I actually walked past it a couple of times before realizing where it was. Even after finding the building, I wasn’t sure how to get inside. I asked one of the gentlemen standing near the entrance and he pointed me in the right direction.

The moment I walked in…

Oh man.

Floor-to-ceiling Tamiyas.

An entire wall dedicated to spare parts.

Another wall filled with motors.

It honestly felt like I was a kid walking into a candy store.

Even Brickyard in Glorietta didn’t have this many kits on display. Some of the boxes here weren’t even listed on the website, so browsing the shelves felt like a treasure hunt.

And that’s when I found this beauty.

There were a lot of firsts waiting inside this box.

So far I’d already experienced the FM-A, Super II, and AR chassis. This would be my first encounter with the MA chassis.

Then I noticed something that completely threw me off.

The motor wasn’t in the front.

It wasn’t in the back.

It was…

Right in the middle.

The first thing that caught my eye wasn’t even where the motor sat.

It was the fact that it had two output shafts.

Every Mini 4WD I’d built up until this point used a motor that drove one side of the drivetrain. This one drove both.

I just stared at the diagram for a while.

“Okay… how does THAT work?”

Then another question popped into my head.

“If the motor’s there… where do the batteries go?”

Like the Aero Avante before it, this Starter Pack came with all the usual goodies: rollers, FRP plates, weights, tools, and this time, a Torque-Tuned motor.

The moment I got home, I cleared my desk and got to work.

Building the MA chassis felt like I was back in discovery mode again.

By this point I could usually predict how a chassis was going to come together.

The MA completely threw that out the window.

Every few pages of the manual made me stop and go,

“Ooooh…”

Then it all clicked.

The dual-shaft motor meant there was no need for a long propeller shaft connecting the front and rear of the car.

Everything was centered.

Motor in the middle.

Batteries on either side.

The whole drivetrain suddenly made perfect sense.

Even before putting batteries in, the car just felt balanced.

Little engineering decisions like this are what keep pulling me deeper into the hobby. You can almost imagine the conversations the engineers at Tamiya had while designing it.

“What if we put the motor in the middle instead?”

“What if we eliminated the propeller shaft entirely?”

It made me appreciate just how many different ways there are to solve the same problem.

I know I say this after almost every build…

But Blast Arrow looked fantastic.

The white body paired with the gold wheels gave it a completely different personality from everything else I’d built. It somehow managed to look futuristic while still reminding me of an old-school Formula 1 car.

It felt like a perfect match for the MA chassis underneath.

This experience felt like rediscovering the hobby all over again.

It reminded me of building the Geo Glider for the very first time. Every few pages revealed another clever engineering decision that made me stop and appreciate how much thought had gone into something so small.

Even without racing it, I could already understand why so many people loved the MA chassis.

Everything about it felt deliberate.

Just like the motor found its place right in the middle of the chassis…

I feel like I’m somewhere in the middle of this journey too.

I’m no longer the beginner who bought a Geo Glider because the purple wheels looked cool.

But I’m also nowhere near the finish line.

There are still plenty of chassis I haven’t built.

Plenty of stories waiting to be told.

Historian’s Note

Geo Glider introduced me to Mini 4WD.

Ray Stinger sparked my curiosity.

Aero Avante taught me about tuning.

Mach Frame awakened the collector in me.

Blast Arrow reminded me why I fell in love with this hobby in the first place.

Not because it was the fastest.

Not because it was the newest.

But because every new chassis felt like meeting another engineer who looked at the same problem and said,

“I think I have a different idea.”