Though heavily
promoted, there is not a great deal of known "Supertrain" tie-in merchandise. There were no fast food kids' meals toys
and no toy train sets for the series. What follows is the grand total of many years of enjoying and collecting
"Supertrain" items.
Supertrain Affiliate Poster
NBC supplied its affiliates with
promotional materials for the networks series. One such item is the above seen poster. They come in various sizes,
though most are in the neighborhood of a typical movie poster's 27"x41" dimensions, these posters generally would be found
in places like the lobby of an affiliates offices/studios and were not known to have been made available to the public in
general.
Supertrain T-Shirt
Never saw this in stores and don't
have much information regarding the Supertrain T-Shirt. May have been promotional and could have even been
a production crew item, it is not known for certain. The shirt is a typical cotton white t-shirt with the Supertrain"
design on the front only.
Supertrain Itself!
Found in an early 1980s edition
of Model Railroader magazine is a half page ad offering the smaller of the two Supertrain models. For a stated
$25,000 AHM (Associated Hobby Manufacturers) was listing a full set of Supertrain that was powered and included its own set
of track. AHM was a company that offered model trains in a variety of scales from N-gauge and HO-gauge and on up to
O-gauge. The AHM company entered the toy train/hobby market in the 1960s and disappears in the late 1980s.
How's that for the ultimate
train set to put under one's Christmas tree! Attempts to track down the buyer, if there was one, have failed over the
years and the status of this model is not known today. Who knows, just over the hedge in somebody's backyard may be
one of NBC's most costly stars ever enjoying her retirement!
