Subject:
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Re: All plastic track
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:16:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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2183 times
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Jake-
I haven’t quite figured out why I am more concerned about the recent track
announcements than most other LTC types I have spoken with.
Certainly there’s not much anxiety with SCLTC (and even some enthusiasm) as I
check in with members. (That may be partly because only a small percentage of us
are heavily invested in train infrastructure. Most members own very little
“train” hardware -- if any.)
Even the rest of my family is not especially concerned. I think that may be
partly because one of my functions in our family LEGO operations is procurement.
I’m the one who places 14 BrickLink orders when we do a project and am always
proactively looking for good deals on things we can use. More likely, its
because they are all smarter than I am.
One strong reason is that I’ve been here before: The first LEGO we ever bought
the kids was the 7745 battery powered (4.5V system) train. Thomas fell in love
with pictures of the 12V TGV included in the box and we were lucky enough to
acquire a set and accessories from relatives visiting Europe. But within two
years, it it was obsolete and incompatible when 9V came out.
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First, to be completely clear about a very very important distinction - we’re
not “switching”, we’re “including”.
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To be perfectly clear in return, I wrote about switching focus from metal to
plastic in the expectation and hope that TLC can sell a lot more plastic rail
trains than it has been selling metal rail trains.
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4. Most of us get our
bulk LEGO from closeouts and/or BrickLink. Since track and 9V motors and 9V
systems won’t be in retail outlets, we aren’t going to get them for anything
other than full MSRP.
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Out of honest curiousity, are you buying 9v track and motors at a discount
now?
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We’re always on the lookout for 9V bargains. Most noteably was the recent S@H
closeout on motors at 50% off, the 25% off track and motors at Potomac Mills,
the 20% off at LLCA for annual pass holders last November and December, the 10%
everyday discount for annual pass holders at LLCA, the effective 6% off for
using a LEGO Loyalty card at LEGO Brand Retail stores, the 80 pieces of new
straight track we bought on BL a few months back for a bit of over $1 per piece,
the 200 pieces of new curve (yeah, we actually bought curve track, but we used
them to construct buildings) we bought last year on BL for about $0.50 each, and
others.
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5. When asked (before Jake’s presentation) about plans
for other 9V track, the TLC guy in charge said no plans at present. That was
surprisingly worse than the standard “we can’t tell you” and it became clear
why when Jake announced the all plastic track.
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Ted, I’m not sure who you’re referring to - there were quite a few LEGO
people there. Do you mean Jorgen Vig?Out of curiousity, was the LEGO person
in question the Trains project team (which would have only included myself,
Mark Hansen, and Tormod Askildsen)? If not, the details of the future might
not be well understood.
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Jorgen was asked the question in the public session on Saturday morning and he
deferred it to a TLC person in the audience whom I did not see or know, but I
heard his answer. It surprised me because it wasn’t the usual “We’re considering
it, but we can’t say anything”. Instead it was the equivalent of “we are not
looking into that”. I’ll confess that I don’t like reading too much into things
like that, and there could have been language issues or other considerations,
but there was a room full of TLC folks listening and nobody corrected him.
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As much as I want to spill the full story on the Play Train and Hobby Train
details, I simply can’t. We’re about a year away from release of the Play
Train, and we have a ton of work to do between now and then. Some things are
still being finalized. We know competitors are able to knock off our products
in 6 months or less, so revealing too many details is simply not smart.
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The purpose of my post was to consider the implications if the play train
initiative succeeds in recapturing a share of the young kid market. I perhaps
naively assumed that we would all agree that if that happens, that all-plastic
track and components would eclipse metal-clad track and components in quantity,
availability, profitabilty and therefore keep TLC’s “focus”. Even if it fails,
for the short term it’s already got TLC’s focus for new product development and
presumably marketing and advertising support.
I’ve been posting to LUGNET for many years (I remember receiving the beta trial
announcement from Todd) and have pretty much avoided drawing conclusions before
the facts were in. Even with the grays switch (which I strongly disapprove of) I
only wrote a few posts in which I simply explained why I thought it was a Bad
Idea. I probably should have waited a week to respond to the play train
announcements, like everyone else has had the good sense to do. Clearly it will
take much longer for the facts to emerge (will plastic track outship metal track
by more or less than 100:1?)
-Ted
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: All plastic track
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| (...) First, to be completely clear about a very very important distinction - we're not "switching", we're "including". Plastic rails will not kill the metal rails. Metal rails will continue into the future. We are working on production process that (...) (19 years ago, 16-Aug-05, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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