This is just for fun. I’m sure you will spot the problem right away. The interesting thing is that the picture is the one used on the Tyco packaging!
What is wrong with this picture?
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Tyco-Piggy-back-Depot-/360467207636?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item53ed8515d4
I wonder why Tyco went belly up?!?
Dave[(-D]
Maybe they run the business a bit “backwards”. [#oops]
Gidday, I could make facetious remarks about marketing types, but as its a pleasant, for winter, Sunday arrvo,and that I’ll end up by offending someone and then having to apologise, I won’t. [swg] [:-^]
Cheers,the Bear.
WHich thing? The garish color, the fact that it’s pickign the trailers up by the top sides - you’d crush a real trailer squeezing there - or the $45 shipping charge, trying to beat eBay fees (except you pay on shipping now…so just a dumb seller I guess).
The trailer facing backwards - those cranes can spin, well, the real ones do, so that’s not an issue. In fact the trailers were often set on the cars door to door facing the middle to prevent vandals from getting into them - can’t open the trailer doors when they are close together like that.
–Randy
AHAH!
I see the south Pacific region is wide awake!!![bow]
Ja Bear - I wonder if anyone ever pointed it out to the marketing types, and if so, how many tries did it take to make them understand?!?[(-D][(-D][(-D]
Thanks for playing along!
Randy - you are much more knowledgeable than me. I just thought the obvious stupidity of backing a truck cab up to the backend of a trailer would get a laugh.
Dave
Well, was Tyco really ever known for realistic equipment or structures?
Along with a few nifty comments, the real answer to the question is - - - - - - -? ? ? ?
How about the $11.00 winning bid with $44.95 for shipping???
The main picture shows the trailers being put onto the flat in two different directions. The smaller picture to the right has them both facing the same way.
I don’t think pictures on boxes had much to do with Tyco’s demise. The whole hobby shifted away from their business model and they didn’t shift with it.
Like an airplane, your tractor trailer’s trailer should always land wheels first, regardless which way the trailer faces in direction to the tractor.
Tyco was, I think, really meant for durable interactive play for children, not really for the serious MRRer.
I could be wrong, I have been known to be wrong before and will, I am sure, be wrong again at some point in the future.
[8-|]
The OP indicated the answer he was looking for (the trailer being backwards to the tractor). There are so many inaccuracies it would be easier to point out what’s correct, which is basically nothing. Tyco for the most part made toys, not realistic models.
It’s better than the one I had, which was a giant forklift to unload the trailers, although mine was remote controlled. You spot a car in front of it, then use the sticks ont he remote control to runt he forklift forward, then lift the trailer, and back up to set it on the platform.
This one: http://www.ho-scaletrains.net/tycoactionaccessories/id52.html
–Randy
I had one of those. Half the time it knocked the trailer off the flatcar!
Pfft, I did that on purpose. At first it was fun to work it, then I quickly realized how inaccurate it was plus all you could do was pick the trailer up and take it off, or put it back on. Could’t do anything about the second trailer on the flat car. So the game became, can I knock it off so it falls away fromt he train so I can still move the train. At some point I just took it all apart to see how it worked, I think I have some of the parts in a junk box somewhere.
Then there was the Life Like log loader. Move one lever and it tipped a log onto a chute where it rolled down into a holding spot. Get three logs there, then move another lever and they rolled on to the car. And finally a third lever woudl top the car and dump the logs into a bin on the other side of the tracks. I also has the Tyco electric log dumper car. Game there was to get a trains peed such that you coudl hold down the button before the car got there, sothat as soon as it hit the contacts it would dump. Too slow and the logs missed the bin, too fast and they jammed agaisnt the far side of the bin and derailed the train.
Ah tinplate HO of the 70’s…
–Randy
Short answer is yes. Long answer is 95% yes, regarding their locos. Tyco’s early days was the RTR branch of Mantua. You got the same equipment as the Mantua kits, but it was assembled and painted. I don’t think most of their structures were ever that good, but there were some exceptions.
