Mega Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway unboxing review taking a look at Thomas with Booster Steam car, Giggling Troublesome Trucks, Talking Thomas The Tank, Aquarium Cars Shark and Squid, Battery Operated Diesel, Chuggington Chug Patrol Jackman and my collection of amazing Devious Diesels which shows you how the classic earlier models Vs todays CGI inspired happy Diesel designs.
Thomas Wooden Railway is a wooden model railway system created by Learning Curve in 1992. Yet wooden railway toy trains have been around for many years before the Thomas version. Amazingly there is a track standard across the many different brands on the market and most will interconnect with the most popular brands. Since 2013, the Thomas range has been produced by Fisher-Price. It is one of the longest-running Thomas merchandise lines and is a high quality, high priced robust classic toy.
Learning Curve introduced some new designs for the track surface of wooden toy railways, such as the "clickety-clack" rails patented in 1995 and the newer tracks with a relief to supply better traction grip for battery powered engines, these toy trains sometimes de-rail on some track styles and track pieces.
The original models were constructed mainly from painted wood with metal used in the coupling magnets and axles and plastic for the wheels and faces. The wooden models are of simple design without destroying the differences between the many Thomas & Friends characters. It's arguably the most popular Thomas and friends toy line.
In the late 1990s and early 2000's, the models were upgraded. The wooden funnel and smokebox were replaced with a separate plastic smokebox with a more realistic funnel. The tender engines received an additional upgrade of plastic coal. There is an argument of how much plastic can a wooden toy have before it's not wooden. Some of the battery powered wooden railway models are mostly die-cast metal and plastic without any wood in the design.
More design changes saw new faces to coincide with the TV Thomas series CGI switchover. Gone were many of the classic Thomas & Friends character faces. With all the changes it makes for a perfect toy to collect. The earlier format of the wooden railway toys are collectable valuable classic toys, if they are in excellent condition they can command excellent re-sale prices.
Chuggington toys are now made by Tomy. For me these toys are extremely difficult to find in store, where I live there has been a massive shortage of supply for some time now. I did find a new style of die-cast chugger but it's vastly different to the other toys in my son's Chuggington toy collection. My Chug Patrol Jackman has an all plastic top and only a small amount of metal underneath where the wheels join the toy train. What was nice to see is we finally have a name printed so we can learn the names of the trains as we play. But this important change was far too long in happening.
Whats curious is I see many e-bay auctions which list this toy like this.
Chuggington Die-Cast Stack Track Chug Patroller Jackman
But I have a feeling calling this a Chuggington die-cast is incorrect, the packaging classes this as a high performance "Stack Track" toy. The design is Chuggington die-cast but thats where it stops as it's overall material design is plastic. Nether the less it's a fantastic looking toy which is colourful and reminds me of Diesel 10 with his claw on the top. Question is how much train wrecking punishment can this plastic toy take compared to the classic die-cast earlier styles?
Web Links :
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en.wikipedia.or...
tomy.com/chuggi...
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