I’m kinda glad I focus my own collection on “real world” Plarail stuff!
Unfortunately, I’m also a parent with two kids in the target age range for Thomas stuff. Some of the design and marketing decisions Mattel has made with the various Thomas toy lines the past year or two haven’t set well with me. While I liked the new couplers on the revamped Adventures line, it made them incompatible with Take n Play. Of course, you could use the special adapters but I think there must’ve been about 5 sets of those made! The re-do of the track connecters was unnecessary and I never saw any adapter pieces for those either.
The new wooden line is a huge disappointment and the proprietary connectors on the track seems specifically designed to hack off kids and parents who’ve been able to connect the earlier tracks to other wooden rail systems.
And in a time when many people are dropping cable TV, Mattel gets the “brilliant” idea to launch the allegedly new and improved Thomas on Nickelodeon here in the US. That ends about 30 years of it being on public television and since Nick is now “premium” level in many markets, kids like mine don’t see new episodes anymore, even if those episodes are mushy and dumbed down.
The whole thing reeks of both cynicism and desperation that really turns me off as a parent and customer. Oddly, having a new, push-along line in the same gauge as Trackmaster (and also various wooden systems) is the LEAST irritating part about this whole debacle for me! What stinks about this is the underlying assumption that parents and collectors have a magic money tree to go harvest every time an older line is orphaned and new line is introduced. The “diverse, inclusive, multicultural” stuff might temporarily quell the whining ninnies at Tumblr but my kids just want cool toys of characters they like. It’s something they’ve done for years anyway (consider the popularity of Hiro or Ashima) but without the self-congratulatory corporate blather.
Unfortunately, I’m also a parent with two kids in the target age range for Thomas stuff. Some of the design and marketing decisions Mattel has made with the various Thomas toy lines the past year or two haven’t set well with me. While I liked the new couplers on the revamped Adventures line, it made them incompatible with Take n Play. Of course, you could use the special adapters but I think there must’ve been about 5 sets of those made! The re-do of the track connecters was unnecessary and I never saw any adapter pieces for those either.
The new wooden line is a huge disappointment and the proprietary connectors on the track seems specifically designed to hack off kids and parents who’ve been able to connect the earlier tracks to other wooden rail systems.
And in a time when many people are dropping cable TV, Mattel gets the “brilliant” idea to launch the allegedly new and improved Thomas on Nickelodeon here in the US. That ends about 30 years of it being on public television and since Nick is now “premium” level in many markets, kids like mine don’t see new episodes anymore, even if those episodes are mushy and dumbed down.
The whole thing reeks of both cynicism and desperation that really turns me off as a parent and customer. Oddly, having a new, push-along line in the same gauge as Trackmaster (and also various wooden systems) is the LEAST irritating part about this whole debacle for me! What stinks about this is the underlying assumption that parents and collectors have a magic money tree to go harvest every time an older line is orphaned and new line is introduced. The “diverse, inclusive, multicultural” stuff might temporarily quell the whining ninnies at Tumblr but my kids just want cool toys of characters they like. It’s something they’ve done for years anyway (consider the popularity of Hiro or Ashima) but without the self-congratulatory corporate blather.
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