Tyco/Mantua made such items as an inexpensive model of a B&O pacific, a Mike that really had no prototype, but add a Cary boiler to it, and you got a realistic USRA Mike. They even offered a model of the Reading 0-4-0 camelback switcher.
It was in the mid to late 1970’s that Mantua sold off it’s Tyco division, so they could offer their locos and cars again back under the Mantua name. This is when the quality construction of Tyco started down, and it turned into a manufacturer, (really an importer) of the really cheap low quality trains it seems to be known more for nowadays.
Mantua’s older locos are now offered by Model Power, and still seem to be very well made.
RUgged through the 60’s they were, but I’d say the realizm level started slippign int he late 50’s when they changed everything over to talgo trucks and then touted it as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I guess as 18" and even 15" radius curves became common in HO, they had to do somethign to allow their equipment to run. It was still metal and well made though. I have a coupelof Tyco locos from the 60’s, they are heavy, pull a lot, and are reliable (older than me and still work). Once Consolidated Foods got ahold of Tyco, it went downhill, fast. Poor quality, cheap motors, and such abominations as the B-B trucked GG1. Or the 2-8-0 made into an 0-8-0 Chatanooga Choo Choo set. Pretty much the same as General Mills and Lionel. The age of conglomeration had companies that had not the slightest clue about models ownign model companies and trying to sell trains like breakfast cereal.
Even older Mantua, the pre-WWII stuff, was mostly Reading prototypes. That little 0-4-0 Camelback has lived on a long time, that was their first HO loco and I believe it’s still being made by Model Power. The early Mantua HO motors had the field pieces somewhat shaped like a Wooten firebox, so it seemed a natural that they would do Reading prototypes, to fit the motor in. Question is, what came first, the 0-4-0 or the motor shaped to fit in it.
–Randy
Prior to the mid-1970’s move to production in Hong Kong, all of the (Mantua) Tyco stuff was pretty well made. It did it’s purpose. On my layout the operating accessories operated very well, especially considering what was typical of the day. The operating accessories I owned included the ore cars that dumped and the boxcars where the guy kicked boxes out the side. They did exactly what they were supposed to do, over and over–for years–and they did it well. The engines lasted for many hundreds–even thousands–of hours. This included the diesels with the rubber tired power trucks. We occasionally needed to replace motor brushes, clean commutator slots, and replace rubber tires–but they ran and ran pretty well for us.
Parts were readily available from the local fine train store for all of it. It was a fun time to operate HO trains.
The move to production in Hong Kong to much lower quality standards is what hurt them, combined with the rise of Athearn and a few other manufacturers to higher quality and reliability standards at virtually the same time.
John
Many thanks to those who have added some TYCO/Mantua history to the thread.
I have two very old TYCO steamer kits that I have built and both seem to run fine, at least on my test track (no layout yet). I have yet to convert them to DCC nor have I checked the current draw to see if the original motors are useable. Non the less, one in particular has been a blast because I decided to move the motor so it is driving the third set of wheels instead of the middle set. I did this in order to create the space seen on most older steam locos between the boiler and the chassis. It seems to work!
Anyhow, to answer my original question - “How are your powers of observation” i.e.“what is wrong with the picture on the TYCO packaging”, as someone has already said, just about everything![(-D][(-D][(-D]
Thanks
Dave
Mantua / Tyco got sold to General Foods or some such company that REALLY understood our sort of market. Well they didn’t ! ! Bean counters and college grad business managers don’t always know everything. When the remaining interests came to their senses and tried to recover it and polish it up… it was too late. The world had blown past them and they were simply charging way too much for models pressed from for dies that had been paid for 30 years before. Bachmann, Model Power, Atlas, and others ate their lunch.
It was a great company and I have a collection of their rolling stock and locos that goes back to the late 40’s. I have one pre-war pacific. Many of the locos and cars belonged to my dad when he modeled in the late 40’s and early 50’s. My first loco was a brass boiler mogul.
see ya
Bob