Lionel trains is all that I thought about as a boy in the 1950s and 1960s. One teacher told my Mom that she should take those trains away from me. Almost 70 years old and I am still enjoying them.
@@johnkearney2513 Agree with you even though my Mom would never do that. Instead, I had loving parents (and a Grandpa) that indulged me with my love of Lionel Trains over the years. I am now 71 years old and am still playing with them. Thanks for the comment.
I had the chemistry sets, microscope sets. I went on to study biology and chemistry and then had a career in medical technology. After all those years, I still have my Lionel trains and a wealth of memories to go with them. Thank you Lionel for feeding my imagination and curiosity about the world.
I grew up in Pass Christian, Mississippi & we didn’t get to see those Lionel commercials cause we had….No TV . But all is super well cause at 80+ I am enjoying what I didn’t see.🥳🥳🥳🎉🎉
I love the Lionel engineering sets. I had the weather station, plastics and electronics sets as a kid. I went into electronics engineering. I built some fixtures through the years out of Delrin plastic that I had learned about in the early 60s from the Lionel plastics engineering set.
My Dad bought me a spring loaded rocket launcher Lionel Train when he retired from Army in1961. Not enough track, he said, and he went out and bought a LOT more track. 35 years of Army and war, time for trains, golf, and fun!
Talk about time travel! I remember some of those commercials!! Never had any of the science sets but saw them in the Lionel Catalog, which between my brother and I would get a few of every year; we would wear them out looking, reading and dreaming!!! My early 1960's Lionel HO train set had 4 cars - a tiny "Hustler" type diesel decorated for M & St.L, Minneapolis & St. Louis, a wind-up "Satellite" launcher (round gizmo, three prop blades in a ring with a stem to stick in a spring and wind (Whine - D) up to launch, an "Exploding Box Car" we used to put "caps" into to liven things up, and a Caboose. The caboose was the most realistic car in the set. It seemed to be actually in scale. It had sprung trucks. SPRUNG TRUCKS!!! 4 tiny brass springs on each truck allowing independent motion for each wheel!!! In the early 1960's in a Toy Department Shelf Set!!! Can you imagine some of those toys in 2020? Using your kitchen oven to bake and create your boat?? Using your science kit to control 120 volt electricity??!! It was all normal back then! I made molten wax with a light bulb with my Emenee Formex 7 to hand pour into molds!!! You'd have to log in then read and e-sign hundreds of forms in legalese that even lawyers can't read!!! Thanks for the childhood Rememberies!!!!!!
I've never owned any model trains, and never knew about all those special cars that Lionel put out. I also never knew about the science sets. How cool!
This commercial had the cold war written all over it. I had those exploding box cars and a stationary rocket launcher. I had to be real careful putting them back together as it was like a mousetrap if I didn't do it right. I was 8 years old in 1961 and loved President Kennedy.
There's a safety catch under the car to lock the spring action when you reassemble the Boxcar. Always struck me as funny that the Ammo Car details were in English. They should have been in Cyrillic.
Before my time, however, I received a multi/project electronic breadboard kit from some company. It launched my career! Perhaps we should bring some of this back?
"Quick mom, bring in the baby! It's starting to rain!" I could've used a device like this. I've lost track of how many times the baby was left in the rain.
They were getting pretty desperate by then, taking on American Flyer from Gilbert and basically doing nothing with it certainly didn't help. Really wasn't the same after Mr. Cowen retired, but I think he saw the writing on the wall.
They were getting pretty desperate to find something that would sell after the kiddos started losing interest in the trains and the sales slumped when the space race kicked off. 3D cameras, fishing reels, all the science stuff, slot cars, nothing really worked. Then they had the gall to go buy out American Flyer which was on the rocks even worse, which put them in even more of a financial pickle. In the end, the original Lionel Corporation gave up the ghost and its assets were acquired by General Mills, who figured they wanted to sell kids toys as well as their morning munches, and became a division of their Model Products Corporation subsidiary. From there, got spun off several times until we get to today's Lionel LLC, which is basically a completely different company which retains all of the old Lionel and American Flyer assets.
it was right around 1957 (the year of sputnik) when Lionel went off the rails with rockets and satellites and helicopters and submarines and bobbing giraffes and pastel locomotives - ridiculous junk.
