If you compare the products Lionel put out in 1970, to what you see today, much of it quite frankly was a cheaply made copy of post war products, instead of cast metal frames were all plastic, crappy trucks, cheap couples and so forth, the engines were still using the old open frame engine and mechanical e-unit. The car we are paying for today is generally scale or scale like and from what I have seen, isn't the rubbery plastic boxcar that you could almost bend (gondolas and flat cars could be flexed). That 5 dollar boxcar based on standard measures would be about 25 bucks today, but take into consideration the kind of rolling stock we are comparing it to, and it is comparing two different beasts, you would need to compare it to the high end of what came out then, and see, and even then may not be comparable.
Comparing MPC trains to what Lionel was making in the 1960's, or even the late 1950's, I think they are very similar. Mechanically, MPC started making improvements over what the Lionel Corp was doing right away.
They made a mistake using scout type rollers, but overall, the diesel truck they developed was better made than the late Postwar Lionel diesel truck. (I've seen more used locos with good gears than bad, including some very high mileage ones)
People complained about the plastic gears splitting. I wonder whether the problem had anything to do with using the wrong lubricants. According to some information I found on the web, using the wrong lubricant can cause the premature failure of plastic parts.
People wanted open frame motors and mechanical e-units.
People would not have accepted can motors or electronic reverse units.
Scale detailed stuff is great for the people who like and can afford to buy.
Sixty dollar boxcars (and up) are a barrier to new people getting into the hobby.
Perhaps I didn't look at the Coke boxcars close enough. I think they list for $85, with a street price around $60. They have metal trucks, other than that, they look to be about the same as a 9200 series boxcar. They do not appear to be scale detailed cars.
I don't think people wanted open frame motors and mechanical e-units, in 1974 Lionel could have used DC can motors and an electronic reversing unit that would work fine with the transformer based control, and on a per unit basis would not, I can almost guarantee you, change the price of the engine involved. In 1974 DC can motors were not exotic technology, nor would be an electronic reverse unit, my dad was an EE, my brother a serious electronics hobbyist, and they could have created such a thing, with the open frame motor and mechanical reverse units Lionel had the production technology totally paid for (depreciated), and probably a large backlog of them in inventory. If they worked, people wouldn't have cared for the most part.
Looking at the Trainland website, I see boxcars in the range of 25-50 bucks, and many of those in the upper end are specially named ones, like a "NY Yankee" box car that by its very nature is going to be more expensive (licensing for one, plus it being a 'collectible'), and if you translate that to 1974 dollars, that is 5-10 bucks. Even that 60 buck boxcar is about 12 bucks in 1974 dollars (using the official inflation rates of 5-1).
The price list doesn't have any high end engines it looks like, but for example the 1200 dollar engine of today in 1974 if my math holds would be about 240 bucks.....expensive in 1974, and from what I recall of the time a top end MPC engine might have been half of that (talking something like a hudson reproduction), but it also didn't have what that 1200 dollar engine has. Looking at the ordinary diesels on the list, they were running around 40 bucks, with mechanical e-units and open frame motor, which today would be 200, and with that, you are getting into the range of what a lion chief plus unit can run you, which has command control and sound not available in 1974....
Yes, there has been inflation above the level of general inflation with Lionel, but I think you also have to be careful trying to claim that prices on stuff today is outrageous and wasn't expensive in 1974, with salaries of the time and typical cost of living, a 5 buck boxcar might not sound like a lot, but using minimum wage of the time, it likely cost 2.5 hours of work to buy it (leaving out taxes) at 2 an hour, which was the official rate in 1974 (for covered jobs). Federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, it is current 7.90 an hour (and given that with the inflation of the 1970's that 2 buck rate likely had not kept up with prior inflation), so it would cost you a little over 3 hours of work to buy that 25 buck boxcar (which do exist, which are like the 5 buck boxcars people talk about seeing in stores, are discounted).
I am not saying trains are cheap, but they always have been a discretionary purchase. What made trains cheap back in 1974 was not Lionel pricing IMO, it was that there was a ton of post war trains out there people were trying to get rid of, and it was a flood on the market, there were tons of people where at a garage sale you could get for 50 bucks a lot of stuff, post war hadn't become a collectors market (and then an overheated mess in the 1980's as it became another of the 'get rich quick schemes' of some), and that made it cheap, even with the prices of post war having dropped from those heights, you don't find too many "50 bucks buys it all", in part because people still have this idea it is a collectors item.
Today Lionel is a bit different, because they are definitely aimed at more affluent buyers who have the money and so forth, and being a speciality niche, they also charge for that, and that has led to some things being priced above their 1974 level (accessories, for example), but I remember that tinplate automated switches were already in the 20 buck range in 1974, and that is pretty much what they go for today, and there are things like lionchief plus sets that to me are priced better than anything they had in 1974, given what it gives you *shrug*.
