You get what you pay for. Good luck.
+100
This statement is one to live by. It applies not only to RCs but to life in general. That being said I'm quite often looking for the balance between quality and price. There are good bargains out there that are also good or at least decent quality. Red Cat is not one of those bargains.
Now I am not a Traxxas fan by any means. I personally find Traxxas to be the good beginner brand to recommend because I feel that even though they don't have the same level of quality as Losi, Mugen, HPI, or Associated I do feel that they are good quality for the price you pay for them. At least most of them. I have owned a few different Traxxas kits and the only ones I kept were my Nitro Rusty and my VXL Rusty. For some reason I really dig the Rustys. Seems like they've kinda been replaced by the Jato but now I'm just getting side tracked from my point.
Getting back to my point. If you take a Red Cat, Exceed, HSP, or any of the other "Cheap" brands and put them side by side with a comparable Traxxas you can see the difference in quality just by looking at them. My own personal opinion is these brands are a waste of money.
As for parts support, yes some LHS actually do carry Red Cat parts but 95% of the time they don't and 95% of the time if they do carry them its usually a pretty limited selection. Even if your LHS has a good selection of Red Cat parts guess what brand that they will have the most support for 99% of the time? That's right Traxxas. Every single hobby store, in America at least, stocks tons of Traxxas parts.
That being said if you want something that has a lower cost but will be a decent kit with tons of parts support Id suggest Traxxas as your starter kit. When you say you were looking at the Caldera 1/10 truck I'm assuming you mean the monster truck as they have a Caldera named kit for every class of car and truck out there. If your looking for a good starter Monster truck Id suggest the Traxxas Stampede. They have 3 different models of Stampede. One for $200, one for $339, and one for $400 depending on what you want. If you only have 200 bucks I would strongly suggest patience and save up until you can afford the Traxxas kit you want if you want say the $400 kit for example. In the long run you most likely will not only have more fun with it but when it does break it will be very easy to get cheaply priced parts for it.
This is my opinion. I know not everyone will agree with it but I'll leave you with one final thought to ponder. If you start a thread and ask about red cats/exceed/HSP etc you will get exactly what you have here. A ton of mixed opinions. If you started the same thread and asked about Traxxas, Losi, HPI, or Associated virtually everyone would agree that those are good brands. You wont see a lot of varied opinions and people arguing back and forth. That right there says a lot IMO.
