What is MPC?

I remember the pre war clooectors of the early 70s referring MPC to More Plastic Crap and the Cornflake company but if not for them Lionle and Flyer may have been a memory today.

Today some of the issues with cheap stuff from the MPC operated Lionel hit home when I acquired a 1625 loco, beans in the wheel PRR tender, Erie-Lackawanna box car and a PRR caboose. Not the cheapest made as it has cast wheels and operating couplers but it's DC operation only. I understand later examples has a circuit board enabling AC operation. Anyway the stuff is like brand new and only cost $7.99 so I guess I made out OK.

Jim McClenin

Wonderful MPC-era photos, Rusty!

TRW

For the Nay-sayers I say keep it up.  Painting everything MPC with one brush helps keep the premium offerings affordable.  I enjoy buying faithful remakes of PW Lionel classics at bargain prices.  Chances are the item is new in the box too.

Bruce

Given I grew up with MCP era rolling stock that still runs fine. I would say MPC was a mixed bag, there was quality and there was throw away product. I recall reading that some of the original Lionel employees worked on during the MPC era, even one of the original factories till about 1974. Given the shape Lionel Corporation was in when it sold of most of it self to General Mills it saved the day. if it was not for them I would not be able to get Lionel branded and designed products. In my opinion I see MPC as more of a passing of a management torch than a company given the passing of much of the infrastructure, tooling, and ect. Saving a brand is a hard job and MPC/Fundimentions(sp?) did just that. So for me the are a company and saved Lionel and the hobby by extension.

If there were no General Mills / MPC purchase of Lionel, most likely there would be no Lionel or O Gauge as we know it today. I for one enjoyed the MPC era very much and have fond memories of it. 

Art

Its no different then renting a fully equipped bakery, using the owners name & logo including his stove and cookware to bake and sell coookies for profit.

And thats exactly what General Mills did for 15 years with MPC.

Easy to forget the enterprise itself including all tooling never changed hands. It was  owned by the original Lionel Corp. until Richard Kughn bought it all in 1985 

Bottom line...

MPC Lionel is more like PW Lionel then modern era Lionel. 

Joe

quote:

MPC Lionel is more like PW Lionel then modern era Lionel. 

Absolutely.
And while MPC may have cheapened some products, they also made improvements to existing products, and introduced new products here and here.

Rusty:

Those are fun photos.  I am in the process of building a similar postwar/mpc layout.  Do you have other photos of yours, particularly from a slightly higher angle?  You've done a nice job of putting the gray roadbed down over a big grassmat and I (and I hope others) would like to get a better look at it.  The effect nicely emulates the postwar dealer display layouts.  

What is that gray under the track?  Paper?  Sheet styrene?  Gray paint?  Something else?

That's a nice, charming layout you have there.  I'm sure you enjoy it a lot.

Thanks.  Here's a couple:

Alas, the layout is no more.  Parts of it do survive as shelves in the basement.  Circumstances in the early 1990's forced me to dispose of my MPC and Postwar.  But enough of the sob story.

The layout was designed to emulate a traditional Lionel display.  It was good old painted plywood.  I painted the entire surface gray and marked out the "roadbed."  The grass and dirt is dyed sawdust a long-gone LHS was carrying at the time.  I painted the grassy areas green and the dirt areas tan, (Dutch Boy) then poured on the sawdust.  Then vacuumed off the loose stuff.  Trees were held on with Velcro.

As this was a layout I took to train shows, all the accessories were keyed to the layout and connected by 1/4" phone jacks underneath.  It broke apart into six sections and could be up and running in 45 minutes.

I have nothing but fond memories of the layout.  I built it in my parent's basement at the time and it was the last big father-son project with my dad. (When I came over to my parents house on weekends, the trains would be in different positions!  Seems my dad would either play with it or show it off to some of the locals.)   It was a blast to run and to show.

