Thomas The Tank Is Getting On A Bit

Thomas the Tank actually came into the mind in 1919 but he wasn’t really created until the first books came out in the 60s which is where of course that figure comes from so he is getting on bit really. I remember that whenever I was at home or at my nan’s house I was constantly watching the show. I used to have a lot of the RC models of the trains and they most likely still be found in my loft somewhere.

Thomas and all of the characters that can be found within the series actually stemmed from the books but it was the television series that made them all famous, this started in 84 and is still going. I remember that the original series was pretty cool because Ringo Starr actually did the narration for it.

What was used up until recently in all of the episodes is real live action models as it proved to be very effective indeed. All of the trains that you can see on the screen were operated by radio signal and the animals and everything else were static. Sometimes, stop motion was used on the humans to make it look a bit better. Recently the television series has started to use CGI and whilst I have been told this is working quite well it just doesn’t really have the same effect as the old seasons.

There are so many figures on sale based around this season that you can get from RC boats to RC helicopter based on the character Harold from the series. The series creator Britt Allcroft was actually born in the same town that I am from and she did a great job at really showing of the stories in the series.

So there you go, Thomas the Tank is over 65!

Kids still love this programme today and using this programme can actually be a really good way to get your kids into model kits or something like this because you can of course buy them with all of the Thomas gang in the sets.