Love 'em or hate 'em, “billboard” railcars have their roots in the colorful reefers and covered hoppers that once roamed the rails in decades past. Scale-railroad versions trace their origins to promotional cars and sets dating back to postwar O scale. Tyco was an early pioneer of using HO cars for this purpose, with rare sets and cars made for various companies and hobby shops. This was the extent of billboards in the hobby for many years until the fad exploded in the late 60's. When Tyco was sold to the Sara Lee Corp. in 1970, the seeds were sown for a cross-promotional blitzkreig; by the mid-1970’s the “billboard car” craze was in full swing, finding hundreds of freight car offerings from several vendors awash in corporate colors. If it was sold at a supermarket, chances are there was (or is) an HO car made for it....

I've finally updated the preprods post with some new stuff, including:

Have you ever read the fine print that says "actual product may vary from shown" and wondered why? Or notice something in a catalog is indeed markedly different and wonder what happened to the one in the picture? Or ponder why some items saw the green light of production's blessing - sometimes against better sense - while others didn't and hey, what about those others anyway: how many cool things were proposed but never actually made? Ever daydream about what sort of mayhem and creativity you'd unleash if given the keys to the factory and its resources and R&D department for a day?

What if some of those answers came to light, but only dragged new questions along with them since R&D (and the whole factory, oops) closed somewhere between 10 and 30 years ago, depending on whom you talk to...?

Bombastatron: (bom-bast-a-tron; -- n: A amplification chamber which imparts an assortment of electron tubes the capacity to disseminate sound waves with bombastic qualities; i.e., kickass old-school lounge box)

PROJECT Bombastatron: The process of resurrection...

Before ultimately deciding that model railroading was more interesting and rewarding, I collected diecast cars to an embarrassing extent. Of course I still can't quell the odd impulse purchase of a Matchbox car that sports some sort of random appeal - heck, I can't avoid wandering down that aisle in the first place and I'm plenty old enough to "know better". In any case, be it as a child, or the dedicated or casual adult collector, I always did and will continue to commit the sin of opening the package. Why buy a toy car to forever sit on a shelf or hang on a wall or languish in a box under foolish pretense of funding my retirement? I buy it to admire the casting, the details, and the paint job... or to commemorate a personal memory or goal... or because it will look good in a themed display... or yes, because it will be fun to roll around on the desk a bit.

There's a tangible thrill and bonus to liberating cars from the package: often there are little details and even easter eggs you'll never see if you leave them in there. Additional details on a specific (hidden) side of a vehicle, interior delights, paint variations, inside jokes, and operating functions add a new layer of enjoyment to a model. Of course, sometimes these are deliberately changed to get people to buy them again - and if you do, the slippery slope to collectorhood begins.

Now here's the thing that will ruffle feathers, but I've spent enough to be entitled to my opinion: Collectors, including guys like me, are bleepin' idiots...