Just a a couple of months ago, Fisher-Price released a brand new range of Thomas & Friends engines, both motorised and diecast. This was certainly a welcome change from the chunky-looking All Engines Go style characters who have been shrinking Thomas’ shelf space since 2022 – only the masterminds at Mattel could take a brand as big as Thomas that once used to have its own aisle in Toys R Us and reduce it to a couple of shelves in Smyths Toys. But while these new engines do look much nicer than the previous iteration, just how good are they when all said and done?
Mattel’s new ‘classic-style’ Thomas & Friends range was released this June to coincide with the franchise’s 80th anniversary. Characters on offer include Thomas, Percy, Nia, Gordon, James, Duck and Flying Scotsman – the latter two I suspect were added to the line-up because the product design team at Mattel were aware of their popularity in previous ranges. There’s also ‘Greatest Moments’ packs – though these are only available in America due to poor sales in previous years – and a talking Thomas who can interact with engines from the ‘All Engines Go’ range, complete with Annie and Clarabel. In addition to the ‘motorised’ fleet of engines, the Metal Collection range also includes Henry and a ‘Railway Series’ Thomas, styled after the original book illustrations – to keep things simple, this article will be focusing on the motorised engines. But the main attraction is in the form of the new Load and Launch Barrel Playset – because what Thomas toy line would be complete without a gimmicky playset to tie it all together?
The ‘Load and Launch’ Barrel Delivery Set has Thomas collect a barrel from the depot, run around the track and launch it straight back to where it came from! There’s also a fair length of track to give your engines a good run.
The engines seem to be based on their Season 23 makeovers when they gained rivets and handrails, likely to make them look more ‘cool and machine-y’ – personally I think these additional details take away from the simplicity of Thomas’ character designs. In fact, it almost looks like the toy designers at Mattel literally took the 3D meshes for the characters used on the CGI series and adapted them to fit on the motorised chassis. And speaking of the chassis, that’s the biggest flaw of the new motorised engines. Every single engine still uses the same streamlined Trackmaster Revolution chassis Mattel introduced back in 2014 – which not only means these new engines are identical under-the-hood to every other engine produced in the Trackmaster range for the last 11 years now, but every character is squashed to fit on the same size chassis.
The tank engines got off fairly easy, but Gordon and James got the short end of the stick. Gordon in particular almost looks like a cardboard tube train – and not the London Underground kind!
But the real let-down of the Revolution chassis is their lack of traction power and free-wheeling that previous generations of motorised Thomas engines had. “Faster and more realistic”, the initial 2014 redesign packaging boasted… “cheaper and easier to mass produce”, more like! Some of the new engines struggle to pull their own rolling stock sometimes.
But once I took out the lacklustre motors, which is pretty easy to do if you have the right kind of screwdriver on hand, I was left with a pretty decent looking push-along Thomas and Percy. They really do almost look like Mattel slapped the CGI meshes onto the toy chassis and sent it off to the factory. You might also notice Thomas has a slightly different expression than his iconic smile, but a cocky smirk is still a perfect fit for the cheeky little blue engine.
Now while this new range is a definite step-up from the cheap-looking cartoony Thomas toys kids have been stuck with for the last few years now, it still feels lacking compared to Thomas ranges of years gone by… a Take-N-Play collector’s sheet from 2012 has a bigger selection alone than the entire 2025 range. More characters? More playsets and destinations? Rolling stock packs? Not even so much as track extensions? There’s talk of a new Thomas project happening next year, so we can only hope that some of these missing items will be available by then.
And here’s another interesting observation… you might have noticed how close the Fisher-Price logo is to the Thomas logo on the packaging.
Gone are the days of Trackmaster and Take-N-Play – ‘Thomas & Friends’ is the toy brand. Not only does this mean there isn’t really a clear brand name for this new line of toys, but Mattel doesn’t seem to be doing a good job of spreading the word about its existence. The closest thing this line has gotten to any sort of marketing or advertising was when it was first shown off at New York Toy Fair earlier this year.
How is the general public going to know about these new toys when they hardly take up any space on the shelves? And how is that going to affect sales – and potentially new products? With the wild ride Thomas has been on these last few years, it almost feels like the future of the entire brand depends on the performance of these new toys…
But all the same, it’s so nice to see Thomas toys on the market again that actually look like Thomas the Tank Engine.
These new Thomas engines are slowly being introduced at various retailers across the globe. Readers in the UK can find the entire range of motorised engines at Smyths Toys Superstores.
