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 Posted - October 23 2006 : 2:49:35 PM
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Forgot the asterisk point in my rant in another topic, so here it is:
* Has anyone else seen the new line of "Enamelized" graffiti freight cars being sold at walmart since July? They're the same oddball pseudo-TT scale items sold by Maisto a few years back. The line consists of a bunch of "B&O" boxcars in fake colors, and a lone D&H hopper. All are coated with reproduced "artworks" taken from photos, complete with "artist bios" on the package.
I have mixed feelings on this, but am generally sick. I mean, I happen to love the looks and style of a lot of graffiti. The colors, the shapes, the abstract forms in a well-executed "piece" are really quite as honorable as any abstract art you're ever likely to see.
HOWEVER... I am saddened that you can't watch a train anywhere without seeing "tags" on everything. Old soldier freighcars that are otherwise intact time machines are spoiled; brand-new reflective paint comes back a week later looking like it went through a war zone. It puts a bad face on railroading and civic pride - which is why it is a crime.
I'm amazed that a company thought it a good idea to promote vandalism by giving these "taggers" validation by selling their "art" to children. It's. Just. Wrong. And I won't be buying any.
(As for guys like that ebay blowhard MellowMike, and other model taggers: reproducing a real car and doing it as well as he does, might be considered a "necessary evil" of sorts, with a legititmate place in the hobby. I highly doubt many of the real vandals out there even know he's making a killing on their "art". However, mass-producing it, selling it at a discount store (with no regard for model authenticity), and inspriring kids to go out and make a tagger name for themselves? That's a whole 'nother thing entirely! And THAT, post-Thomas the Tank, is how kids are being exposed to railroads these days. As I like to say: "No good can come of this").
Edited by - GoingInCirclez on October 23 2006 2:59:01 PM
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 Posted - October 23 2006 : 4:30:39 PM
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I did buy one of the Enamilized Freight Cars when I saw them at Wal-Mart. Really a questionable concept. Though some do celebrate such works as art, it is railroad property. Would Wal-Mart be interested in stocking and selling models of Wal-Mart stores covered with graffiti paint???
And I agree with GoingInCirclez on the concern about making them a toy item for kids. Seems to say that it is not only okay to tag trains with paint, but that you are creating art in the process. Is that how the UP, BNSF, NS, KCS, CSX and others see it???
If you can't sell die-cast models of NASCAR stockers with alcohol or tobacco sponsor logos, because the cars are considered toys and aimed at the youth market...then I have to say that graffiti-covered freight cars should also be taboo.
Tony Cook
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Posted - October 23 2006 : 9:00:26 PM
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I can see the movie marquee now: "Taggers--Assassins of Youth!"
Seems like a bit of a tempest in a teapot to complain about graffiti cars (but, then, I don't have to look at butchered CNW rolling stock and paint-desecrated Metra bridges and stations anymore, living the life of a country squire).
I do think it is just a matter of old wine in new wine skins, however. Trains, after all, mirror the societal predilections of the world in which they perambulate. Model trains, then, should fare no better and, perhaps, the graffiti cars are a net positive. Heck, I don't know; never having been one to deface private property.
I do know, however, that "Kilroy was here" decorates more than one Vintage box car offering from the fifties (Hobbyline Great Northern and "graffiti" transfers for Southern Maintenance Bunk car, Southern Models, Elon College, NC, 1952 (?) immediately springs to memory).
I recall vividly that Bachmann premiered a 51' steel plug door box car in 1980 that was ALL graffiti on a white background, the number 1087 "Graffiti" custom box.
There is a precedent for almost everything in Vintage HO.
Magnolia Academy
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Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:11:06 PM
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I'm afraid the line in the sand is a bit finer than what you've drawn, but I'll not bore the forum with my devil's rantings anymore. As Tony C also pointed out, there's a distinction between representing the real world and its seedy whimsy... and encouraging it through glorifying criminals. Where ARE those tagged convenience store and big-box loading dock toys, anyway?
I think I;ve seen that bachmann car, now that you mention it. Is it the white one with the giant peace signs and typical harmless hippie scrawls? I laughed when I saw that... I mean, come on now :)
Hey, I'll admit to "tagging" a few old HO cars myself. Would like to get visitors to do the same so I can remember them. But these cars, if you've seen them, are just wrong, in some vaguely quantifiable fashion. Oh well, I'm outtie.
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Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:16:27 PM
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and I tear the wings off flies...
MA
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 Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:35:29 PM
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I have a complete set of all episodes of "Supertrain" and "BJ and the Bear" on DVD. [V]
Tony Cook
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Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:36:42 PM
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...See we all have dark and questionable areas beyond our TYCO interests...[^]
Tony Cook
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Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:50:20 PM
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Tony:
My hoity-toity brass-hat vintage train collecting cronies consider Tyco collecting the most "dark and questionable" of pursuits...
