I suppose it's been quite a while since I've posted anything here, but what I do have to say after a phone call to Fisher-Price the other day probably won't make any of us here any happier.
I finally found Mike and Ryan on the 6th, and picked them both up from my local Target store; after inspecting them, I found Ryan was jerking about on the rails instead of running nice and mellifluously as Mike did. So, since I don't like having any of those sorts of engines in my collection, I gave them a call and asked them about Ryan's production model.
To say that I was disappointed is a better term than what I was actually thinking-- the representative actually put me on hold when I asked about the production model's wheel colour-- only the pre-production model has the purple wheels; the production model is supposed to have black wheels, and that was it. To put the icing atop my cake of frustration, they are sending me a voucher to find another Ryan model to replace the one that I have. Please try to imagine the joy I have that it's only going to be a $17.00 voucher to cover an $18.40 purchase.
This gimmick of climbing and speed is probably the only selling factor of this line, which makes it a genuine failure later on down the road. To be honest, I'm getting tired of buying the "1 in 100", or whatever the numbers are for the faulty ones in the batches, of a certain engine-- If I'm the only one that keeps getting these, the company should probably just start figuring out a new motor and redesigning this redesign.
It's really not good for kids to get a train that doesn't work properly and, if the gimmick is only good on one engine, the line probably won't survive.
I finally found Mike and Ryan on the 6th, and picked them both up from my local Target store; after inspecting them, I found Ryan was jerking about on the rails instead of running nice and mellifluously as Mike did. So, since I don't like having any of those sorts of engines in my collection, I gave them a call and asked them about Ryan's production model.
To say that I was disappointed is a better term than what I was actually thinking-- the representative actually put me on hold when I asked about the production model's wheel colour-- only the pre-production model has the purple wheels; the production model is supposed to have black wheels, and that was it. To put the icing atop my cake of frustration, they are sending me a voucher to find another Ryan model to replace the one that I have. Please try to imagine the joy I have that it's only going to be a $17.00 voucher to cover an $18.40 purchase.
This gimmick of climbing and speed is probably the only selling factor of this line, which makes it a genuine failure later on down the road. To be honest, I'm getting tired of buying the "1 in 100", or whatever the numbers are for the faulty ones in the batches, of a certain engine-- If I'm the only one that keeps getting these, the company should probably just start figuring out a new motor and redesigning this redesign.
It's really not good for kids to get a train that doesn't work properly and, if the gimmick is only good on one engine, the line probably won't survive.
Residential train-afficionado in training, and Thomas & Friends fan.
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