Roads

[Romemobil]

Hi Everyone,

Can someone tell me why Playmobil do not produce a road surface, the only I can see seems to appear in set 4047 The Road Construction set, it just seems quite crazy when you consider the pavement / sidewalk details in the city life sets eg shops, etc


Thanks


John

[tahra]

Uhm.. maybe because people would need loads of it? You know.. they'd want to give them.. MONEY. The HORROR. 

[The_Mad_Hadder]

Probably to do with the amount of plastic required, and then you would get what, one section of road or even two or three? still would not be enough plus the ramp sections they would have to provide at either the to allow the vehicles to travel up and on and then off again. Would it be a section that consists of two lanes or four? Would it have a center lane for turning that you could put your own turning makers on? How would intersections work to connect? Would they provide lane mergers when you want to move from four lanes down to 2?  I can see the complants parents would have if a vehicle only came with one or two sections of road. Would it just be a stand alone, or only sold through DS? Would children then prefer to play with their playmobil vehicles on the the playmobil roads or on their floors as they currently do?

There is a lot to consider here and personally I can see why PM does not bother. It has to make business sense for them. The question you need to find out is could collectors pay enough to warrent the cost to have them made?

[Oliver]

I'd question the play value of it. The pavements are attached to the buildings, and so provide a neat look. Would a road be a plastic sheet attached to buildings or a stand alone set?

I believe Lego used to (and maybe still do?) make road base plates?

By the same argument they don't make 'grass' beyond a couple of garden sets. I'm not sure of the benefit beyond playing on the floor, plus for it to be on a big scale it would be very space intensive (which I assume is why the railways have fallen out of favour).

[Romemobil]

Yes I can see those points from my view it was purely selfish wanting to simply add a another realistic element to any diorama, but yes from a cost and certainly a "play" aspect I can see why they don't produce roads - still afew would be nice 

John

[Klickteryx]

No reason they couldn't do a floor mat that rolls up. Yes such products already exist, but a playmo-specific one would look better. They could even have green areas which you could place their existing ground bases on and having a mat where the colours match the buildings, bases etc would tie things in nicely.

[tahra]

They did do some play mats recently...

I wish they didn't have silly drawings though - like tall trees, flowers, a pier, fences, horse stall, barrels.. That just looks awful when you put real playmo on it too.

[GrahamB]

When I look at pictures of Playmobil dioramas, I find the best ones include non-Playmobil scenery. Although PM rocks, grass, roads, trees, etc. do exist, sometimes a diorama can look a bit unfinished or incomplete if the creator uses only PM items. Just my opinion, but even Geobra use non-PM items in their promotional pictures and box art (this was especially true in the early days).
Perhaps the exception to this is when a creator produces indoor scenes (remember Toby's zoo visits and several other masterpieces by Raven?) which can look great with all-PM parts.

[Raven]

There is a road baseplate 30 80 3972 which came in sets 4044, 4048, and 7514.  (Each piece also needs part 30 45 8470 to complete it.) It looks quite good with all the sets (including 4047) put together.  You can only have a long straight road though!

[Romemobil]

Thanks Raven, I thought there must be some road surfaces somewhere