Total brand compatibility?

What are your thoughts on Fisher-Price making it so that every Thomas brand has full compatibility with each other, instead of filling its own "niche"? Take-n-Play becoming "TrackMaster Push-Along" and so on. Apparently to appease kids and parents who complained about trains not all fitting on one track. Personally, I think it's unnecessary, but I've always wanted to get a non-fan opinion.

[Super]

Hello Fred_Pelhay

Welcome to BluePlasticTracks

We have many Members that have opinions on this exact subject and it is a good question for discussion.

My big complaint is that they did it after making significant changes to all the lines. The Wooden Railway and Take N Play lines were first reworked so that they weren’t compatible with previous iterations of both lines. Now that they’ve “listened to the consumers”, we’re expected to shell out money yet again for new lines that aren’t fully compatible with the old ones. My son got one or two Trackmaster push along engines but his reaction was not very enthusiastic. I refused to purchase any of the previous, simplified Wooden Railway stuff because it was low quality crap. IMO, the only positive thing to come out of all the changes was the switch to non-magnetic couplers on the Take N Play “Adventures” line. When my son was younger, he damaged a (at the time) fairly expensive TV with the magnets and bashed some dents into a couple pieces of furniture. Of course, those couplers weren’t compatible with the earlier magnetic versions and the size and gauge isn’t compatible with the Push Along line that replaces it.

Nowadays, my son is primarily of fan of the motorized trains and usually prefers Plarail or older Trackmaster. My daughter mostly focuses on the Minis line with some occasional forays into motorized trains. We only buy Fisher Price stuff if there’s a character that Tomy doesn’t make and even then, it’s pretty rare. I’m more than slightly annoyed at the “change and change again” business model Mattel employed with the various Thomas lines and the general lackadaisical treatment of the property as a whole. The whole thing is somewhat shoddy and cynical and the toys are kind of boring over all.

Fisher-Piece is the greediest, cheapest, most unsentimental, heartless, consumer fan base ignoring, junk toy company to have ever ruined a franchise toy line.

Tell us what you really think Muddy! LOL

fisher price trackmaster line is quite sad. They basically slap stickers on box cars to turn them into coaches. The good thing is that is I can scan the side of the coach and print them on sticker paper. Then I can make more coaches out of surplus box cars I have at home.

Another complaint is the “multi gauge” track they used in sets like the Super Station. That’s the only track where I’ve experienced derailments on straight runs. At least having Trackmaster Push Along at the same gauge as motorized Trackmaster and Wooden Railway partially eliminates the need for that track.

I remember parents complaining for years that Take-Along (later Take-n-Play, then Adventures) wouldn't fit on wooden or TOMY/TrackMaster tracks (despite it clearly saying so on the package), but was TrackMaster Push-Along really the way to go? The die-cast engines had their own unique narrow wheel gauge for 16 years, and would've continued to.
Just seems to me that they used those complaints from a small minority of parents as an excuse to try to "fix" a brand that was already on a downward slope.
And now Mattel (Fisher-Price) has released a statement that the separate brands were always "their challenge area, their hot topic" and by 2020 they want "completely interchangeable trains, no more confusion!" - so get ready for Thomas & Friends Wood with TrackMaster couplings, I guess?

I wonder how they incorporate the much smaller Minis into the “One Gauge To Rule Them All” concept? Speaking from parental experience, it could get expensive and tight for space with three different track systems and two different gauges. The problem is that they kept simplifying and changing mechanical designs in a scattershot fashion. If you were buying the various Thomas lines in this era, it would get frustrating to realize that older and newer lines weren’t compatible.

Just using the Take N Play/Adventures line as an example, they changed the track design and the couplers in such a way that the older and newer systems didn’t work together. There were allegedly adapters offered but I never saw them online or at store front retail. The Wooden Railway also got a track redesign that made them incompatible with older Thomas and other brands of track, like Brio. The whole “natural wood” aesthetic of that redesign was also awful. So bad in fact that the traveling Thomas museum exhibit continued using the older, more realistic looking products after the new designs came out!

And I understand that Mattel/FP is making toys that are sold to parents of young kids for fairly cheap at Walmart and Target. They aren’t in the business of making detailed collectibles for discriminating adult collectors. By the time your kid is old enough to say “Hey, wait a minute... these kinda suck” he’ll be begging for Legos or playing Roblox on his iPad. But even with that, Mattel has mishandled the toy lines and the Thomas media property pretty badly. It has turned stale and become excessively self-conscious instead of fun and dynamic. I’m not sure how much cross brand compatibility can alter that.

Yeah, if a kid says it sucks. He/she could just go online and get Plarails from Japan instead. Japan rules the new US engines and downeight terrible.