Show your old Lionel comic ads

I remember that exact ad, and I did take advantage of the offer (and any other offers Lionel made in those days).  Waiting in eager anticipation for the mailman to arrive, day after day and sometimes week after week, was one of the memorable events of my boyhood.

I just wish I still had the record and the billboards.  I believe I probably do still have the catalog since most of my childhood Lionel catalogs survived the years.

Lucky kid...was that the promotional 45 or 78 rpm?   I remember a kid friend of mine having a clear 45 rpm record of the bells and whistles that he sent away for...the one in this comic look like a picture based 45.  Biggest thrill as a kid was to get any package you sent away for with your name on it...

Wow!  That really brings back some great memories.  They really knew how to excite us kids.

Art

An advertisement in the style of a comic strip in which the DL&W Train Master, Texas Special F3 and gang car are prominently featured:

Bob

Allan, I ordered the same thing but never got it. I waited and waited everyday. The one thing I did get was the little plastic stamps to design a layout. Anyone remember those? Now that was cool. Don

Roger Carp has a book "The Art of Lionel Trains".  It has advertising copy and other promotional material by Lionel and their competitors from the 1900's all the way to 2003.

Anyone remember the fake certiciate showing you owned a share in Lionel stock?

Balto, don't remember that promotion but I do own one square inch of land somewhere in Canada. Don

I must have been reading the wrong comic books!  I don't remember ever seeing a Lionel ad!  Sometime in the early to mid fifties I even had a Lionel train for around the Christmas tree!  Of course it was only up for two weeks at the most.  

In High School I had a paper route that covered the 1400-1500 blocks of 9th st. in Reading just the north side of the 6th st. yards(there was no 7th or 8th st in that area due to the rail yards and Reading shops).  Remember the trains but I never even once attempted to go there.   

Lionel adds were not only in comic books but they were also in the funny papers. Don

As I recall, it was a 78.  I believe back then the 45s had a big hole in the middle.  Sounds were locomotive sounds.

I don't ever remember seeing these ads either.  Sure do remember the Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs though, with all the train sets circled in pencil!

And in just about every issue of "Boys Life."

Yep!  That's another one I had, Don!  Long gone, of course.  The clear plastic track sections were a great way to get started in layout design.  Those were great days when imagination was combined with manual dexterity.

Yes, indeed! The Sunday funnies would have a BIG ad on the front page right below "Blondie". I remember sticking a dime and the coupon into an envelope with a 2 cent stamp on it. Has anyone noticed, these keyboards don't even have a "cent" symbol on them anymore.

Anyone who tells me that those weren't great days to be a youngster interested in toy trains is someone who obviously didn't experience that period.  Yes, society had its woes back then, but by and large they pale in comparison to what we are living with today.

I wish Lionel would still do fun stuff like that, especially the stamp kit!

McComas and Tuohy published a book on advertising and art as part of their six volume series on Lionel. Here is a link.

Some ads from comics are reproduced.

Allan, I remember well when the new Lionel catalog would come out. Every boy would show up at the hobby shop then run home and daydream about those wonderful trains. Those illustrations in the catalog were truly the stuff of dreams for us. There were two kinds of kids then. Lionel kids and American Flyer kids. The Lionel kids outnumber the AF by a large margin so of course we kind of looked down on them. Even felt sorry for them. Some of us had both Lionel and Marx mixed on the same layout. I didn't know anyone with a railroad larger than a 4x8 sheet of plywood and those were the lucky ones. It's so much fun to remember those days. Don

There were ads in the National Geographic.  Newspaper ads were primarily only in larger cities.  I don't mean New York or Chicago big cities but Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee sized big cities where there would have been more than one large department store in the "downtown" area.  The comic book ads would have been ending by the late 50's as other toys took over and trains were being pushed aside (think "Army Men", Amazing Sea Monkeys, etc).

Here's an ad which appeared in the November 1953 issue of Farm Journal.

Bob

This is one of my favorites.

Didn't the Lionel ads appear in Boy's Life Magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America?

