What did MPC do differently?

Probably the most important thing was General Mills kept the Lionel name alive and was able to provide the money to keep producing trains. More specifically, the Lionel name was under General Mills' ownership and moved the production plant from New Jersey to Mt. Clemens, Michigan, where Lionel would be producing trains in the USA there for another 30 years, and the HQ would be placed nearby in Chesterfield. At the point MPC was owning Lionel, it began the focus of Lionel's products being both for adults and children, especially adults.

Ms. Jennifer,

MPC had a reputation for quality products. It was purchased along with Lionel by General Mills. IMHO The name was used as a marketing ploy to save the Lionel name. Soon after Lionel Trains also carried the MPC brand. There's a little more to the story, however, that's how it started in the early 1970's. I'm sure the Lionel historians will jump in soon.

Economies of scale.....

MPC was a established plastic model manufacture and designer. When General Mills bought Lionel and put them under the MPC label they were able to utilize MPC's large staff for design and the manufacturing facilities like mold cutting and injection molding machines.  Injection machines are so costly you want them to run 7/24. MPC had the talent and capacity to produce Lionel items and General Mills was able to add Lionel to its portfolio without any big investment in new equipment and facilities. 

For us today it ended up a win win......

MPC also used improved painting/decorating techniques that were more advanced than what Lionel customers were used to. From that standpoint, the product quality improved over what it had been previously.

MPC produced more paint schemes and railroad names.

They also experimented with a few new freight cars.

MPC got the O Scale car molds imported to the factory in Mount Clements, Michigan.

Andrew

They saved the Lionel name . But they became a "different" Lionel too.

 While some ideas were innovative improvements, others hurt the brand tremendously.

  My own perception was at any dept. store, the only difference between Lionel, and the super cheap toy next to it, was the transformer vs batteries, and metal wheel sets. Oh... then they blew that with DC trains and all plastic wheels "the birth of the can motor locomotive" The battery set was a better deal. "My Lionel" died slowly under MPC.  

 . Over years Lionel reputation was reduced to more of a toy company vs a model train producer. By the later half of the seventies, my Grandfather, a collector since the early 30s, had stopped pre-orders altogether after the Bicentennial issues.

No MPC engine I have has gone without "life support" repairs needed, except for the Pulmor Generals.

The lighted passenger cars trucks pickup meltdowns aren't impressive either.

The "mighty sound of steam" wasn't too bad. But I had seen two other "static" chuff systems in aftermarket tenders, long before that. And they sounded better than the early MSOS (beats a giant rolling rattle)

 TMCC finally got my attention again...well almost. That's another story though. I only even looked at TMCC again after my first encounter, because of learning about Neil Young's involvement. For me, a sign there had to be some hope, for Lionel's improvement ahead.

Wow, what a history lesson.  Jim, thanks for the pictures.  As you said, lots of color there.  Bob S.

I highly recommend volume IV of the TM books on Lionel, titled: Lionel, A Collectors Guide and History, volume IV, 1970 - 1980. There is a lot of information about the purchase of Lionel, and how MPC restarted the company.

The first MPC catalog (1970) was sparse, but their line of product grew rather rapidly.

IMHO, part of MPC's success was timing.

They also stopped appealing to a mass market........It was no longer the principal toy desired by young boys......it became a niche market.....appealing to the PostWar youngsters, who having grown up, had disposable income and a wish for both nostalgia and new products.....that was me!

Here's me circa 1980.....check out the cool 70s-style mustache!

Peter

Someone at MPC/General Mills was a visionary. In 1969 sales of Lionel trains were at an all time low. MPC ( a toy manufacturer) recognized that they may be an emerging collector market and went after it. This was a time when many of us were perhaps in our teens but by the end of the decade an audience of 20 and 30 years olds emerged to form a brisk collectors market that was reliving their childhood memories and buying trains. During this period the coveted F3's, GG1's and FM engines were re-introduced along with a wide array of rolling stock. The workings were simple and just about the same as P/W Lionel. MPC mainly sold rolling stock and simple accessories. In some cases MPC cut corners and manufactured unpainted box cars, devoid of rivet detail,  with the coloring supplied only by the base plastic. The horns and whistles in engines were largely missing until the 80's. Their prime innovation was the fast angle O gauge needlepoint trucks.