MA
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 Posted - October 23 2006 : 11:53:39 PM
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"Dark and Questionable"? Have they ever SEEN a Golden Eagle or Silver Streak?
Questionable? Maybe. Dark?? With the lights off, maybe [:P]
You should ask how many of thsoe same hoitoids still use the venerated Tyco/Mantua 50' flatcar for any sort of project. For purpose, detailing, and deck detail, it just doesn't get any better than that.
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 12:32:09 AM
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Circlez:
I certainly know more than a few serious modellers who regularly employ Mantyco raw materials in their efforts. As you and others have pointed out repeatedly there is ample fodder for the serious build-up or conversion in many of their products.
Alas, my hoity toity collector friends don't ever sully their dainty and effiminate white-gloved digits with anything so undignified as modelling. They sit on velvet divans, nestling their soft derrieres in rafts of satin pillows, caressing their mint condition product boxes while discussing Sotheby's last "rare and collectible" train auction results.
MA
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 Posted - October 24 2006 : 04:12:57 AM
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Hi All,
Just my 2 cents worth here. I drive a section of I290 here in Chicago everyday that if you are going east bound you have the Chicago Transit Authority electric trains on your left that are a thing of beauty "NO TAGGING" and then you have the Canadian National on the right all tagged up, It looks like crap. I can go for weeks before I see a tag worth it's weight in Tyco's. When I build a layout it is not modeled after the world I live in but one I would like to live in. thats the beauty of modeling, it's like Burger King, you can have it your way! And my way is NO tagged cars. Besides I can't paint over Mytyco's.
Thanks and keep the change LOL!
Mike
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 4:11:23 PM
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| I think that the Tyco "Armour" reefer had a graffeti print of a stick figure with a quote of some sort? I'm at work (lunch) so I can't check but I work in Stockton CA and Graffeti is the norm around here so I am entertained when at a RR crossing I have reading material after the engines pass. However I did see a Fallen Flag Hopper of the Rock Island covered with graffeti and it saddend me to witness as it was a fine example of rolling stock history. I think when the engines get hit, and I have seen some real messes, it takes any charm from the urban environment art progect school of thought. I did see a work of art under the Bear Creek Bridge south bound lane on SR-99 that was a fantastic abstraction of the BNSF colors, however only the artist and the homeless that reside there ever see it.
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 5:45:52 PM
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That Armour reefer does have a graffitti stick figure,with the words
"My Gal" on it.
I thought it was strange of Mantua/Tyco to include this as I have never seen something like that before on a toy train.
Carl T. Man of many gauges,master of none!
President of the Cape James Terminal RR.
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 6:22:11 PM
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| Yeah youre right with a quote of "My Gal" the stick figure should have boobs on her thus portraying proof of gender. I guess Tyco was being PC or like in Disiney Animated films the artists slipped one through!
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 8:06:55 PM
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Nice bit of memory-dredging there, Slam! I'd forgotten about the Armour reefer carrying dreaded graffiti. Yet another stellar example of "Tagging: Assassin of Youth!"
That car is 47 years old, by the way...
makes it a sort of time-tested "Teddy-Boy":
A "Reefer Without a Cause."
argh... what a crummy pun.
MagAc
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 10:05:47 PM
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Hows about "REEFER MADNESS" Ha Ha, yup me and that Reefer are the same age, it stuck in my memory as it was my first rolling stock and as a kid I was amazed with wonderment about that little stick figure, what did it mean? who drew it and why? Should I do the same on the local Chatsworth Train Tunnel? Yes I think I should after I throw some more rocks at the auto transport cars as they pass (pre metal protecters). I still remember the sound of breaking glass.
Yep those were the days you always hurt the one you love and those Southern Pacific Fast Freghts were my source of admiration!
Kinda of like hitting that girl in class you liked so much.
So did Tyco Trains with Graffiti lead me down the path of destructive behaviours or was I just a rotten kid with Tyco Trains and a Schwin, well all I know is now I just photograph them and let them pass in peace. However in my youth I did draw boobies on my Tyco Armour Reefer to make the realisem of the "My Gal" stick figure anatomically correct!
Photos to follow
Edited by - Trans-Slam on October 24 2006 10:12:49 PM
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Posted - October 24 2006 : 11:29:26 PM
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Oh, if only that terrible Armour Reefer had "Mom" written on it instead of the lurid and suggestive "My Gal." Your life would, perhaps, have taken a more wholesome and rewarding path. Perhaps you would have become a divinity student, or taken Holy Orders, or become a Scout Master, or maybe all three...
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
Norman Bates
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