On the subject of Boys' Life, here are images of the December 1938 issue's cover - check out what the kid on the right is holding - and the Lionel ad which appeared within the body of the magazine.

Bob

Here's an interesting piece. According to my research, Leo Marks was a jewelry store in Toledo, OH. Like many businesses at the time, the store evidently carried model trains during the holiday season. This is a 50s era Leo Marks newspaper ad featuring Lionel equipment. Perhaps some OGR Forum posters bought trains here and can provide additional information.

Bob 

Great ads, CNJ 3676.  I'd like to comment on the Farm Journal one.  If that son received four trains plus accessories, he sure did have a Merry Christmas!

I like the information column on the right side about putting out warfarin to kill rats.  Warfarin is one of the medicines used to treat heart patients now!  

I must have been reading the wrong comic books!  I don't remember ever seeing a Lionel ad!

Neither did I.  I saw ads for Schwinn bicycles aplenty, but never anything from Lionel.

Sure do remember the Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs though, with all the train sets circled in pencil!

Yeah, same here!  I used to ignore almost every other part of the Sears Christmas catalog, focusing instead on the toy train section.  That's where I first learned about all the Lionel and Marx accessories I could use with my Lionel trains.

... don't remember that promotion but I do own one square inch of land somewhere in Canada.

Wasn't it in Alaska?  I have two of those "Big Inch Land Company" deed certificates, which makes me a land baron, I guess.

I remember Gabby Hayes on Saturday morning TV, assuring me that if I kept on eating Shredded Wheat (or was it Puffed Wheat?), why I'd end up with "miles an' miles of land!"  Alas, it never happened.  It was a clever promotion, though.

There were two kinds of kids then: Lionel kids and American Flyer kids. The Lionel kids outnumbered the AF by a large margin, so of course we kind of looked down on them. Even felt sorry for them. Some of us had both Lionel and Marx mixed on the same layout. I didn't know anyone with a railroad larger than a 4x8 sheet of plywood and those were the lucky ones.

Oddly enough, I never knew anyone who had American Flyer trains.  Which is odd, because my father worked at a local hardware store one Christmas, selling AF trains in their Toyland.  You'd think I'd have met at least one Flyer fan through that connection, but I never did.

I did have one friend who had a Marx M-10000 set (for his sake, I hope he still has it), but never met a Flyer fan.

Oh yeah, and our Christmas layout was 4x8, too.  Although it seemed a lot bigger to me at the time.

Biggest thrill as a kid was to get any package you sent away for with your name on it...

To this day, I get a kick out of receiving packages in the mail, even if it's only a box of train parts.

My Uncle gave me one fo those records last year, but no ads.

God...I love those ads!

I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island in the 50's & 60's.  From

1958 to 1962 I had a paper route.  The Providence Evening Bulletin

would have some great ad's within during the Christams season from

the major department stores in downtown Providence.

I only wish I kept some.  I remember in 1962 Lionel Husdon's &

Santa Fe F-3's with passenger cars and freight cars in the Outlet

Company's ad's for the season.  If that was not cool enough Sears

would have Lionel & Marx trains with great pictures of what was being

offered.

The best part was going downtown and looking in the display windows

of the department stores, and like Ralphie and his friends seeing the

real trains in action.  Please correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe

Lionel during the year would post ad's of their trains in comic books.

I can only remember so much from that time like others here, but as

Woody Allen said at the end of his movie "Radio Days" from the 30's

& 40's. "Each year the memories get dimmer and dimmer."

Great topic and pictures.

Many thanks,

Billy C 

Here's a pre-war era advertisement which was run in the Baltimore Sun by Hecht Brothers Department Store.

Bob

Wow, I still get excited when I look at those adds.

If you're truly interested in the golden years of toy train advertising, John Holtmann's digital archive is a "must have" for your library collection.  Talk about something that will rekindle great memories!  Wow!

See his post further up in this thread.

Christmas in Buffalo, NY, 1954:

During the 50s, Lionel ran full page advertisements in comic books released by the St. John Publishing Company. One such ad is pictured below.

Bob