Dear GreatGordonFan, you are also free to fight your battles, but the real Thomas & Friends are in Rev. Awdry's awesome 26 little "Railway Series" books (nothing can replace those; I hope you read them, they are beautiful!), and (for the models) in Tomy Plarail & Hit Toys products. Everything else is... just not real Thomas. You can't detach the author from his work and pretend it's the real thing. Just look at the newer stories & FP models with awful spiky wheels: if you look closely, you could see they are completely distorted in looks (even Thomas' front wheel looks off!) and the sets are completely insane (walking bridges and jumping & flying engines). There was not much purists-protests about that. And that was also a deterioration of the real Thomas & Friends...
As I said before, this new pushalongs are something that little children could love. They look rather cute. But time will tell. Motorized engines shouldn't follow that path (I sincerely hope at least Tomy would not make "rebooted" engines/sets; FP is, by all accounts, a hopeless case).
Personally, I would love all companies to get back to basis: there are many, many people who would want nice, original (now "out-of-print" for a long time) engines/characters based on Awdry's tales, not weird looking things invented by some companies "experts". They could be re-released, possibly with some new features & improvements, and they'll sell like hot cakes. But here we have this new direction, and some kids may like it. Maybe there is a place for both of them, old and new, maybe there isn't. The time (and the market) will tell. And maybe "real, old Thomas" will disappear in the past. In real life, some things are just... gone, and they're not coming back anymore. It's hard to accept that when you're young, but it gets easier later. Cheers!
As I said before, this new pushalongs are something that little children could love. They look rather cute. But time will tell. Motorized engines shouldn't follow that path (I sincerely hope at least Tomy would not make "rebooted" engines/sets; FP is, by all accounts, a hopeless case).
Personally, I would love all companies to get back to basis: there are many, many people who would want nice, original (now "out-of-print" for a long time) engines/characters based on Awdry's tales, not weird looking things invented by some companies "experts". They could be re-released, possibly with some new features & improvements, and they'll sell like hot cakes. But here we have this new direction, and some kids may like it. Maybe there is a place for both of them, old and new, maybe there isn't. The time (and the market) will tell. And maybe "real, old Thomas" will disappear in the past. In real life, some things are just... gone, and they're not coming back anymore. It's hard to accept that when you're young, but it gets easier later. Cheers!
My YouTube Channel: Mister No
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