Rusty

Actually that is not 100% correct.  While the Lionel Corp. retained the Lionel name and associated trademarks which they leased to General Mills (up until the final sale of those names and trademarks to Richard Kuhn/LTI in 1991), Lionel Corporation did not continue to own the tooling.  They sold both the Lionel and American Flyer tooling to General Mills in either mid- or late- 1969, so General Mills actually owned the tooling when they took over train production in 1970, not the Lionel Corporation.

As to the former Hagerstown & Hillside plants, I don't 100% recall the details, but I believe the Hagerstown plant was shut down in 1969 (while the tooling was transferred to Mt. Clemens, MI) and the Hillside, NJ facility was sold or was in the process of being sold at around the same time (whether it was sold to General Mills or someone else that General Mills leased from, I'm not certain).  But limited production and support at Hillside did remain up until about 1974, after which all remaining production finally winded up at the Mt. Clemens facility.

Let's not forget that Kenner was almost a  player, right before Kuhn bought Lionel. MPC is an era in its own spotlight. I was one of those who disparaged it at first, but later on came to realize its part of Lionel. I have a bunch of MPC stuff. In my world, there is a place for it.

I have plenty of MPC, and like some very much. Maybe if we would have actually seen those nicer items displayed at a store things would have gotten better sooner. But the cheap sets were the only ones available at most outlets. All I ever saw was cheap ones and thought "better" ones were no longer made. The only difference between some MPC and ultra cheap toys were batteries vs metal track and frame, and the name Lionel on the box. You got to pay 3-4 times as much for the privilege of buying the Lionel name. So which do you think average Moms and Dads bought at Christmas, and how did that affect the reputation of toy trains. Would a child save their paper route money to buy a Kickapoo? How close to the Kickapoo below are the trains at the dollar store and how is a non-train person to recognize the subtle differences. In fact the no-name brand may look better, no frame to be seen. 

Non-operating dummy couplers and plastic wheels on all cars here. ac voltage kickapoo

A part of a cheap no-name set of the same era being painted/weathered. Barely smaller than O, but runs OK on O track. Has an oil tank car around, but the smoking, battery powered engine was used in kit bashing. Looks similar to the MPC of similar quality, seems more durable. At least four times less money(and every car has rivets to count too)..

I can only think of three items right off hand that MPC cheapened from the postwar-era. Putting dummy couplers on both ends of the lower end cars, cheap variations of the General, and the plastic 675. Most of the ultra-cheap stuff was new tooling for the most part.

On the other hand, they seemed to continue adding detail back into the products that Lionel took out in the late 50's and 60's. The geeps and f's come to mind right away. The "collector" line was really pretty good stuff, and in some cases better than the postwar version. I have a 2055 that's pretty loud with very thick paint, and a FARR version of it that's got very nice paint and fairly quiet for an open frame motor.

Some postwar was junk, some MPC was junk, and, honestly, some modern is junk. Some postwar is great, some MPC is great, and some modern is great. Price point determines quality. It did in 1914, and it does in 2014.

That's a very accurate statement, right there. I hadn't though much about Lionel as I was growing up in the late 60's and early 70's; HO had more detail and variety than the Lionel sets I saw. But in the mid-70's, a friend of our family passed along an old Marx 666 set while cleaning out their attic, and my dad and I were fairly hooked. He stopped by a local hobby store and come home with the Santa Fe FARR series set and a used ZW transformer. We never looked back at HO... The Blue Comet passenger set and some Pennsy dual-motor F3's joined the fleet shortly after, with various "Collector Series" freight cars.

The local hobby shop only carried a smattering of good Lionel, so we kept up a fairly regular stream of orders from Train World and Charles Ro back in the days of printed catalogs and price lists. There were good products to be had from the General Mills era, but the store chains only carried starter sets and even the hobby shops in my area carried mostly HO and just a few better Lionel items. Finding the "good stuff" took more hunting than the casual buyer might have invested the time for.

I've heard some people  say it stood for More Plastic Crap but my 1st Lionel set was from Lionel/MPC. The Amtrak Lake Shore Limited has and will always be my favorite 0/27 train set. I still have the full set today in good condition. If it wasn't for MPC it's very possible that Lionel wouldn't be here today.