don7 Hopefully, there will be others wiling to serve the Model Railroad market. The Pollyscale and Floquil names are well known, hopefully Testor's will be willing to sell their brand names?
Hopefully, there will be others wiling to serve the Model Railroad market. The Pollyscale and Floquil names are well known, hopefully Testor's will be willing to sell their brand names?
Where is Walthers when we need them?
Why don't they step in and buy the brand?
Rich
Alton Junction
richhotrain don7 Hopefully, there will be others wiling to serve the Model Railroad market. The Pollyscale and Floquil names are well known, hopefully Testor's will be willing to sell their brand names? Where is Walthers when we need them? Why don't they step in and buy the brand? Rich
I'd LOVE to see a company like Walthers step up to the plate & offer to buy the brands. Being a much more model railroad specific company, I think they would be much more responsive to MRR's wants & needs.
Carl
"I could never belong to any club that would have me as a member."
Rich,
Good Idea!!! I'll bring it up at our next share-holders,meeting...
Cheers,
Frank
AVRNUT richhotrain don7 Hopefully, there will be others wiling to serve the Model Railroad market. The Pollyscale and Floquil names are well known, hopefully Testor's will be willing to sell their brand names? Where is Walthers when we need them? Why don't they step in and buy the brand? Rich I'd LOVE to see a company like Walthers step up to the plate & offer to buy the brands. Being a much more model railroad specific company, I think they would be much more responsive to MRR's wants & needs. Carl
Walthers is heavily involved in the manufacture and sale of structures. Lord knows, most of my structures are Walthers Cornerstone. It would be a natural for Walthers to scoop up the Pollyscale brand and keep the railroad colors intact.
So I have a question; "Who makes the paint that the RTR manufacturers use? I mean they have to get their "Boxcar Red" and "Armour Yellow" from somewhere, right?
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
For somebody else to buy the "name" would be the easy part. You also have to either buy a facility to make the paint, or sub-contract a current paint company to produce it. Hardly cost effective on either count to just produce a line of paint for just model railroaders ! You guys just aren't getting it.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
Mark R. For somebody else to buy the "name" would be the easy part. You also have to either buy a facility to make the paint, or sub-contract a current paint company to produce it. Hardly cost effective on either count to just produce a line of paint for just model railroaders ! You guys just aren't getting it. Mark.
Mark, with all due respect, you are not getting it, at least on this particular point.
Sure, the chances of Walthers stepping in are next to nil. But, there is precedent for such action.
Can you say Life-Like?
Mark,
With all due,respect,,,I believe most people that have replied,,are getting it,,,and have come to the,conclusion,that we as,Modelers,can't do anything about it..So we exchange Ideas..No harm in that is there??
richhotrain Mark R. For somebody else to buy the "name" would be the easy part. You also have to either buy a facility to make the paint, or sub-contract a current paint company to produce it. Hardly cost effective on either count to just produce a line of paint for just model railroaders ! You guys just aren't getting it. Mark. Mark, with all due respect, you are not getting it, at least on this particular point. Sure, the chances of Walthers stepping in are next to nil. But, there is precedent for such action. Can you say Life-Like? Rich
And this situation is very much like the Life Like buyout. Life Like's parent company was bought by someone not interested in the model train business - so they sold the model train division to someone who was.
Sheldon
It makes no financial sense for Testor's to sell the brand to a competitor! It's better for them to let it die.
Forget the paint, I still say we should bring back stove polish no matter how toxic it is. ( Just kidding)
In any event, no paint I know of can match the realistic effects of a steam engine boiler than stove polish could. Here is a picture of a highly modified Bowser cast brass Mountain painted with stove polish. Although it has lost some of its sheen, It is still holding up. I built it in 1958.
Peter Smith, Memphis.
I remember reading a John Page article in MR about one article he wrote about Stove Polish instead of Floquil and Floquil got upset and pulled their advertisement
My spin on the situation from being in the model railroad biz...Things will have to change for Floquil formulation in the new world, the invasive thinners are going away. Neighboring countries refuse to stock such products (Lost revenue), the post office forces shiping by ground (hard to get to market), and modelers whom never smoke acquiring lung cancer. These are sobering realities and no hobby of any sort should be a hazard. A business inheriting these issues will have some tough decisions on their hands.
Logical business decision making suggests Floquil, as you know it, if it caries on past today, will only be familiar in name. It won't have much relation to the DioSol era from decades ago. Colors will most likey be formulated from the industry standard Pantone charts; perhaps the final shift in color for the Floquil line. Formulation based upon less invasive/milder thinners, perhaps even an acrylic-enamel? The market is moving to Acrylics, more development into Acrylics has also helped into that transition. The real value would be into the PollyS line which would have a longer future to return on investment, and could be made available in other countries like Canada should their bi-lingual labeling and extra container sealing the bottle be followed.
