There are two possibilities:
1)there is a variant, due to being made in two different batches
2)someone swapped the original body with printed decals with the one from the original angry thomas
While we are waiting for our experts to chime in and keeping in mind I am far from being well versed in the Thomas trains, wasn't there a Thomas that had red cheeks but wasn't considered the 'Blushing' one???
Never noticed this until now! I opened up mine and I believe @Donald9Douglas10Oliver11mp is correct, as the date code says the body shell was produced in 2004. My guess is the printed decals might have been rubbing off, so the original owner swapped the face with the angry Thomas.
It’s always possible that Tomy just had extra stickered shells lying around and wanted to get rid of them, but that’s much less likely
plarail for life
I am sorry that it took so long for my reply, but it was a very busy week, and I was just now able to take a look…The one that I have out of box has printed detailing rather than a sticker decal, and I will assume our unopened bnib one is the same.
My first guess is that it is just a face swap onto a different shell, but my other thought is: why would they use a stickered shell when it could have just been swapped onto any common printed detail shell, so that its state would have never come into question?
Play nice & have fun!!
I remember reading some discussion a while ago about a sticker or printing inside the shells of Plarail engines that indicated the year or something of when it was made or am I confusing that with something else? Are there numbers or letters inside the shell? What about under the chassis, does that say what the blushing Thomas chassis is supposed to say?