MAY 8, 2008

Who Killed The Lionel Train?

Answer me this: What do the Lionel Corporation and Neil Young have in common?

If you’re one of the 68 million baby boomers alive today, you’ll probably remember that Lionel was, as its peak, a celebrated 1950s model train maker and that Young was – er, is – a 1970s rock’n'roll legend.  But would you have guessed that the 62 year-old rocker is also a lifelong fan of classic toy trains – or that he once owned a 20% stake in the Lionel brand?

If you’re of my generation - Gen Y - you probably haven’t played with a Lionel train or put on a Neil Young album in your entire life.  Why would we, after all, when we’ve got the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band - when we can play the rock stars ourselves?  Over the past 25 years, we’ve grown bored with merely creating and controlling model environments; these days, we want to interact with our surroundings.  But in the process of spending more money and more time on these stimulating simulations, we almost killed the Lionel train.

Yes, I said we almost killed the Lionel train.  According to an emotionally-charged press release from Lionel Chief Executive Jerry Calabrese, May 1, 2008 marked the end of “one of the most dramatic and difficult” periods in Lionel’s 108 year history: bankruptcy.  Especially touching was Calabrese’s statement that “all model train fans are, by nature, students of history, which offers no greater lesson than the fact that desperate times create opportunities for heroic deeds.”  Indeed, 108 years and two World Wars later, Lionel remains a case study in consumer loyalty, a lesson in what hobbyists are willing to sacrifice to save a treasured pastime. 

So don’t go retiring your engineering caps just yet; those toy trains are still chugging along.  In the past three years, Lionel’s sales have grown dramatically.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that sales of Lionel starter sets – kid-friendly systems that range in price from $129 to $300 – have more than doubled since the company entered bankruptcy three and a half years ago.  In fact, the company sold close to 200,000 sets last year, with much of that growth coming from sales at department stores and big-box retailers.  It would seem, then, that Calabrese has discovered how to break out of the hobby shop and into the broader pop-culture marketplace: through big retail outlets, movies, and television.

As for me, I’m not so confident that a company can successfully reinvent a product that is so deeply steeped in nostalgia with absolutely no digital dazzle.  However, Terry Brennan at the Dealscape blog  thinks there is still hope.  He writes, “Just like hearing the train whistle in the distance has comforted many an insomniac in the middle of the night, so too has the miniaturized version inspired a few generations of model railroaders.  And while video games assimilate so many things, one thing they can’t do is emulate the fun of creating towns, or putting up trestles or having smoke come out of a little locomotive.” 

Funny thing is, despite my own doubts, I know exactly what he means.  When I was three, a real live train used to whistle by less than a mile from my house at least ten times a day, every day, for nine years.  Then, when we moved into a new house, I helped my Dad build a 15ft x 18ft model train set complete with little people, plastic buildings, a golf course - even a baseball field.  Our efforts - well, mostly my Dad’s efforts - earned the train set a spot on the cover of the July 1997 issue of Classic Toy Trains magazine.

So I’m incredibly torn.  I may have grown up with trains living in my basement, but I, like everyone else from age 6 to 96, just can’t get over the Nintendo Wii.  And, eerily telling of the times, that train whistle that put me to sleep for 9 years?  It was shut off last spring as a result of a hard-fought community association campaign.  Apparently, people just got tired of hearing it.