The Thomas the Tank Engine Reboot…

When I refreshed this blog I promised that I would be talking more about things that I’m a fan of and this is part of that. I’ve been a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine since I was a kid. My Dad used to read the complete stories before bed. I owned VHS tapes (yes I’m old don’t @ me) and I owned a set of die-cast engines and cars that I played with all over the house. I used to build cardboard bridges between two counters in the kitchen so that I could run my trains in a continuous loop around the kitchen. I drove my parents nuts! Anyway, when I was a kid, Thomas on TV was through a program called Shining Time Station on PBS because it was a British import. The show is one of the best examples of stop motion animation from the 80s and 90s.

However, the Thomas the Tank Engine intellectual property has been tossed around the industry over the last few years and it finally fell into the hands of Mattel. The TV show has always been a vehicle to sell toys and this was Mattel’s strategy. A good TV show will drive toy sales.

This idea hasn’t really worked out for Mattel and continuing the show is in real jeopardy. I think part of the reason that this is the case is pretty simple: the TV isn’t that great. I will admit I don’t understand too much about animation and that whole world. I’ve been learning quite a bit about it via the YouTube animation community. I just tend to take in information and I’ll watch whatever if I like the story and the characters. So I just watched Thomas along and just enjoyed what was going on. I’m sort of child-like and naive that way. So I was happily going along in my Thomas bliss and enjoying the 3D animation of the thing until I came across this video. When all the errors, problems, and difficulties were pointed out to me I realized the problem.

I’m sure many cable TV providers will continue to run the series, and there’s no doubt that kids love it when they’re young, but there’s an execution issue here. The lack of care is something that will be grating for a lot of people and they won’t like it. Whether the networks will continue showing it remains an open question, but for the sake of the franchise, it would be nice if they did.

In recent days, I’ve learned about myself that I just sort of take in information without really passing judgment on it. I had to learn the very hard way to avoid scams and other such things. I’ve had to learn what words and phrases are codes for other things and learn to feel the vibes. When it comes to shows, there’s storylines I find boring or just uninteresting but what is fascinating about this video is the level of detail he goes into pointing out all the flights of fancy and animation problems. When it comes to this sort of thing, I’m just not that smart. I find that quite a bit lately, I’m not really that smart. Anyway, here’s Thomas the Tank Engine and all the problems with the latest series and movie: Big World, Big Adventures.