Not to seem negative about Floquil, it just has a tough path ahead to avoid obsolesce, one that may be too expensive and risky for a company to invest in the brand.
Chris Palomarez
Walthers bought the Life-Like NAME - Walthers does not MAKE the product, China does. If they bought the Floquil line, who is going to make it ? Testors is shutting down that paint line. Who do you think is going to make the paint ? I really don't think Testors would continue to make the paint for Walthers if they bought the name. This is the part people aren't getting.
Testors IS the manufacturer. For somebody else to buy the name, they would also have to either find another paint manufacturer to make the paint FOR them, or build their own paint manufacturing company .... hardly a profitable consideration.
This would be like when Ford decided to quit making the Thunderbird because it was no longer profitable - which upset a lot of people. Based on the thought process on the forums, why couldn't Ford sell the Thunderbird name, to say .... Cheverolet ? Let's say that happened. Who's going to MAKE the Thunderbird ? Don't think Ford would continue to make it using their molds and dies for Cheverolet. And I hardly think Chevrolet would tool up a whole new line to keep making the Thunderbird when Ford already deemed it not profitable, for just a small minority of people who loved the Thunderbird. Same thing .... smaller scale.
How's that petition working to bring back the Blue Box kits by the way ? ....
Yup, MR even published the nasty letter fromt he owner of Floquil, withdrawing his advertisements. Some years later, they quietly returned to the pages of MR - probbaly started feeling the effects of not advertising in the top selling hobby magazine while their competitors were.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Walthers bought the Life-Like NAME - Walthers does not MAKE the product, China does.
Not exactly. Regarding the original Proto2000 products from Life Like, they owned the tooling. The tooling was made for them in GERMANY by Brawa, and sent China for sub contract manufacturing. Unlike companies like Broadway who seldom if ever own their tooling.
When Walthers bought Life Like, the design team here in Baltimore stayed here, from a satellite office, and did their job until full transition was complete.
Life Like had a large parts inventory, that went to Milwaukee.
I don't know as much about Walthers like I did about Life Like here in Baltimore, but I suspect Walthers still owns their tooling - they are smart, just like Athearn.
They bought a lot more than just a name.
Peter Smith's comment about returning to the use of stove polish provides a bit of comic relief in this very heated thread. For those of us "of a certain age" recall a time back in the 1950s when MR ran an article on using stove polish to finish model steam engines. The owner of Floquil, then still a small firm in upstate New York, reacted violently, pulling his ads from the magazine and denouncing the magazine for stabbing a loyal advertiser in the back!
But that incident points up a key factor. Floquil was founded by a modeler who cared about the hobby of model railroading. Yes, he needed to make a profit to to stay in business. But as a the owner of a small business, he didn't have to support a large staff much less stock holders. And he didn't make decisions based on market data or market projects. He just did what his personal knowledge of his niche market (and his idiosyncratic views, reasonable or not) dictated. And for forty or so some years that made his line of paints virtually the only one used by North American modelers. But the United States changed. And the business climate within it changed, too. Small companies were bought up and merged into ever larger conglomerates that thought that diversification was the answer to diminishing returns in their own original areas. In most cases, it was a mistake, creating unweildy companies whose bloated middle managements had to oversee lines abourt which they knew or cared nothing. And so, many failed. Modelers may best remember Tyco and how it missmanaged John Tyler's Mantua line, once another model railroad standard, and then cut it adrift . But I could list dozens of other examples of general corporate failures of this sort.
The real problem here may be scale. Not the width between rails, but the size of conglomerates and the difficulty of outsiders to manage businesses about which they personally know nothing. RPM, the ultimate owner of today's Floquil and PolyScale is a case in point. It is a holding company that bought up once profitable firms (that's what made them worth acquiring). In that all the acquired firms deal with "special coatings" of one sort or another it has a certain focus. But the market for DAP, Weldwood, and Rust-Oleum are hardly similar to that of Floquil. And I doubt that within the vast scale of all the products its member firms produce, the rather tiny segment of model railroad paints merit much study or interest. The decision to exit them was probably based on nothing more than some number cruncher's recommendation to cut all lines with less than a certain minimum profit margin. My own experience with such corporate giants suggests that most decisions are made on little real understanding of long term trends in precise sectors, but rather a few general assumptions and the snap decisions of top leaders seeking short term gains. If large corporations were so carefully managed as many posters assume, why have so many, even giants like GM and Lehman Brothers, gone bankrupt?
