Thomas Take and Play Bundle

Got lucky with an eBay bundle couple of days ago, surprisingly all of them are pretty much mint rather than the usually all but destroyed offerings. Here's some example pictures. Some highlights were a celebration type Thomas with matching Annie/Clarabell, a gold limited Thomas (not pictured). About the only downside was Gordon was missing his tender

[Super]

Wow, nice bundle Nigels. Good to see you are still adding to your many collections. These are in very nice shape, are they old?

@Super These are the new style "Take N Play" diecast toys, circa 2013-2016.

Wow, nice bundle Nigels. Good to see you are still adding to your many collections. These are in very nice shape, are they old?

To be honest I have no idea, I'm pretty much new to the 'Take and Play' range, although I do have a couple already rattling around somewhere which came with job lots of something else.

In fact having got these I was beginning to wonder if 'Take and Play' is still a current range? Having looked about a bit since I got these I noticed there seems to be lots of 'Thomas and Friends' type around, but these rather than having the magnet couplers have poor looking plastic couplers that look like they'll break in a moment.

To a degree the difference seems to be very like the difference between the metal bodied Thomas mini's and the newer 2017 plastic bodied mini's (which I hated I hasten to add). Is the Thomas and Friends range superceeding Take and Play in order to save FP a few cents on production costs maybe as they seem to be far more easily available than the Take and Play versions?!?