By and large, MPC made reasonably priced, reliable, colorful, good running products until 1990 when it was time to pass the torch. MPC products while never gaining the collector status or value of earlier and later trains still remain a good buy to this day. if you see MPC trains at the shows the prices are usually very reasonable and its all Made in the USA. Great stuff for the model railroader on a tight budget.

Peter; Why the white gloves to run the trains???

I think peter needed the gloves because he  just used the armourall on that ZW.

I have a friend who collects cameras. He puts on a pair of white cotton gloves to handle them.

....I did use ArmorAll exclusively at the time......I'm not sure what I was doing that I had gloves on.....I used to use those to work on the car, changing oil, waxing it, etc......

Peter

Peter, do you still wear the engineer cap and bandana when you run trains?  Were the overalls in the laundry? 

It's a great period photograph; thanks for sharing.

I think the book All Aboard had a section on the sale to General Mills in along with the early years of MPC...........Paul

Saved Lionel from a long decline. Brought back the dedication it took to make it work and saved a name for future generations. it took hard work, using small budgets, and a man who had never owned a train set to put it back in order. it took the ma while, but with the loss of infighting, and mostly a straight forward corporate struggles they rebuilt it, brought variety back, and with time more innovation.

How do you tell if its MPC?

What engines are considered to be good?

I would say that MPC was anything built from 1970 to roughly 1984.....I believe for about 1-2 years Lionel were owned by Kenner-Parker before being sold to Mr Kughn.

My favorite thing about MPC were the Famous Name Boxcars.....

Oh, and in answer to Carl's question, now I wear bow ties.....

Peter

    I was there when the MPC products began to be introduced. Dennis LaGrua explains it best.

    1. "Timing is everything." MPC started to bring back some of the great postwar Lionel products when I had finished college, married, had three kids and a good job. Now I could afford the Lionel trains that I used to just dream of having as I read the latest Lionel catalogs when I was a kid.

         I believe that what happened to me above, was happening to a lot of young men and woman who found themselves in the position I was in and who now could finally afford that two-motor GG-1 or whatever.

    2.  Much of the excitement of that time (1970-1980's) was getting the new Lionel catalog and looking to see which legendary Lionel engine or accessory they would be resurrecting next from Lionel's postwar era.

         After releasing GP-7's, GP-9's, Atlantics, switchers, the big news came when Lionel/MPC announced that they would bring back the Hudson in 1984!

         MPC did a nice job of preserving Lionel and they did it at a time when there was a market of grown-up baby boomers who could afford to keep it going.

John Knapp

Erie, not Eerie

In my opinion MPC brought the O Gauge market back to what it is today.

Art

I love my collector line MPC. Very colorful, and fast point needle wheels for the cars to run smooth. Most of the engines run extremely well if taken care of and you can still get parts for almost everything, because they used postwar type parts. MPC kept the Lionel name alive. MPC items are still available, many in mint in the box condition. Some items still commanding a premium....and some people call MPC Junk...thats crazy...MPC and Postwar will still be running when these newly made Chinese trains wont run anymore because of blown circuit boards :-)

Here's what I remember so it's not exactly factual, but my opinion, having been a kid thru the end the post war years and into the early MPC era.  Almost all of my Lionel trains were from the 40's and 50's passed down by my father to me.  The cars in general were plastic, but heavier with all metal trucks and wheels with sturdy metal couplers.

