PaperTRW posted:MichRR714 posted:I'm just curious... Has Lionel explained to anyone why they can't seem to get the colors right? The mistakes just keep happening... A mistake on a piece here and there would be one thing and understandable.
I personally don't understand why they can't get a handle on this. Howard needs to buy a couple Pantone books.
Charlie,
I normally don't weigh-in on things like this, but I'll put on my professional (HA!) cap for a moment and offer an opinion.
It dawned on me what had likely occurred a year or so at a local hobby shop, which had a nice wall of current Lionel product. Quite frankly, very few things looked right in my "mind's eye," something I've developed over time and bringing 1000+ products to market. I believe that the reason Lionel's entire product line has color-shifted over the past several years is not because they need Pantone books -- but rather because they're using them. The problem is that the vast majority of "railroad colors" don't have Pantone (PMS) equivalents. You can likely find something close with many lighter hues, but the darker, richer and/or dirtier colors won't have anything in the ballpark.
Back in the day (early 2000's), Lionel had their offshore manufacturing partners match the appropriate colors from chips generated from the paint used domestically. No Pantone. It was a big chore, but also a necessary one -- the paint had to match current and pre-existing product, regardless of where it was manufactured. Period.
Regardless, I believe that sometime over the past handful of years, a decision was made to switch from Lionel's decades-old paint codes and swatches, and convert to PMS. I can understand why. Pantone is recognized everywhere, and by simply calling out PMS 877c on a deco print, everyone worldwide is quickly on the same page. Conversely, "8366 Tuscan" -- Lionel's old color for that N&W stripe -- doesn't mean anything unless the proper chip is provided to match. (And ever wonder why all Lionel's steam locos had bright silver boiler fronts all of a sudden? My guess is because there's only one "metallic gray" -- 877c Silver -- in the standard Pantone book.)
So the color problems that keep occurring aren't about individual products -- they're a systemic issue that won't change until the Pantone books are closed, and the company makes an effort to stress product integrity over efficiency by diving into the company's old color library.
Of course, the above is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
TRW
MichRR714 posted:Todd,
I'm not sure I agree with you completely on PMS. Pantone is a color standard for ink not paint. Of course they would have to match the PMS color or an in-between blend with paint. Why would they settle on something that they know is the wrong color when mixing the paint match?
That line of thinking just doesn't make any sense to me.
Charlie,
Sorry for the delay in following-up. I didn't catch your response until now.
Check out this Lionel artwork that Charlienassau posted earlier this year for his Long Island C420's:
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...u%20Hobbies%20Ex.pdf
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...u%20Hobbies%20Ex.pdf
The color call-outs on those are basically Pantone across the board. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the orange and gray LI color scheme did NOT start out as PMS, so somewhere along the line, someone took the Lionel historical paint swatches and converted them to a "close enough" Pantone. As I noted in my first note, the problem is that historical "railroad" colors don't really have equivalents in the world of "clean, shiny and happy" PMS colors (I'm channeling a graphic designer that I once worked with).
Using Pantone in the business world for all sorts of color matching is nothing new. Some corporate Style Guides go as far to include an actual paint chip and then a separate PMS code for printing. If I remember right, UPS is one of those -- their PMS brown color is quite a bit different from the color used to paint their delivery vehicles (Package Cars in UPS parlance), but they properly understand the differences between paint (and the associated tints) with the printed page, a lot of which is CMYK.
As I write this, I'm more convinced than ever that all the color drifting and downright bad color selection over the past few years from Lionel is a result of them switching to an entirely Pantone-based color reference. The issue likely has nothing to do with poor execution on behalf of their offshore manufacturing partners.
TRW
