Official branded merchandise

[princessclyne69]

By this term, I mean stuff that was given by the railroad to build brand awareness, or given to employees as incentives or commemoration, or otherwise actually originating from the railroad, not something created in recent years by entities not associated with the railroad, ‘fake’ or other more polite terms. I’m also not including stuff that was marked, like pencils or staplers, to make it less likely to walk off.

It seems to me that there are way more things out there with the screaming eagle or the eagle buzzsaw, as compared to things with the simple earlier buzzsaw. Is it possible that the railroad did this on purpose, giving away things more substantial than, for instance, pocket calendars? Is it possible that, by the late 70s, the giveaways of stuff were just more common overall? They had less than ten years of the screaming eagle, compared to well over fifty years for the buzzsaw.

Was there a marketing department change that could have been responsible for this?

Just thinking out loud.

RG7

[peggyrothschild]

Ron
Safety ‘give always’ were popular, key chains, cups, jackets, watches, plates as the divisions had budgets for such. Mopac never had a company store so items that you see from UP were never available for sale.

Marketing & Sales had items to give to customers- pen sets, calendar holders, cigarette lighters come to mind.

Of course the orange employee timetables are in plentiful supply as Amtrak paid for a large percentage of them due to schedule changes. We always had boxes left over. I see the small demurrage and switching booklet I wrote in the early 1980’s before merger showing up on eBay once in a while and the Circular 7 booklets too. We printed lots of them as well.

Charlie

[Author]

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