Skip, you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head. Until it creates pain for Lionel, it will probably never change. These color problems have been going on for nearly five years and they keep happening. Consumers are getting stuck with stuff they don’t like (although, in fairness, I believe there are many buyers who are ambivalent to the color mistakes). The dealers are getting stuck with the rest or are spending their own money to try to fix the mistakes (e.g., it was a dealer who first started paying to repaint the Js). Yeah, Lionel has remade a shell or two, but otherwise the burden has not been theirs.
I honestly believe Lionel knows the issue and the frustration it causes for many of their loyal and longtime buyers. They either simply don’t care or they are not capable of fixing it, but they are not unaware.
I’ve long since thought that for many of us, if not most of us, fidelity to previous model releases is more important than fidelity to the prototype. When I order something based on a catalog illustration, my assumption is that it will be like the one that came out eight years ago that I missed on - or loved and want another one - or whatever. This should actually make life easier for manufacturers since they really just need to be good at doing what they’ve already done, not something new. I think that’s the part that’s the most maddening about all of this: look again at Gary’s list (paint mistakes, horrible new couplers, etc) - these are all self-inflicted fumbles of things that have been made at an excellent level before. It’s not a case of trying something new and failing, it’s suddenly forgetting how to do what you’ve done extremely well for a longtime.
I think the only real fix on the consumer level is to decide you have enough stuff. We can’t control anything else anyway.
