What I noticed, and I wonder if anyone in Playmobil did too, was why have a western themed water-tower for a steam engine but yet they are NOT selling a western steam engine?!
Yes you are right that there is no western train and even in the US all the trains have been discontinued. The reason for it was the it was very high on the list as to items the international pilot group voted on. It does not make theme sense but this was/is more of a test to see how it works out.
Sales will be very low on these. Only the very few collectors who have western stuff will even bother with it.
How do you know that this will happen?
Then the executives at Playmobil will look at numbers of sales of this item and see how low they were and how many they still have in stock at various DS locations and then be very reluctant to release old moulds again ...
How many people do you think bought the classic fire truck or the orange construction truck. Even the used vintage ones do not sell very well at all and yet Geobra re-released them. The items chosen all of these are very sought after by collectors and the used prices are very high so in my opinion these have a better chance than the ones Geobra itself choses.
One thing you should also keep in mind is that Geobra already put in the capital investment into these molds. Plugging in an old mold and cranking out some classic sets is all profit. No high salary design team, no market research, no mold expense, no fancy child testing, no boxes even. To turn 50¢ of raw goods into $20, those #'s should keep the execs happy enough.
