You're kidding, right? Tower 55 did the same thing and Athearn is just picking up where they left off when they bought T55. No offense intended but I don't think Athearn cares or should care what any individual or group of modelers is doing. They have no obligation to you or anyone else to produce or not to produce something. If it's a horrible idea then Athearn will pay the price by not selling any models. If it's a good idea, Athearn will sell a bunch of them and have the profit to produce more models for all of us. This is still a nominally free country and I would be loathe to tell any company what they can or can't produce as long as it was legal.
Of course it's completely legal, but then again so were the executive bonuses at AIG. Care to defend that? Regarding the Athearn models, while Athearn has every right to produce them, I still believe it diminishes the uniqueness and charm of the modern-day fallen flag modelers who have had the courage to stray away from the pack and do something radically different. It's akin to two major corporations and their business models we have seen recently: Barnes & Noble, and Starbucks. Barnes & Noble basically took the idea of the local urban bookstore - many in neighborhoods that quite hadn't gentrified yet - and mass produced it by planting their mega-stores in the middle of SUV-packed parking lots in Suburbia USA. The original pioneers of the bookstore concept - a place where one was free to sit down in a comfy couch, browse through books, and enjoy some coffee and a muffin - were squashed in the process, even though having provided the inspiration to the mega corporation that would ultimately carbon copy their business model.
Starbucks has done a similar thing, albeit they were admittedly a pioneer themselves for the local coffee shop business model with their first few stores in Seattle. Mass production would ultimately take a concept celebrated for its uniqueness and quirkiness, and make it wholly boring and generic through rapid expansion. Starbucks recently shuttered over 700 stores worldwide, for what it's worth.
What does this have to do with Athearn's fantasy models, you may wonder? The answer isn't easy or even possible to achieve, since we hold different values; I can actually claim to have a vested interest in this as I am a modern fallen-flag modeler who has spent the majority of his time formulating a concept, an alternate history, building a website, decorating rolling stock and locomotives for a railroad that doesn't currently exist. While I don't hold copyright to the idea, if anyone else were to come along and do something similar, I would commend them for the effort and time they would have to invest to bring their concept to reality. But when a major MRR manufacturer comes along and, at the swipe of a pen, signals the factory in China to start mass-producing paint schemes for "fantasy" concepts that others have worked so hard to establish, I do believe that's a slap in the face. Especially when that manufacturer could be producing more prototype paint schemes that are sorely missing from the market and would no doubt be a guaranteed sales success.
Again, it's a value difference between us. Only difference here is that I actually have a vested interest in the issue. Many suburban soccer moms may have applauded the expansion of Barnes & Noble, but I'm sure the local bookstores did not. Just depends on which side of the fence you fall on the issue, who you are, and how you figure into the game.
I'm still trying to figure out colour schemes for my Emerald, Leemer & Southern!!
