Hornby's folly for 2009?...

"Jerry" wrote

I've given up trying to understand the logic of some of Horby's releases. I'm not saying they won't sell, but in my humble estimation there are often better options available.

Some Q1s were being 'jobbed out' by Hornby within twelve months of their release. I really couldn't imagine that happening with really nice models of LMS (3F or 4F) or LNER 0-6-0s (J21, J25 & J27). Bachmann's J39 always seem to sell out fairly quickly, along with the BR versions of their B1s.

Still it's their business and it's their decision how they run it, but which business would you think was the better investment - Corgi or Sander Kan?

John.

Quite frankly neither (with 20/20 hindsight vision of course), OK Corgi gives them additional markets to exploit whilst buying Sander Kan would have given them their own production base but neither would now consider the down turn in the economy and the nose dive in the value of the GBP against the USD...

"Jerry" wrote

Good point, but I think I'd like to be at least in part-control of my own manufacturing destiny than simply add another name to my product base.

Just out of interest who owns the Dinky brand name these days? That was of course the old Mecanno (original Hornby owners) brand for die-cast toys.

John.

The point is, you can have all your own manufacturing ability/capacity you like but if you're suffering from poor exchange rates you're trying to climb a greasy poll - the only people who could end up winning from the current state of the economy is the cottage industry kit manufacturers.

Mattel, according to the vagaries of this (and all) Wikipedia page;

"Jerry" wrote

It does give you rather more control over your output, although I take your point about exchange rates. Time to move production back to the UK???

John.

Ho Ho, the fun of LMS Liveries, key dates :- built 8/1943 streamline removed 9/1946 lms black (as per hornby) 11/1946 br black 11/1948

So only 2 years. Curious thing is it looks almost the same as City of Glasgow that they did a few years ago. Perhaps the site is incorrect and it will be wartime black - anyone know ?

Cheers, Simon

Using my 'half brain' realised, destreamlined with wartime black would only be 2 months for City of Manchester, so perhaps not whats intended.

Cheers, Simon

On 05/01/2009 13:56, Jerry said,

Another way of looking at it is that for years people have been complaining about some of the minority locos never being produced RTR, and now that they are, people are complaining about the choice of minority loco being produced :-) But yes, a de-streamlined Duchess does seem an odd choice! Lovely looking loco though...

I wonder if there will be a sudden increase in the number of observation cars on layouts soon. Now that really is a bizarre subject to produce in RTR form :-)

By not owning the manufacturing they don't have the costs of running it down when the market turns down. Hornby should see profits increase with the Euro so high against the pound with their brands in Europe translating to high GB pounds profit for selling at the same price. The pound has fallen to a more realistic level against the dollar, they are in deeper trouble than we are, its no where near dollar parity we had a decade a go.

Chris

"The Dinky trade-name was a valuable one, and changed hands many times before ending up as part of Matchbox International Ltd in the late '80s. ... Matchbox began issuing model cars of the 1950s through the 'Dinky Collection' in the late 1980s, but these were models intentionally designed for adult collectors. The models were attractive and honoured the tradition of the Dinky name in terms of both quality and scale, and were popular with collectors for the short time that they were available... The 'Dinky Collection' then became absorbed into the themed series offered by Matchbox Collectibles Inc, owned by US giants Mattel, who have shown little interest in or understanding of the Dinky brand preferring nowadays to rebadge normal Matchbox models as Dinky for some editions of their models in certain markets, or to reissue 1:43 models from the Matchbox era. No new "dedicated" Dinky castings have been created in the Mattel era since Matchbox Collectibles was shut down in 2000."

I don't know where you get that idea from but the pound was nowhere near dollar parity a decade ago. Just under a decade ago (2001) it was very much where it is now, as it was also around 1993. In between those dates it peaked at about $1.70.

MBQ

A decade ago would be 1999. I should have added another 14 years February 1985 at $1.05 was the record low. Since then the average is about $1.60 so not that far off the current rate.

Paul Boyd wrote in news:496242d3$0$10536$db0fefd9 @news.zen.co.uk:

I don't know, Pullman cars always seem to be very popular, though a RRP of £ 48.49 will be to step for many.

I've often wondered what happened to the actual Dinky moulds, as surely they would be quite valuable in today's market? I know they wouldn't be capable of producing models to modern standards, but surely there would be some value for the nostalgia market. I wouldn't mind buying a brand new Thunderbird 2 or a Space 1999 Eagle Transporter at a reasonable price myself!

Fred X

On 05/01/2009 20:03, David Jackman said,

How much????? I guess that'll restrict the numbers floating around 'Much Piddling On The Marsh' :-)

Be interesting to see how they will compare with those Brass ones manufactured in Korea for and sold by Golden Age Models down in Dorset. I could not justify the price for one of those even though they are very nice.

G.Harman

WRONG, the governing factor is the USD, if you have not noticed the GBP has nosed dived against that currency as well, costs will and have increased.

Dream on!

I think that's unlikely John, the set up costs would be astranomical! Having said that if they own the tooling (and they can make it work cost effectively) then there are loads of injection moulding outfits here that are screaming for work!

Rob.

That assumes that they were short sighted (some would say stupid enough) to rip out all their own injection moulding equipment when they out-sourced their production to China...

Or indeed elsewhere within the EU.

If they can't do either, well Hornby might just end up being a headline of the recession/depression. IIRC it was irrational acquisitions by Rovex in the good times that caused it's downfall in the turmoil of the 1970s. Airfix suffered a similar fate, for similar reasons, in the 1980s, as did Pailtoy in the 1990s...