Lionel Premium Set - the Low Cost option?

Not to worry MTH will copy the features and offer one soon.

After several discussions with MTH folks over the past few years, I'd liken their product development group to scientist engineers. They certainly have the capability to put out superior products, but they focus, or perhaps preserverate, on making sure each new feature is "the best." Nothing wrong with this, except that Lionel has been eating MTH's lunch for like 6-7 years on innovative features that tipped the scales (for us and likely others) in favor of the more feature rich offerings from Lionel.  So our hobby dollars are not going to MTH.  Haven't bought a single MTH steamer in over 3 years.  MTH can interpret the decreased sales volume of O gauge steamers as a sign of dwindling hobby interest and miss the fact that people like us were MTH purists until we discovered products from their competitor that are simply more fun. Anyway...

 

Peter 

Peter,

 

I think you might be comparing apples to oranges WRT street-prices and MSRP's.

 

Lionel's MSRP for the ESE set (loco w/4 cars) is $1950.  Charlie Ro's website price is $1640.

 

MTH doesn't offer the exact same configuration per se, but they do offer the loco for $1200 MSRP, which would be roughly $1100 at most MTH dealers.  The 5-car passenger set lists for $470, with most dealers selling it for $390.  Both importers offer add-on cars too, but it's not one-for-one.  Lionel has a two-pack add-on plus StationSounds diner.  MTH offers several add-ons that bring the total train-length to 11 cars.

 

So on a basic level, we're really looking at $1640 for Lionel vs. $1490 for MTH.  Pretty much business-as-usual as I see it.

 

Sure... Lionel has whistle-steam and excellent Legacy Railsounds going for it's steamers.  And their new 21" cars look promising for those with sufficient real-estate.  Whereas MTH is probably just very happy to have steam production back to normal levels now (with existing tooling), after not shipping steam at all for a few years -- especially to the US market.  Now they need to add/tweak a few features to give them the reputation they once had over Lionel.  It's not gonna be easy though.  Lots of folks jumped over to Lionel for steam after MTH ran into factory issues several years ago (late 2000's) which put them out of the steam business for awhile.

 

I'm glad to see MTH hitting full stride again in the steam department, 'cause it's never good to have only one supplier delivering goods.  Were it not for MTH, Lionel would probably be cataloging non-Vision Line steamers with a $2K MSRP.  Actually, they're almost there now with the FEF at $1700. 

 

David

In recent years, MTH has struck me as being in the "hunker down and weather the storm" mode. They came out guns blazing in 2000 with the DCS system, protosounds 2 in almost everything, and a lot of new locos.

Since then, they appear to be coasting a bit - at least in the domestic market.

 

Graz, you really mean ps3 in 2010. Ps2 was in full swing by 1999/2000.

Full swing? I thought that the Premier PRR Atlantic was the first PS2 loco released and I thought it shipped in 2000 with the actual DCS system shipping later.