The editor of Model Rail has gone a bit too far in my view with his editorial in this months Model Rail.
The editor basically says that now Hornby and Bachmann have got the product right they need to get the packaging right and take the packaging upmarket and as an example tells us how a £200 American loco is packaged.
It comes in a largish luxury box with a foam filler and a numbered certificate and a limited lifetime gaurantee for the first owner and has an A5 sized booklet with 16 pages detailing the history of the loco and there is a signifificant instruction manual as the loco comes with a decoder and sound. It all sounds very nice and I guess if you are paying £200 then fair enough.
However stores in the USA have the room for big boxes. Stockists is the UK most certainly do not!
And we simply don't have the room at home that the Americans have to store all these large boxes.
And big boxes and all the trimmings are for collectors. Modellers don't necessarily want any of this and Britain is a nation of modellers rather than collectors. And the thought of paying an extra £20 or whatever for luxury packaging does not go down down too well with me.
I would rather that Hornby and Bachmann invest any spare cash into locomotives and not luxury packaging. There is still so much that can be done on this front in the UK.
However others may view all this entirely different.
Is my view right or wrong?
Should Hornby and Bachmann really make more of an effort to bring us luxury packaging with every model and are we willing to pay the extra for this?
Happy modelling
Gary
The editor basically says that now Hornby and Bachmann have got the product right they need to get the packaging right and take the packaging upmarket and as an example tells us how a £200 American loco is packaged.
It comes in a largish luxury box with a foam filler and a numbered certificate and a limited lifetime gaurantee for the first owner and has an A5 sized booklet with 16 pages detailing the history of the loco and there is a signifificant instruction manual as the loco comes with a decoder and sound. It all sounds very nice and I guess if you are paying £200 then fair enough.
However stores in the USA have the room for big boxes. Stockists is the UK most certainly do not!
And we simply don't have the room at home that the Americans have to store all these large boxes.
And big boxes and all the trimmings are for collectors. Modellers don't necessarily want any of this and Britain is a nation of modellers rather than collectors. And the thought of paying an extra £20 or whatever for luxury packaging does not go down down too well with me.
I would rather that Hornby and Bachmann invest any spare cash into locomotives and not luxury packaging. There is still so much that can be done on this front in the UK.
However others may view all this entirely different.
Is my view right or wrong?

Should Hornby and Bachmann really make more of an effort to bring us luxury packaging with every model and are we willing to pay the extra for this?

Happy modelling
Gary