When I wanted to add more Lionel product, the new stuff was all MPC.  My parents called it "More Plastic C**p".  Even as a kid, that's what I remember the most about it.  Most of low end cars were too light, all plastic construction right down to the couplers, wheels, and trucks.  They were prone to string line and each one needed a heavy load just to run with my post war stuff.  Also, much of the detail was often removed compared to my post war cars of similar type like gondolas or hoppers.

Anything I added had to be old stock from hobby stores rather than toy stores.

Now that I'm an adult, I have discovered that not all the MPC stuff was bad at all, but there was a lot of low end junk which polluted or clouded my thinking probably started in the end of post war era and some of which continued on in the MPC era.  To this day, I still avoid the overly plastic ultra light weight cars you see at train shows but admire the post war "re-pops" with better or new paint jobs. 

Still won't go for any plastic trucks though...But don't mind the fast angle wheels to reduce friction.

I'm all about postwar & mpc stuff. like Mark said, if cared for, the MPC trains run very well. They are colorful, affordable & for the most part, built very close to postwar Lionel.  I have all MPC stuff on my layout right now. Love it!

I came to the MPC party late but have thoroughly enjoyed collecting and operating some of their locos and rolling stock. A few years ago I started picking up some of the collector sets (Quaker City, Royal Limited, etc.) and a few of the Service Station Sets.

Fun, reliable and great looking trains!

Its true that MPC used unpainted bodies and cars with plastic trucks. That is what they inherited from the Lionel Corp. Many Lionel trains of the 1960's, and even the very late 1950's had plastic trucks, and unpainted bodies. I guess the passenger cars had metal trucks, but at the moment, I cannot think of any other rolling stock that had metal trucks. (The 1969 6464 boxcars may have had metal trucks, I'd have to check)

Great question, Jennifer!  Thanks for asking!  Great information, everyone who has answered!

Having just come to O gauge trains after being in the smaller scales since the '60s.  Dennis' comment about the date Lionel hit an all time low is probably a big reason I bought HO when I bought my first train set.  At that time, I viewed HO as far superior.  About 3 years ago I made the jump to O gauge being impressed with the new offerings by Lionel, MTH, Williams bB, Weaver.   My eyes and arthritic hands told me I needed to dump HO for a larger scale.  I had sold off my HO over the previous few years to help pay our daughters' tuition.  It has just been in the last year, I have come to appreciate the MPC offerings.  I now see they can be a real asset to the tight budget modeler like myself, who is still trying to get one kid out from under our roof, but also staring retirement and health issues in the face.

Peter, if that mustache looks '70s, then what my brother says must be true.  He has said since the '80s that my wife and I are 30 years behind the times.  ;-)  No, I never had a leisure suit and I hated Disco.  ;-)

I think the 1969 6464s had the metal trucks

See if you can find this book

And I will add, for those who call MPC Junk, if it wasn't for MPC and General Mills saving Lionel, everything available today wouldn't even be around!!! You might be collecting HO instead :-)

Why armorall on a ZW?

I'd have to agree with Paul's assessment above.

When comparing my Dad's postwar 027 set to the Sound of Steam set that a relative handed down to me, the in-hand quality was night and day. The MPC cars were feather light, the plastic was thinner and more flexible (which translated to cheaper feeling) and the cars were molding in color rather than painted which also looked cheaper.

I'm sure that the MPC postwar repo's were great but the starter sets smelled of cheapness.

A big improvement made in the MPC years that has not been mentioned that really improves rolling stock running qualities is the introduction of Fast angled wheels. 

Why armorall on a ZW?

It made it shiny again....

Peter

For me it was all about demographics.  I turned six the year the Lionel name was leased and the tooling was sold to General Mills/MPC, and in college when Richard Kughn took over.  These were MY Post War years.  

I'll just add that VERY little production was the extremely cheap product people seem to remember.  Sure, you'd find low-end starter sets at Toys R Us and (oddly enough) Lionel Kiddie City that had all-plastic construction... but the most popular sets were in the mid-range, like the ever-present "Chesapeake Flyer" or one of the Santa Fe Double Diesel sets.