The lesson I take from this "exiting" of a classic product by a big corporation, is the need to support small businesses and beware of the growing consolidation of production in the hobby into the hands of a few large firms whose collapse will cripple the hobby. I can't help but notice the difference between the manufacturers of craftsmen lines of structures, all small, domestic firms, and the large companies that sell imported rolling stock. If one of the former goes out of business, it will upset a few but not affect the many. When Walthers or Banchmann fails, however, the hobby will reel in turmoil. I personally hope new technology, like the perfection of 3D printing help make it possible for more small firms to enter the rolling stock market and compete with the few big supplies. But who knows, modeling may take a totally unexpected turn, with virtual layouts becoming the wave of the future, making concern for physical trains completely outdated--much like interest in stove polish today
Frank!
Voyager If large corporations were so carefully managed as many posters assume, why have so many, even giants like GM and Lehman Brothers, gone bankrupt?
If large corporations were so carefully managed as many posters assume, why have so many, even giants like GM and Lehman Brothers, gone bankrupt?
Failure to react to market forces.
Unlike, say, RPM International, which is reacting logically to market forces.
Frank, that is a very intelligent commentary. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
richhotrain Frank, that is a very intelligent commentary. Thanks for taking the time to write it. Rich
I second that. Very intelligent and well thought out commentary indeed. Perhaps there in lies the solution that might one day ease the pain of losing Floquil/Polyscale. Some small, independent company in the MRR hobby will realize that there is a niche left void by Floquil's demise, take up the challenge of formulating a line of RR colors that will be as good (or better) and be comfortable filling that void, regardless of how limited it may be. And cater to the needs of the hobbyists, not the bean counters.
AVRNUT richhotrain Frank, that is a very intelligent commentary. Thanks for taking the time to write it. Rich I second that. Very intelligent and well thought out commentary indeed. Perhaps there in lies the solution that might one day ease the pain of losing Floquil/Polyscale. Some small, independent company in the MRR hobby will realize that there is a niche left void by Floquil's demise, take up the challenge of formulating a line of RR colors that will be as good (or better) and be comfortable filling that void, regardless of how limited it may be. And cater to the needs of the hobbyists, not the bean counters. Carl
Personally, I think that is exactly what Tru-Color is doing. I switched from Floquil to Scalecoat years ago for actual railroad colors. Switched from Scalecoat to Tru-Color when it came out and haven't looked back.
The only thing I ever used left of Floquil was some colors for weathering, but the Model Master line more than covers that. I became dis-illusioned with Floquil when they dropped the Diosol thinned finishes and went to an enamel base. Was never the same to me after that. It took years to deplete my large inventory, but the new formula just didn't cut it for me.
Mark
For ten pages now, myself and a few others have been giving this answer - Scalecoat - made by a model railroad company for model railroaders.
Maybe, just maybe, Floquil lost market share after reformulation because Scalecoat is better? It surely is easier for painting rolling stock you plan to decal. It is gloss, eliminating a step and/or an additive. It covers well without hiding detail. It is durable, it cleans up easy, it has a long working time, making it easy to use.
Before Floquil, in the 50's, there was 410M made by Stewart/Lundahl Co. - they got out of the model paint business and the hobby did not die?
But what could I possibly know, I've only been doing this for 43 years, and use to sell this stuff?
For me, it is Pollyscale, the water based acrylic paint that I will miss, not Floquil, the enamel.
richhotrain For me, it is Pollyscale, the water based acrylic paint that I will miss, not Floquil, the enamel. Rich
Good Morning!
Same here for me. Since I got back into this I've pretty much stuck with Pollyscale Acrylic & some Humbrol Acrylic (mostly for detailing & weathering on the Humbrol). I'd be more than willing to give Scalecoat a try, save for one reservation & correct me if I'm wrong. I don't use an airbrush. I'm one of those old kermudgeons that loves hand painting with a brush. From what I've read & heard, Scalecoat is great for airbrushing, but not so hot for hand/brush painting.
I've not tried Trucolor or Tamiya, or even Model Master. Because of that, I've been reluctant to place any sizeable online paint order for paints I've not tried. We only have two MRR shops around here. One is 90 miles away & carries exclusively Floquil & Pollyscale. (Wonder what they're going to switch to?) The other is about 70 miles away. They have Floquil, Pollyscale, Tamiya & Testors. Thing is, their Floquil/Pollyscale rack is almost always 3/4 empty, same with the Tamiya rack. The only one that's always near full is Testors & there's nothing in their line that I want.