Actually, space and rockets were a HUGE deal in that period and Lionel just wanted to ride on those coat tails. Also, they needed to cater to what the market was now wanting. Lionel Trains was already waning as THE toy boys wanted every Christmas. The space items with more "play value" likely helped sales. The pastel "Lady Lionel" was, however, a huge mistake made by all men around the conference table injecting their stereotypes into product design. They didn't understand that if a girl wanted a train set, she ALSO wanted it to be like real trains. But Lionel's 'Girl's Set" was a very rare failure for Lionel marketing.
@@trainliker100 The irony is that the Girl's Set is now a valuable collector's item exactly because it was a flop back then, and most got sent back to Lionel to be repainted into the standard colors, so they're hard to come by. What's not commonly known is that there was intended to be a companion set for the Girl's Set known as the Boy's Set, intended for one's little brother/cousin/etc. so he could have a train of his own. It was supposed to have a bright blue engine, and the cars were to have bright primary colors like crayons in a box. They were just starting to get the prototypes made when the Girl's Set tanked, so the Boy's Set was scrapped. It was eventually made during the modern era along with a remake of the girl's set as a tip of the hat, and are also collector's items now.
@@Shipwright1918 there was a guy who had one of the Lionel boy train sets it was valued at $30,000 and when he was on display in a case he had an armed guard watching it I saw a picture of it in a train magazine. It's funny when they were flop the trains for painted regular colors and then when they became a collector's item every Lady Lionel set had to smell a fresh paint. My dad bought my sister a set and she couldn't care less.
Back when the World was normal and young boys grew up to become men. Not like the WOKE freak show that is rammed downed our throats today! Thanks for sharing.
I still have one of those "Enemy Ammunition Cars" (0:38) in HO scale. A mousetrap like set up. The roof and both sides scatter apart. Molded in red plastic. Detail is not very good, but it's a fun piece. Polystyrene may be getting brittle 60 years on. Explode at your own risk Never had the missle launchers.
The quality of Lionel's trains may have overall dropped in the '60s, but they certainly didn't loose their penchant for coming up with clever ways to create entertaining mechanical movement. I'm not the hugest fan of the military themed trains, but I don't fault Lionel for making them- if trains on their own weren't selling as well, they needed a gimmick. And space and the cold war were on everyone's minds then, so it makes sense Lionel would cash in on that to avoid losing more of the toy market. It's hard to say just when Lionel lost its quality, but certainly the '60s were when it started to go off the cliff- more and more plastic, less metal. Less robust construction. Cost cutting corners all over the place. They did what they had to to stay in business I'm sure. It's still a little sad. At least they tried their best, even if it couldn't hold off the inevitable demise of the Lionel Corporation.
I've never seen any of those science kit , never knew about them and never seen any of these advertised . I was born in 58 . The only thing that I have seen was the trains but only the O scale . Like the science and engineering kits never known anyone who had HO trains back then .
This was the time. That Lionel trains came out with the Scout line of complete garbage. Incompatible couplers no details locomotives that were unserviceable and unreliable he wanted to compete with marks at the lower end of trains and he should have left that end of the market to him. Another instance of where he misspent company finances. People who say O gauge trains take up too much space have a humongous ho layout that is bigger than the O gauge layout would have been.
What are these toys? they are amazing man todays toys look good and certanly have quailty if their design But these... these are something else man i was born in the wrong generation
Lionel wasted so much money on gimmicks like the helicopter car and the satellite car and the launching car and exploding box car. They should have done better by not deleting details so they can fit a cheaper box. It's a shame that Lionel did not let his son take over the company. If a Model Railroader ran Lionel trains they would not have been any cheapening of quality and they would have expanded the line better. And they wasted so much money buying the science set company and the record company and the fishing rod company what stupid business decision they were. Sank the company what a shame.
Ho gauge trains like the double O that Lionel made before the war we're a failure sales wise Lionel should have just kept to what it knew best and not try to dabble into things it did not. Poor quality imported trains did not help their reputation any.
Well,being in food marketing I think where Lionel took the wrong track was not recognizing that O gauge and even O27,while OK for going around a Christmas tree were still too large for people wanting to run trains all year as a hobby. Their marketing error was not realizing people in NYC,Philadelphia,Boston,Balt/Wash were moving out of apartments and buying their first homes. No room for high priced O gauge Lionel trains and still no room for a layout all year long. Lionel should have taken the HO track. Affordable with less space requirements.
