You left out one important factor though. Advertising. Traxxas spent a TON of money in getting those trucks out to supercross and monster truck events putting that slash into peoples hands and letting them bash them around in the race arena to get them to go to there local hobbyshops the next day to pick one up. Without someone showing these cars to people nobody knows they exist and nobody wants to get one.
Our local outdoor asphault track is acctualy built in a public park and we get a lot of intrest from people about the cars, asking what they are, how much they are, and where to get them because they had never seen anything like them before. Without that exposure there is no intrest