Very nice piece on CBS nightly news tonight about how Union Pacific is ripping off railroaders with their licensing fees on manufacturers. Hope you all saw it. In any event hope you all abandon modeling the UP or any of it's heritage.
If the UP president has any brains those responsible would be in his office tomorrow to watch the clip and then pick up their final checks.
Only if you model the Carbonated & Flatulent RR.
Seriously, the day I pay extra for a Coca Cola car will be the day I stop being a railroad modeller, and become a Lionel collector, instead.
From: "Two23"
And note this. I went to a Hallmark shop tonight and saw that the Harley Davidson motorcycle ornament was $14.95, the Chevy C-10 was $14.95, the Tonka toy crane was $14.95, and so on. Now get this: the Lionel train engine was $18.95!!!! So, it's LIONEL that is ripping us off here! And yet Lionel gets on national TV to whine about UP charging a nominal amount when in the same situation Lionel charges Hallmark (and thus us) FAR more than UP. THIS IS HYPOCRISY!!!!! Kent in SD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And you went to Kansas City to check Hallmark's books to see the difference in price was solely license fees? I think not. It looks like a lot more work to make and assemble the loco than a Chevy. The tender and passenger car are only $12.95, that compares well with the others you mentioned.
FWIW, it's those locomotive decorations that got me into this hobby - got the first one, got a piece of track to set it on, and it just picked up steam from there. (Yes, they sit on N-guage track very nicely!)
Val, in SD
Is this the start of the beating in the press and from stockholders that you predicted?
Coca Cola and Disney aren't in the railroad business. Charging for their logo on a box car is reasonable. Union Pacific IS in the railroad business and they shouldn't be charging those who model the railroad. If UP wants to charge me $5 to put their logo on a baseball cap, that's ok. But, this hobby is modeling the real thing, not taking the logo to attach it to something else.
Why are the manufacturers escaping everyone's condemnation in this discussion? The gentleman representing manufacturers in the CBS segment said something to the effect of being upset the UP wanted a "piece of our action." In my eyes, he's the shill for trying to capitalize on the UP's corporate image without giving them their due.
A corporate identity is a commodity that can be bought and sold and UP is perfectly right to try to protect and capitalize on their image's popularity.
In a way, that's pretty much the way all of the U.P. whiners on rec.models.railroad come off, too. On one hand they're calling the U.P. greedy for charging a licensing fee for their logos, while at the same time it sure sounds like the underlying current in their messages is: "we don't want to pay for manufacturers to use the trademarks."
Oh no!
There are several groups of "whiners" about the UP trademark controversy:
Ed.
in article AXJEb.151098$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com, Mark Mathu at snipped-for-privacy@mathu.com wrote on 12/19/03 1:19 PM:
I don't recall predicting the stockholders would get involved, but I was hoping for the press. btw, I spent 20 years managing the logo licensing for a VERY famous sporting goods brand. We charged everybody thru the nose to put our logo on tee shirt and ball caps, because they would pay. But, we would NEVER charge someone who made a model of our product. Albeit, our product wasn't something that typically got modeled, but if it was we would just consider ourselves lucky to get the free advertising.
Put me in with group 6. :-)
........F>
|> > 6. Those who will hijack any thread to discuss the merits of haggis.
|> Oh no!
I thought he was going to say WMDs...
Haggis: Weapon of Mass Digestion??
Shouldn't that be Mass Indigestion?
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The Gratiot Valley Railroad Club bi-annual train show and sale March 7, 2004, at the Macomb Community College Sports and Expo Center. Macomb County Michigan. Please visit our Web Site at:
No, no. Weapon of Malevolent Digestion.
Because he's making models of railroad locomotives and cars - some of which are operated by a huge corporation calling itself Union Pacific (please, don't look at the history of graft and corruption behind the curtain) - and part of making a model is getting the paint and markings right. It doesn't have a thing to do with UP's corporate image.
Myself, I'm apalled by their attempts to wrap themselves in the flag, but merely amused by the incredible stupidity of their legal and marketing departments that can't differentiate between someone selling a model that bears their RR markings and someone selling a tshirt or an ashtray or a beer cooler or a travel mug or a vaguely locomotive shaped tree ornament: objects that have as their only distinction the logo printed on them, unless you count the overwhelming inanity of the average customer for such schlock (sorry, all you NFL boxcar and Coca Cola missile launching milk car owners).
A corporate stooge is a commodity that will enthusiastically believe any nonsense so long as it is promulgated by a large enough corporation. Sorry, never mind me, just finger your Saint Nixon medals and drop back to sleep.
Oh come on... the UP recognizes the difference and has a separate licensing agreement for model railroad products.
I wonder who the real shill is? According to google "wicate's" only posts are a pro-Kalmbach one back in February, and these pro-UP posts now. And he/she kinda writes like a marketing graduate...
Only when mixed with good single malt.
Don
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For my part, they've long taken the place of lawyers in Bill Shakespeare's famous dictum.
Ayn Ranty marketing majors get the short drop.
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