While I do have some RTR rolling stock, I love building mostly from kits & have a fair stockpile as yet unbuilt (rainy day fun), so I use a fair amount of paint. Right now I'm working on an Athearn Blue Box undecorated 40 Ft. Pulpwood car. So, kind of in a quandry as to what to switch to once Pollyscale is no longer available.
Carl.
Just my experience with,Tamiya..I do a lot of,Military Modeling,almost all scales there are,figures and vehicles,etc.. I have found,again my experience,,The Tamiya paint,does not take to,painting with a brush very well,,especially large area's..I have tried that way,many times and if you try to put another coat on it,it has a tendency,to take the first one off. That's letting it cure for,at least,three days.. Air-brushing it I had no problem's with it.. Again,Just my experience...
AVRNUT richhotrain For me, it is Pollyscale, the water based acrylic paint that I will miss, not Floquil, the enamel. Rich Same here for me. Since I got back into this I've pretty much stuck with Pollyscale Acrylic...... So, kind of in a quandry as to what to switch to once Pollyscale is no longer available.
Same here for me. Since I got back into this I've pretty much stuck with Pollyscale Acrylic......
So, kind of in a quandry as to what to switch to once Pollyscale is no longer available.
And, again, same for me.
If you look on the Walthers web site, the MSRP for a 1 ounce bottle of Polly Scale Acrylic Railroad Colors is $6.05.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, no one pays retail.
But, figure out the math. At $6.05 an ounce, and 128 fluid ounces in a gallon, that works out to $774.40 a gallon. There has to be a profit in there somewhere.
As someone else pointed out in this thread, some MBA bean counter made a 10-second decision to dump a product that made no sense to the bean counter and that was that.
And, as Sheldon pointed out, no one was talking about Walthers buying the name. Someone should buy the name, the formulation and the Rockford facility that makes the paint.
zstripe Carl. Just my experience with,Tamiya..I do a lot of,Military Modeling,almost all scales there are,figures and vehicles,etc.. I have found,again my experience,,The Tamiya paint,does not take to,painting with a brush very well,,especially large area's..I have tried that way,many times and if you try to put another coat on it,it has a tendency,to take the first one off. That's letting it cure for,at least,three days.. Air-brushing it I had no problem's with it.. Again,Just my experience... Cheers, Frank
Back in the mid 60's thru early 70's I did a ton of military modeling too, armor & aircraft, mostly 1/72 & some 1/4 & 1/32 scale. Used to love to build dioramas in 1/72, WWII era, mostly European theatre & Russian front. I used a lot of Humbrol then & at that time Pactra had a nice line of paints that I always had great results with. A lot of great detailing colors like Zinc Chromate, Gunmetal, Flat Aluminum etc. They had one of the few Yellow colors (I think it was called Trainer Yellow or something like that) that would brush on smoothly, evenly, cover in one coat & not leave streaks, brushmarks & gaps. Really liked that line of Pactra paints & was very disappointed when those suddenly vanished.
Carl,
I know what you mean,,,I still enjoy,doing it..I used to put my dioramas,1/72,in fish tanks,that I purchased from my friends,that wanted out of the fish tank thing,after they come to the conclusion,that they were a pain in the butt,to maintain..The fish tank was a excellent display,dust proof and lighted,,made great nite lights..
Great conversing,with you,,
richhotrainBut, figure out the math. At $6.05 an ounce, and 128 fluid ounces in a gallon, that works out to $774.40 a gallon. There has to be a profit in there somewhere.
Math does not work. A 16 ounce bottle of hydrogen peroxide costs 79c; an 8 ounce bottle costs 99c.
Why? The 16 ounce bottle is more popular and is sold and shipped in large quantities. The smaller 8 ounce bottle is less popular and is handled in much smaller quantities. The price is set on the bottle, the label, the packaging, shipping, overhead and profit for the retailer, overhead and profit for the wholesaler, and manufacturing costs and labor for the manufacture.
Same with paint. You pay for the bottle. As you say, a 1 ounce bottle at the hobby shop costs $5, a 2 ounce bottle of a generic paint at Walmart costs 99c. The hobby shop has higher labor costs, and has more product sitting on the shelf for a longer period of time. If he invested his money on something else he would get a better return on it, so while that money is tied up in a bottle of paint on a back shelf, he must still continue to earn interest on that money or he will not stock the paint to begin with.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
ahhh, LION, I understand all of that stuff.
But the math works simply because it is math, no matter that it disregards other production factors.
My point is that the production of Polly Scale is, and can continue to be, profitable.