:confused: What has happened to the toolong that was used to make the old slotcars of the ' 60's / '70 's ? I hear that Atlas still has their old HO car body molds in cosmoline & AL uses some of the MARX HO molds (what about the rest including the Rolls glass , Lincoln , Jaguar,Later T-Bird (the butt ugly one with chrome bumpers)? ) I know that TOMY ,Mattel , & LifeLike use a lot of the tooling of their respective predecessor co.'s e.g TOMY's BMW M-1 coupe, ' 57 NOMAD,etc,. What was the ultimate fate of the tooling for Bachmann , Lionel , Eldon , Faller ,Aurora ? Is there a dark corner where Mattel has the TYCO "S" tooling ?

Thanks, Neal :dude:

PS Apologies to Peter ,Paul & Mary, Joan Baez ,Pete Seeger etc.

Not sure about all those companies but it always the dream of a hobby enthusiast to find molds of an old model or toy to reproduce them.

Sad truth is most of that stuff gets trashed after a business changes lines or goes belly up.

Here's an interesting topic from SCI about trying to get old molds from a manufacturer: The info is more towards the end of the thread.

http://p075.ezboard.com/fpockitfrm4.showMessage?topicID=1184.topic

Very interesting thread. I really enjoyed reading the second page of it. I was sitting here giving out a few "hell yeahs" when reading Greg Braun's one post where he was talking about Tomy missing the boat on what racers want and don't want and why 1/32 is so popular. I'm a racer. I got into it because of the F1 and Indy bodies that Aurora offered in their G+ line. I'm not into muscle cars, Lamborghinis, or anything that doesn't possess a number and belch fire in real life. No disrespect intended for those that do enjoy the street cars but it's just not me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I understand that all too often that when an HO line closes for whatever reason the molds are often trashed. However the Marx HO molds were found by the founders of American Line some time in the late ' 80's about 20-25 years after Marx toys went belly-up.Perhaps they survived for the same reason as all that old Aurora stuff ( Chassis's, etc. ) survived after Aurora went bankrupt. What happened to the MARX Rolls glass & the molds for the Lincoln, Jag & Mercedes ? Could be an interesting story. Also note that the old AMRAC Porsche' survived into the Life-Like era.Interesting how Aurora's old AF/X ' 57 Nomad that came out in '71 has survived into the JL Xtractions era. How many slotcar bodies can make that same claim ? Thats over a generation !


Neal :dude:

I have an interesting one on that topic, even if I "Just heard" that, and it is to be confirmed. And I would have to search deeeeep on my harddisk to find the exact story, but here from my recollection:
Faller sold their tooling after they ended the production to somebody in Australia/New Zealand, who planned to went on producing. After the deal was done, the tooling went on its travel on a ship, which SANK! So these molds were supposed to be lying around, waiting for picking them up!
There is a guy I know who is tracing the ship, and finally got contact to the brother of the former buyer, to get information on the ship, to contact another friend in the insurance conpany to find out further details.
From what he told me I have the feeling he would surely start diving if he knows where!

As I said, thats what I've been told, nice story anyway.....

Michael

Don't you get that feeling of "a cousins, friends, sisters, fathers', mother told me that she has on good authority..." heh!

I have an interesting one on that topic, even if I "Just heard" that, and it is to be confirmed. And I would have to search deeeeep on my harddisk to find the exact story, but here from my recollection:
Faller sold their tooling after they ended the production to somebody in Australia/New Zealand, who planned to went on producing. After the deal was done, the tooling went on its travel on a ship, which SANK! So these molds were supposed to be lying around, waiting for picking them up!
There is a guy I know who is tracing the ship, and finally got contact to the brother of the former buyer, to get information on the ship, to contact another friend in the insurance conpany to find out further details.
From what he told me I have the feeling he would surely start diving if he knows where!
As I said, thats what I've been told, nice story anyway.....

Michael


This is gonna make a great movie! :devil: rr

The thread that is linked to here should be required reading for everyone into slots. Very interesting viewpoints, opinions, and info there.

You know, it just doesn't make sense to me that companies would rather completely junk their molds than sell them to someone else in an attempt to further recoup some of their money or make a little more if they're going out of business or simply getting out of the business.

I don't believe for a second that anyone in the corporate world gives a single thought about the "hobby aspect" of their products (except for possibly Tomy in HO but even that is debatable). They are more focused on the bottom line. It seems Scalextric does think about the hobby angle which more big businesses would do well to take note of.

Maybe we can get Bob Ballard to search for the sunken molds.

I think it's very accurate to say that most companies don't think at all about the "collectible" aspect of their products. I know of at least one company (not slot related at all) that was shocked to learn that people actually collected their products. The company didn't even keep one of everything that they'd produced and in some cases they didn't even have records to prove exactly what they had made over the years. Once the product was out the door their relationship with it ended forever.

In my mind, collecting products that were not intentionally produced to be collectible or "rare" makes them all the more valuable. The fact that some folks (not me!) saw it fitting to preserve their old slot cars in as-new form is truly amazing and the cars they saved deserve to command big price tags. The rarest of these usually had nothing to do with the intentions of the manufacturer, it was purely circumstantial, like a misstruck coin. On the other hand I'm less impressed with products that were designed to be collectible and made artificially "rare" by limiting production. These of course have a deserving place in the collectible market, but I see a huge difference between circumstantial collectibles and manufactured collectibles.

I ask this: wouldn't the ability to produce new castings from old molds create turmoil among collectors? Exact copies would confuse the market and possibly devalue the old stock if they were indistinguishable from the originals. The Johnny Lightning cars are clearly different to 95% of the collecting population. (The other 5% is what keeps E-Bay in business.) If variation from the original is acceptable (and desirable to some) then anything can be copied and reproduced in China, Inc. with a little investment in the production costs. I'm not sure that having the old molds would really make that big of a difference for the investors.

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the collecting aspect of items. I recently remarked to someone that the ho slots could possibly be thought of in the same respect as baseball cards. Back when I was really into it in the late 70's/early 80's, nobody really had the foresight or thought to preserve what they had or to purchase multiple models and keep them in mint condition as we never gave any thought to the things becoming collector items. We went about our merry way hacking at wheel wells and modifying our cars as they were essentially toys. A very intriguing hobby nonetheless but still toys in the grand scheme of things.

The hobby gets watered down and confusing when you introduce "special" runs and limited editions. This goes for everything from the diecast industry to cards and slots. Collecting sports cards and Racing Champions became uninteresting to me when companies started producing limited editions and flooding the market with collectible everything.

As for your point about "new" parts from old molds...I'd be thrilled to find somebody producing bodies with slight variations from the originals. I'd have no problem with that. Myself, I'm into collecting cars to run and not collecting them for the sake of collecting them. If I were a collector in the meaningful sense of the word, I would be miffed if cars were appearing on the market in which you couldn't tell the difference. It would hurt the collecting aspect of the hobby and that's not fair to the true collectors.