Trackmaster Flip Face Percy Theory

Okay so I was talking with @JunctionMalfunk on Twitter about Flip Face Percy and he said "I always wondered if they reused the tooling of the flip face Percy face for the Remote Control Percy. So maybe the flip face Percy was supposed to have a tired out face?" This then led to me getting my RC Percy, and the shape, printing, and decals are really similar to that of the Flip Face Percy. So I'm thinking that the RC Percy is a retool of the Flip Face Percy. 

Some of the similarities are shown in the photos here:
 I've circled out the similar parts on both of them.



The printing is really similar on both items and both have similar decals. There's also a large enough gap for a flip face. The moulds are also similar, as shown with the sandboxes/toolboxes on the Percy's. The color is also relatively similar on both of the items. The only real big difference mould-wise that's noticeable is the front not having a lower area for a flip face feature along with the lever area being way smaller.

If you check the planned release year of the Flip Face Percy set and the release year of the RC Percy, Flip Face was meant to release in 2007 and the RC was released in 2008 according to the Thomas Motorized Wiki.

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Good observations Ffar.

Alot of credit to @JunctionMalfunk, we were discussing it earlier and found out it RC Percy is most likely a retooling of Flip-Face Percy.

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I must be honest...I didn't even know there was a Flip Face Percy

He was a prototype. They were going to make a flip face Gordon too. I remember being in stores and pointing out the prototype image of the three flip face engines on the boxes of items in the store. Unfortunately only Toby was released as a flip face variant.

This is the photo I'm talking about:


You can even see that the Gordon doesn't even have tender decals

I remember seeing a thread on here somewhere that said some Flip Face Percy's might've slipped out. They most likely did make it to production based on the image of the set, but they are either in a warehouse, landfill, storage, or gone.

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Thanks Thara, now I know

Here's something interesting - it seems the flip face Percy promo was edited for use in the HiT Toys Percy's Day at the Farm set, and Mattel reused it for their release of the set

HiT instructions



Mattel instructions

Now that is very interesting

Could it be possible at one point Hit was considering including the Flip-Face Percy in this set?