I'd also add that their creative use of old tooling (ie: GP-7/9 becoming the GP-20, SD-9 etc) and their expertise at creating spectacular new tooling such as the Baby Madison cars and the wood-side reefers kept excitement alive.

Throw in the development of the die-cast sprung truck, and the really cool building kits, and it was great fun!

Jon

MPC/General Mills, as has previously been mentioned, had the foresight to see the value of the Lionel name brand and increased market share of its associated O gauge product line.

They immediately brought a larger variety of roadnames & colors to postwar-derived locomotives & rolling stock, in addition to coming out with some entirely new products.  In regards to plastic freight trucks, that started with the Lionel Corp. with the AAR & archbar trucks beginning in the late 1950's, and with a handful of exceptions, was the norm on their freight rolling stock up to the end of the postwar era.  MPC/General Mills' own contribution was making the trucks out of Delrin (engineering plastic) that, in conjunction with fast-angle wheels and needlepoint bearings, greatly reduced friction so you could pull longer trains with relative ease compared to postwar cars.  Also under General Mills came the die-cast sprung bettendorf trucks and the introduction of Standard O (scale-sized freight cars).

Granted, there was some "cheapening" of some of the product line, but the reality is that this cheapening trend originated with the Lionel Corp. itself starting in the mid-1950s onward, including the removing of details of the F3.  Actually if you look at the NW-2 switcher, that was one example of MPC/General Mills putting detailing back on the NW-2 switcher that Lionel Corporation began removing during the 1960s such as headlight lenses, wheel antenna, horn, marker lights, etc.

Many MPC/General Mills detractors forget, or choose to overlook, that in those early "modern era" years toy train sales were still abysmal, a carryover of declining sales during the late postwar period, and as a company taking on a (new to them) product line, General Mills was not going to jump right in by making enormous investments towards tooling upgrades/improvements and more assembly-intensive upgrades.   They still had to learn the process of making trains and how to sell them to the established market in addition to researching how to increase market share, and none of those just happen overnight.

Quite simply, if General Mills hadn't stepped in, the Lionel Corporation very likely would have completely dropped out of the toy train business, do a fire sale of their remaining product runs, sell the toy train tooling for scrap, and then no more Lionel trains, period.  Sure there was a possibility some other company might have stepped in, but the fact is, Lionel trains was not profitable at that time and that alone was immediately off-putting to most prospective buyers.  In that regard, MPC & General Mills was the "Richard Kughn" of that period, no question about it, IMHO.

Hear!  Hear!  Many people do bash MPC quite a bit and in my opinion they do it a disservice because there is no doubt they kept the fire burning within the souls of legions of O Gauge train enthusiasts.   They made a lot of good stuff and much of it is still running today.  I know because I have a bunch of it. 

As has been posted if one really wants to get down into the ground floor of information regarding the MPC era just go out and purchase a copy of Volume 4 of LIONEL, A Collector's Guide and History by Tom McComas and James Tuohy which is chock full of great information.  This volume is readily available on both Amazon and ABEBOOKS.com at very reasonable prices. 

I also believe the pent up desire of boomers wanting reissues of PW product kept MPC alive.  A quick review will show that little innovation went into any truly new releases.  Why change a good thing?

As the '80's came to a close, with tooling all but useless, LTI had no choice but to upgrade and modernize no matter whether the item was again a PW reissue or an entirely new creation.  These happenings, to me, are the 2 greatest attributes of MPC.  Both were neither farsighted nor good business practice but probably a product of strict economics.

Luckily, the economical side of MPC era remains.  There still seems to be a glut of MPC available, a lot of it NIB, that keeps prices low.  I get a kick out of being the first to play with a 40 year old train that has roots from the 1940's-50's....and I didn't have to pay PW prices to enjoy.

Bruce