the radio's are reasonable, for the people that actually buy them who need absolute assurance that their uber expensive multi jet plane wont get turned into 6 months of complex police questioning and a big hole in the ground over a simple radio malfunction.
as for the traxxas/hpi thing, well some of it is pretty unjustified, for example the savage is just far too expensive now, the price is meant to go down on old designs, not up. i can sort of see the pricing for the x-01 however. they really did put a lot into that thing and innovation sadly does not come cheap.