Why, Oh Why Trackmaster?

When swapping out traction tires with my new black ones I have a lot of newly released Trackmaster engines with black wheels I wanted to redo but....I can't. Why on earth would Trackmaster create an entirely different system that would only take a rubber specially made for their wheels....Are you nuts Trackmaster? Why? Whats wrong with what has been used up till now? I could see if the old way was not working and they wanted to retool and improve but there was nothing wrong with the original way. I could also see if they wanted to improve and then sell their own replacement rubbers but...they don't. Frankly I don't understand. I sure can't see any advantage business wise to retool and make something different when they must have already been making their trains with the original. Ridiculous! Shame on you Trackmaster!

After seeing this different tire I seem to recall that Ucwepn had brought this up in the old Forums if I am not mistaken.

these can be sliced out very carefully with a hobby knife, and yes I curse Trackmaster for this and their split front axles, they did it so the trains have a shorter life so they are not really easily restorable in the future

Lesson learned Do not trust anyone except for Tomy!!!!!

(04-28-2014, 01:29 PM)Ucwepn Wrote: these can be sliced out very carefully with a hobby knife, and yes I curse Trackmaster for this and their split front axles, they did it so the trains have a shorter life so they are not really easily restorable in the future

LOL...I can see the board meeting now at Trackmasters..."Ladies and Gentleman, here at Trackmasters we prefer that our products don't last as long as others. By making an inferior product we insure that all our customers will return in the future to buy more inferior products"

(04-28-2014, 01:33 PM)Gerisplarail1 Wrote: Lesson learned Do not trust anyone except for Tomy!!!!!

Hail Tomy! Long live Tomy!

It ensures they get thrown away instead of resold on ebay once the kid has worn it out, I think Trackmaster have outsmarted themselves here though. They continue to steal my ideas, first it was light up engines they even stole a line I used in my first light up custom video as their slogan "lighting the way". Now it appears stealing another of my ideas and fitting faster motors as standard, coming soon!

Faster motors??? Whats that all about?

This is all that's known at this stage

Very interesting. To me the Thomas engines are slow now so I wonder how much faster they are talking about. Anxious to here areview on the motors once they are released to see if the increase in speed is do to a beefed up motor or a change in gearing and redesign of the gear box. Thanks Ucwepn.

very interesting...

This vid from the other thread makes a little more sense now with Thomas climbing to "greater heights" and James going faster than the current James