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Although Lionel, LLC now owns all of the trademarks and most of the product rights associated with Lionel Corporation, the original producer of Lionel trains founded in 1900, there is no direct connection between the two companies.
The bankrupt Lionel Corporation sold the tooling for its then-current product line and licensed the Lionel name to General Mills in 1969, who then operated Lionel as a division of its subsidiary Model Products Corporation . General Mills did not buy the company, however. Lionel Corporation went on to reorganize as a chain of toy stores.
Due to General Mills' cost-cutting measures, production of Lionel-branded toy and model trains returned to profitability, but sometimes at the expense of quality. Detail was often sacrificed, and most of the remaining metal parts were replaced with molded plastic.
In 1982, General Mills moved production of the trains from the United States to Mexico, an unpopular move that was reversed by 1984. The brand was sold to Kenner-Parker in 1985 and sold again in 1986, this time to a railroad enthusiast real estate developer from Detroit, Michigan named Richard Kughn.
Kughn was a prolific toy train collector who said that his friends joked that the only thing his collection lacked was the company who made them. Kughn believed that if he moved production to Detroit, it would be possible to improve quality to a level characteristic of the original Lionel Corporation and still maintain profitability.
After his purchase, Kughn founded a company called Lionel Trains to continue the brand, and Lionel Trains Inc. opened a plant in Chesterfield, Michigan. In 1989 Lionel Trains introduced a locomotive featuring realistic electronically-produced sounds.
During this time frame, Lionel began producing new products based on designs from the Post-War era, when its popularity was at its peak. Additionally, some offerings began to depart from Lionel's toy-like design and place more emphasis on scale realism and detail.
Additionally, Lionel began selling reproductions of its designs that dated from the period before World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough. These products were made by MTH Electric TrainsMTH Electric Trains formerly Mike's Train House is an American toy train and model railroad designer, importer, and manufacturer, based in Columbia, Maryland. It is a privately held company. MTH had its origins when its founder, Mike Wolf, started assembl using original Lionel Corporation tooling, which had been sold at bankruptcy in the late 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around after sitting unused for decades. This arrangement ended in the early 1990s after a disagreement between Kughn and MTH owner Mike Wolf.
The year 19931993 is a common year starting on Friday and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003 Events January January 1 Czechoslovakia divides. Establishment of independent Slovakia and Czech Republic. brought Kughn's Lionel an opportunity. The original Lionel Corporation had recovered after the sale of its trains and survived as an entirely separate entity, operating a successful chain of retail toy stores for 24 years and becoming for a time the second-largest toy retailer in the country. However, it went bankrupt in the early 1990s under increased competition and liquidated in 1993, allowing the train manufacturer to purchase the Lionel trademark after years of operating as a licensee.