I can remember Lionel trains ads in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sundays. There were ads on TV in the early 50's. The local Hobby store always got Lionel Catalogs every year and I would go and get one each year. They were free.
The May Co. & The Higbee's Department stores always had great train layouts set up at Christmas. Lots of Lionel boxes on the shelves.
I really think the best advertisement was the "word of mouth ". Kids talked about Lionel trains year round.
Chuck
The adds tended to be seasonal (big suprise). The biggest "add" was the catalog. Coupons to request a catalog were often found in Sunday comics and the backs of comic books. For a nominal fee (25 cents) you could get the wish book mailed directly to you. Print adds appeared in National Geographic, Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, Hunting and Fishing... There were crossover deals with "sponsors" (coupon craze of the 50's) and product placement was a big deal in those days too. Lionel sponsored a local TV show featuring Joltin Joe DiMagio. And of course you had the big holiday display layouts at big downtown department stores.
Lionel never considered itself a toy TRAIN company, they considered themselves a TOY company that specialized in trains. This was fine when trains were king (aka first half of the 20th century). Lionel's main problem was they did not adapt themselves succesfuly to non train toys. They kept churning out trains after the children's tastes had changed to a more varied fare.
Roget Carp's book, The Art of Lionel Trains, is a great source of info regarding this aspect of the hobby. I highly recommend it.
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
Arguably the most important advertising method by Lionel in the 1920s and 1930s was through their catalogs. It set Lionel apart from everyone. Stores would receive the lavish, color catalogs when they ordered trains for little or no charge. These were then given away for free when anyone asked for one when they came into their store. One could also order a catalog for a dime directly from Lionel who, in turn, would give the persons name to the nearest Lionel dealer. In Lionel's "glory years" of the 1950s, over one million Lionel catalogs were distributed annually, second only to Sears and Montgomery Wards. Lionel's first ad in the comic section was in The American in 1921 and by the late twenties, Lionel was advertising in national magazines with a combined circulation of over 5 million. In Ron Hollander's "All Aboard-The Story of Joshua Cohen", a partial list of magazine ads in the prewar era includes American Boy, Boy's Life, Boy's Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Collier's, Harpers, Literary Digest, and the Saturday's Evening Post to name a few listed. Radio advertising was also an important prewar media with "Uncle Don and his Lionel Engineers Club", where "All boys were eligible" to join the club. Of course Lionel also established endorsements with famous folks and a pretty famous Mouse during the 1930s. For these years gone by, people would actually go and shop in a downtown store (not in a mall, or a suburb, or online). Lionel spent much time and money training and providing store displays and catalogs to make sure that the experience of any boy entering the shop would be unforgettable.
CTT magazine did an issue in 2005 called electric trains of the 1950's. In there was an article about "Lionel in the funny papers." Here are some quotes from the story...
"Sunday comics are tops with me because of the color and the size of the ads. Lionel began placing ads in comics sections in 1921 and did so virtually every year through 1955. During some of those years there was only one format for the Lionel ads. At other times there were several, which makes collecting them more of a challenge."
Sounds like those would look nice on a train room wall!!
Popular Mechanics magazine was one place and I seem to recall LIFE magazine being another. There were also tie-in's on TV shows: I used to love watching Captain Kangaroo just to see the Lionel trains. The Adam's Family also featured a Lionel train layout and The Honeymooners had an episode that made use of Lionel trains. There were Saturday morning kids shows tie ins as well as cereal promotions. And every Sears and Montgomery Ward CHRISTmas catalog featured Lionel trains. Heck, I even remember seeing the Lionel commercials with Johnny Cash during the early MPC years.
As to why there are no commercials for Lionel today? TV advertising is enormously expensive. And unlike the postwar days where a new locomotive was only being tooled up every few years, today's adult customer expects a dozen new scale detailed locomotives in every single catalog. Given that these new scale locos can cost millions of dollars for just one to be tooled up even before it hits the product line for a run of maybe one or two thousand at best, and well....
Go through the train magazines and you will read that nearly every single train company CEO has said puiblically that these new scale detailed locomotives DO NOT make profits (and often actually lose money) until they reach multiple runs. And most don't have multiple runs. But this is where the train companies are pouring millions of dollars.
Kinda ironic too that yesterday's kids that enjoyed seeing the Lionel commercials are the adults of today, some of which are so demanding of what they want made, and so unforgiving of anything representing a "toy" train.
brianel, Agent 027
"Praise the Lord. I may not have everything I desire, but the Lord has come through for what I need."
... in the 40s and 50s (or maybe even 30s)? Which magazines commonly? Radio? TV? Other?
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