Accident or Intentional Product Release from Axial – What Do You Think?

While scouring the web for any new product releases, I came across a post on www.rccrawler.com that caught my attention. Apparently there might be a new product from Axial coming out; the RR10 1:10 scale 4WD buggy. This rig showed up in the print version of Tower Hobbies 2015 SpeedMart holiday catalog. I was pretty excited about another new product from Axial, so I did a little research and come to find out there is absolutely NOTHING on Axial’s site, Tower’s site or, really, the internet in general. It was time to do a little deeper digging to find out if this was an accidental or intentional product release from those sneaky kids over at Axial.

Here’s what we know:

This is the cover of the print version in question. Notice the issue and date. Also take notice of the cover in general.

Here’s a screen shot of the online version of the same catalog. Notice the issue and date – they’re the same. However, the cover is completely different.

Turning to the inside of the print version, you’ll see the RR10 advertised directly under the new Yeti SCORE Trophy Truck. Note the red arrows; they are pointing to the products on the adjacent page (we’ll be using this for reference).

Here is the online version. Different left page; notice no mention of the Yeti SCORE or RR10, however the adjacent page has the same products on it.

And, last but not least, a very similar version of the RR10 posted to Axial’s blog back in August of 2014. Possibly an early prototype? You can see the post here and the buggy a bit down the page > Axial Driver Jake Hallenbeck Rocks Utah Ultra4 race

So, are there really two versions of Tower’s catalog? And if so, why are they so different?

Did Axial mock up this as a sneaky release to build anticipation for another new product? I wouldn’t put it past them to do something like this seeing as how they’ve done some pretty creative marketing in the past.

So what you think – accident or intentional?