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Hi Rocco,

It's down to simple ECONOMICS.  Economics is the science of the allocation of scarce resources.

If Lionel, MTH, American Models are not allocating major resources to S, dividing the small amount of dollars that is alocated will only lessen the amount of dollars available for FlyerChief, Legacy and new engines.  That is as simple as I can make it.  There is no doubt some small market for Thomas in S, but not enough to drive the hobby.

A nice FlyerChief/Legacy Hudson would bring people in from HO and O as would a new Pacific, Mountain, Northern, F3, F7, and on and on and on.  S is STARVING for new good engines and would grow, if they were produced.  My prime example is the Berkshires - they sold out the first run in less than a month.  I purchased a Polar Berk set and liked it so much I went back for another separate Berk, but they were sold out everywhere.

You can like anything you want, but the majority (small as S may be) want real, new engines - steam, diesel, turbo or whatever.  Give people what they want and they will buy - expanding the S market - back to simple economics.

The length of this PE topic kind of amazes me.  But that's probably because IMHO what we need and would sell is not more or upgraded fantasy stuff.  We (S) are so far yet from having a foundational line-up of real world motive power it isn't funny, particularly when compared to virtually any other gauge or scale bar perhaps standard gauge tin plate.  It amazes me the number of pages, for example, in the latest Lionel catalog dedicated to novelty or fantasy engines and rolling stock (albeit mostly for O gauge).  I mean HotWheels trains, Budweiser, Presidents cars, baby picture cars, Halloween trains, holiday trains, PE, Mickey, Disney, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, Harry Potter, Thomas, etc. Are our O gauge counterparts so saturated with running their Baldwin sharks, streamlined steamers, electric box engines, T1's, T2's, M1's, decapods, etc. that they're buying up fantasy with a fervor?  Maybe, and good for them I suppose, but I'd be very grateful for just a handful of the real world engines they've apparently had too much or too many of and we've yet to see a single release in S.   Not that I don't enjoy LT, PE, Disney, beer, etc.  They're just not what I'd vote for any more or enhancements of in S.  

Dave

Hi Francine

I agree it is simple ECONOMICS.  If you do not grow the market and people keep aging out of the market, the market will dry up and you will never get a Hudson, a GS4 or an SD40.  Now if you expand your market and more dollars are flowing in then you can do more things.  So say new tooling allocations are set at 10% of total sales.  if sales are $10 then they will allocate $1 to new tooling if sales go to $100 then they will allocate $10 to new tooling.  If bringing in new people by building Thomas, Harry Potter or Hot wheels increases sales to $1000. Then they will have $100 for new tooling.  Now the ECONMICS will decide if they should invest the new tooling in Fantasy or in Classic.  The odds are they will do a mix as they want to continue to pull in new blood but they want that new blood to move to the more expensive classic line.

Anyway I have tried my best to explain why both are needed.  I appreciate that those on this forum are of course vested in the classic line (Gilbert, Flyerchief, Legacy), but they need to understand that in order to get new tooling dedicated to what they want, the market needs to expand.

--Rocco--

I hate to beat this dead horse anymore but, economics of the situation is that if you serve the "children S Market" which is tiny, at the expense of the general S market, you will starve the general market into extinction.  In some ways, we're close now, with alot of people who would like to enter, but won't because they can't get what they want.  And what they want isn't child's toys.

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